Eaten Alive

DVD Elite Entertainment
1976, 91 minutes
Rated R 

review by Lee Peterson

   Tobe Hooper's follow-up to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre didn't find much of an audience when released in 1976, despite repeated (and confusing) title changes (Brutes and Savages, Death Trap, Horror Hotel, Horror Hotel Massacre, Legend of the Bayou, Murder on the Bayou and Starlight Slaughter). 

   Fondly remembered by horror fans, its sporadic availability on video has only added to its reputation as a "lost classic" cult film. While it never quite matches the greatness of Chainsaw (and how could it?), Eaten Alive delivers enough low-budget gory mayhem to satisfy any fan of Œ70's drive-in horror excess.

   Clara Wood (Roberta Collins, of The Big Doll House and Death Race 2000), is kicked out of Miss Hattie (Carolyn Jones, of TV's The Addams Family and the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers)'s whorehouse for refusing to submit to the sodomy demands of "good-old-boy" Buck (a young, pre-Freddy Krueger Robert Englund—"Name's Buck and I'm rarin' to fuck!"). She ends up at the nearby Starlight Hotel, a dilapidated, fog-surrounded shit-hole run by weird old Judd (Neville Brand, of Stalag 17, The Birdman of Alcatraz,and best known as Al Capone on TV's The Untouchables—in the middle of the B-horror movie phase of his career, with roles in Killdozer, The Psychic Killer, The Return, and Without Warning). 

   Before long, Judd skewers Clara on a sharpened pitchfork and feeds her to his pet alligator (which Judd insists is a crocodile). Soon, other guests arrive: Roy (William Finley, of Brian DePalma's Sisters and Phantom of the Paradise), his wife Faye (Marilyn Burns, who gets tied up, bloodied and jumps out a window just like she did in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), their little daughter Angie (Kyle Richards, who followed this with The Car and Halloween), and a yappy little dog (which, thankfully, becomes gator chow in short order). 

    Meanwhile, Clara's father Harvey (Mel Ferrer, who would not only face another killer gator in The Great Alligator in 1979, but would also appear in the other Eaten Alive—Umberto Lenzi's 1980 cannibal classic, Mangiati Vivi) and sister Libby (Crystin Sinclair, of Curtis Harrington's Ruby), also show up, on the trail of their missing family member, with help from Sheriff Martin (Stuart Whitman, who battled giant killer bunnies in Night of the Lepus and would play the Rev. Jim Jones in 1980's Guyana, Cult of the Damned). Buck brings his dim-witted girlfriend Lynette, (Janus Blythe, later in The Incredible Melting Man and Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes) and one by one, the guests are sliced up by Judd's trusty scythe, then fed to the (pretty fake-looking) gator. 

    It's tempting to see Eaten Alive as just a Louisiana bayou variation on  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (as Judd could easily be kin to Chainsaw's Sawyer family), but the plot more closely resembles Psycho (also loosely based on the real-life crimes of Ed Gein). The script was written by Greydon Clark's collaborator Alvin L. Fast (Black Shampoo, Satan's Cheerleaders), producer Mardi (Mohammad) Rustam, and Kim Henkel, co-scripter of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (and writer/director of the abysmal Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Rustam wrote and directed 1985's Evils of the Night,a horror rarity with an incredible cast: Neville Brand, Tina Louise, John Carradine, Julie Newmar, and porn stars Amber Lynn and Jerry Butler (Where's the Special Edition DVD of that, Elite?)! '

   Tobe Hooper gets a bad rap from horror fans who accuse him of never fulfilling the promise he showed with Chainsaw. Salem's Lot, Poltergeist and Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 are all bona fide horror classics, and Lifeforce, The Funhouse and the Invaders from Mars remake, although flawed, have plenty of supporters. Hooper's next film is reportedly called Crocodile (formerly Flat Dog), so he's come (almost) full circle.

  Elite Entertainment's letterboxed transfer (1.85:1, non-anamorphic) looks better than we could ever hope. The print is scratchy in places, but that only pumps up the grittiness and drive-in cheesy flavor. The garish lighting and exaggerated color schemes (cinematographer Robert Caramico also shot Orgy of the Dead, Blackenstein and Ted V. Mikels' The Black Klansman!) cast an appropriately sleazy glow, and the claustrophobic set-bound staging gives the whole thing an alternate-reality base. This is a bare-bones release, with a "restricted" trailer and only ten chapter stops. The packaging incorrectly states a running time of 89 minutes (it's really 91).

   If you know and love Eaten Alive, Elite's DVD presentation will not disappoint you. Whatever you do, avoid the "public domain" DVD release from Diamond Entertainment (who just released a $9.99 double-feature of The Giant Gila Monster and The Killer Shrews). Diamond's full-screen DVD sounds terrible, and doesn't look any better than the out-of-print VHS copy you probably already own.