The Opening Bite
Every decade coughs up a horror movie so peculiar that it feels less like a finished product and more like a fever dream scribbled on a cocktail napkin. For the late 1980s, The Kiss is one such specimen. Directed by Pen Densham and starring Joanna Pacula as a cursed supermodel and Meredith Salenger as a teenage target of supernatural French kissing, this movie is a cocktail of demonic parasites, horny uncles, feline manifestations, and more mall-related death traps than OSHA could regulate.
And yet, in the middle of the insanity is Meredith Salenger — luminous, terrified, and genuinely compelling. She’s the one sane presence in a film that thinks “killer escalator” belongs in the same sentence as “ancient African curse.” Watching her navigate this nonsense is like watching a ballerina dance on a floor covered in banana peels.
The Plot: A Family Affair with Extra Saliva
The story begins in the Belgian Congo in 1963, because apparently every cheap horror film requires an exotic prologue involving mysterious artifacts. Young Felice receives a serpent-shaped talisman from her aunt, who immediately goes full demonic make-out session and dies. Felice survives, proving that if your relative tries to tongue you to death on a train, just keep calm and carry on.
Cut to 25 years later in suburban Albany, where Felice (now grown into Joanna Pacula, a woman who can seduce drywall) reconnects with her estranged sister Hilary. Poor Hilary doesn’t survive long enough to regret answering the phone; she’s promptly killed in a freak car accident after looking at a gun shop window. Subtle foreshadowing: none.
Enter Amy Halloran (Meredith Salenger), Hilary’s daughter, who suddenly has to share her house with Aunt Felice — who is a model, a witch, a seductress, and, oh yes, cursed by a saliva-based parasite that turns her into a demonic cat thing when she’s not busy trying to seduce her brother-in-law. Thanksgiving dinner must have been awkward.
Meredith Salenger: The Horror Film’s Beating Heart
Here’s where Meredith Salenger shines. As Amy, she’s the quintessential late-’80s teen heroine — smart, sensitive, rocking the mall-rat wardrobe of the era — but she also sells the terror with real conviction. In a movie where cats explode, priests combust spontaneously in elevators, and escalators devour teenage girls, Salenger plays it absolutely straight.
She is the audience surrogate, screaming on our behalf, asking logical questions like “Why does my aunt keep a bloodied pair of sunglasses as a souvenir?” and “Why does my father think it’s fine that his sister-in-law keeps caressing him during dinner?” If the Academy gave out awards for surviving plot holes with dignity, Meredith Salenger would have had an Oscar on her mantel in 1989.
Highlights in the Madness
The Killer Escalator
Amy’s best friend Heather meets a gruesome fate at the mall when her necklace gets caught in the escalator. The scene is played with genuine suspense, but you can’t help but think it’s an allegory about the dangers of shopping while accessorized. Heather survives but mangled, proving once again that escalators are Satan’s playground.
The Creepy Cat Attacks
Felice’s curse manifests as a demonic cat that terrorizes the Halloran household. At one point it leaps at Amy’s dad in the kitchen. The cat is clearly a stuffed prop in half the shots, but Meredith Salenger still reacts as though she’s being mauled by the spawn of Satan. Give that girl a medal for acting opposite taxidermy.
The Poolside Showdown
The climax involves Amy, her dad, her creepy aunt, an electric gardening tool, a swimming pool, and a propane tank. By the end, Felice has disintegrated, the parasite is fried, and Amy has earned the right to never attend another family reunion. Meredith Salenger sells every shriek and desperate thrash in that pool, turning what should be bargain-bin melodrama into a finale with actual stakes.
Allegories, If You Insist
Some critics have suggested the film is an allegory for the AIDS epidemic, with its deadly curse passed through a kiss. That may be giving The Kiss more credit than it deserves. The movie is less an allegory and more a cautionary tale about avoiding relatives who show up uninvited with cursed jewelry and an overwhelming urge to French kiss their way to immortality.
Still, it does fit the era’s trend of horror films using bodily fluids, contagion, and sex as a cocktail of terror. Watching Joanna Pacula lean in for one of those deadly kisses makes you want to bathe in Purell.
Performances: Beauty and the Beastly
-
Joanna Pacula as Felice: She vamps her way through the film with icy menace. Her accent drips menace. Her wardrobe screams “evil fashion week.” She’s the relative who ruins holidays by flirting with your dad.
-
Nicholas Kilbertus as Jack, the Dad: He spends most of the film bewildered, as if he wandered into the wrong movie but decided to stay because a paycheck is a paycheck.
-
Mimi Kuzyk as Brenda, the Nosy Neighbor: Every horror film needs a neighbor who instantly suspects something supernatural. Brenda even gets her own cat allergy subplot. Because symbolism, I guess.
-
Meredith Salenger as Amy: The undisputed MVP. She carries the film’s emotional weight while also running, screaming, and stabbing demonic cats. She deserved hazard pay.
The Style: Suburban Gothic
Filmed in Montreal but set in upstate New York, The Kiss has the kind of aesthetic where colonial homes, shopping malls, and swimming pools become stages for demonic possession. The special effects are pure late-’80s practical work: rubbery cats, gooey parasites, and spontaneous combustion that looks like a magician’s stage trick.
The tone wavers between gothic melodrama and after-school special. One minute we’re dealing with cursed bloodlines, the next minute Amy is at the mall with her girlfriends. It’s like Cat People crashed into a John Hughes film, and the wreckage was swept into a TriStar release schedule.
Why We Remember It
Despite being a box office dud, The Kiss sticks in the mind because it’s bonkers in all the right ways. It gives us Meredith Salenger in full Final Girl mode, Joanna Pacula as the most glamorous parasite host since Bela Lugosi, and a killer escalator scene you will never forget.
It’s not good in the traditional sense. The script is clunky, the pacing uneven, and some of the effects wouldn’t scare a toddler. But it has a certain charm, the kind that only comes from filmmakers who believed deeply in a premise no sane person could take seriously.
Final Verdict
The Kiss is a flawed, bizarre, occasionally laughable horror film — but within its chaos lies the undeniable beauty of Meredith Salenger’s performance. She grounds the absurdity with genuine heart, giving us a heroine worth rooting for. The movie may try to terrify us with cursed talismans and demonic cats, but the real horror is that Salenger never got enough credit for carrying this goo-soaked, saliva-obsessed monstrosity.
In the grand pantheon of 1980s horror, The Kiss sits comfortably in the “so weird it’s wonderful” category. It’s a movie where death lurks in escalators, kisses can kill, and Meredith Salenger proves that even in the most ludicrous circumstances, a good actress can make you believe in the nightmare.
