Director: Tobe Hooper
Screenplay: Alvin L. Fast, Mardi Rustam
Starring: Neville Brand, Mel Ferrer, Carolyn Jones, Marilyn Burns, Robert Englund
Release Date: May 1977
“My name is Buck. And I’m rarin’ to FUCK!”
Disgusted yet? Yes? Good! Then you probably shouldn’t watch EATEN ALIVE any time soon, as that is the very first line of the movie, intoned over an extreme close-up of hot-tempered redneck Buck’s (Robert Englund) crotch as he unbuckles his jeans. The next shot is of the horrified face of the inexperienced prostitute he is preparing to sodomize. The girl’s name is Clara (Collins), and after refusing Buck’s advances and being subjected to a good ol’ fashioned Texas-style attempted hooker-rape, Miss Hattie (Carolyn Jones) sends her packing. On her way out of town, Clara decides to stop and rest for the night at the Starlight Hotel, a decrepit shit-shack located in a prehistoric swamp deep in the asshole of the Texas backwoods.
The place is run by Judd (Neville Brand), a mentally unhinged rat bastard with severe people problems who, once he discovers Clara is one of Miss Hattie’s girls, tries to rape her and, when that fails, stabs her to death with a pitchfork and feeds her to the massive crocodile that lives in the bog beside his front porch. As the night wears on, more visitors arrive at the Starlight, including bickering husband and wife Roy (William Finley) and Faye (Marilyn Burns), and their daughter Angie (Kyle Richards); Harvey Wood (Ferrer) and his daughter Libby (Crystin Sinclaire), who just happen to be searching for Harvey’s other estranged daughter, the recently-devoured Clara; and good ol’ Buck eventually shows up to get rowdy with a little lady he picked up at the local pool hall. Throughout the course of the night each of them eventually draws the ire of the increasingly unstable Judd, who murders them one by one with the biggest goddamn scythe you’ve ever seen before feeding them to his beloved pet crocodile.
It takes a special breed of sick fuck to churn out a move as demented as EATEN ALIVE, but director Tobe Hooper has proven once again that he is just the twisted son of a bitch for the job, and God bless him for it! The line between entertaining trash and utter trash is razor-thin, and Hooper has always excelled at toeing that line in pictures such as THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, it’s sequel, and last year’s SIHS entry THE FUNHOUSE. As with those films, EATEN ALIVE is populated who range from mere batshit insane to totally goddamn bugnuts. I don’t think there’s a genuinely likeable character in the entire cast. Neville Brand is an absolute hoot to watch in his portrayal of Judd, all greasy hair hanging over a wiry pair of glasses held together by tape, hobbling around on a wooden leg. Long stretches of the film are spent observing him in solitude, usually post-homicide, as he babbles madly to himself, attempting to justify his actions to the demons in his head. The man is absolutely riveting, and I would gladly watch a one man show all about this guy.
Brand aside, the entire cast is remarkably unhinged, in particular William Finley as Roy. Roy and his family end up staying at the hotel after his daughter’s puppy is devoured by the crocodile, leaving the little girl in shock. Once the family settles into their room, Roy’s reaction to all of this is to behave like some sort of homicidal man-child, mindlessly and unintelligibly bickering with his wife, strangling the air, and even barking like a dog at one point. The whole movie is filled with mostly-male characters who initially seem normal, only to devolve into sub-moronic psychopaths at a moments notice. There were many moments in this flick where I couldn’t believe ridiculous behavior on display. This is a trait Hooper wisely carried over from TCM, creating a sinister world of deviancy where everybody seems to be on edge, and that atmosphere effectively rubs off on the audience. Aiding in the creation of this atmosphere is the stellar production design. The Starlight Hotel and it’s swampy exterior were obviously built indoors on a soundstage. Some might argue that this phoniness runs contrary to the terrifying realism that location shooting lent to CHAINSAW, but shooting on a stage allows Hooper to experiment with some fairly complex camerawork and an effectively hellish orange lighting scheme. The score by Hooper and Wayne Bell is also quite eerie, a cacophonous soundscape of dissonant noise that serves to keep the viewer on edge.
As far as scares go, this flick can’t compete with TCM at all, but the lack of tension never acts as a detriment to the film’s fairly brisk pacing. I spent the first 45 minutes of the film consistently gob smacked by the utter lunacy of what I was watching, and that’s where most of my enjoyment came from. Hooper upped the gore quotient quite a bit compared to TCM. When Judd uses his scythe on his victims, it isn’t pretty. The most effective kill is one of the first ones, where Judd slices the person up fairly adequately and the camera lingers on their shocked face for while, long enough for me to believe the scene was over. And then, out of nowhere the crocodile bursts through the porch railing and snags the poor bastard, causing me to nearly shit my pants, as I had forgotten this flick had a giant croc by that point. The effects used to create are at first glance incredibly hokey, but the few solid glimpses of the rubbery critter are mostly seen through a swampy haze of fog and murky water, which keeps the beast from appearing too laughable. It helps that amidst all of the sleaze, boobs and bloodshed the film retains a certain dry dark humor that acknowledges the ludicrousness of the situation.
I suppose I could call EATEN ALIVE a guilty pleasure, but to be perfectly honest I don’t feel at all guilty for enjoying this. My only real complaints with the film are that after the 45 minute mark the pacing loses steam for a bit, as the plot briefly leaves the confines of the hotel to follow Clara’s father and sister in their futile search for her, bickering the corrupt local sheriff and generally boring the piss out of me. It is sleazy, at times sickening, morally reprehensible and totally indefensible, yet oddly compelling and always entertaining. When I sit down to watch any movie I hope to see at least one thing I’ve never seen on a movie screen before, and EATEN ALIVE offers up a smorgasbord of dementia that could never be recreated in a film today. Sue me, but I dug the hell out of this sick-ass flick.
My Rating: 7/10
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