• Source: Eaten Alive

Eaten Alive (known under various alternate titles, including Death Trap, Horror Hotel, and Starlight Slaughter, and stylized on the poster as Eaten Alive!) is a 1976 American horror film directed by Tobe Hooper, and written by Kim Henkel, Alvin L. Fast, and Mardi Rustam.
The film stars Neville Brand, Mel Ferrer, Carolyn Jones, Roberta Collins, Robert Englund, William Finley, Marilyn Burns, Janus Blythe, and Kyle Richards. Brand plays a psychotic hotel proprietor in a Southern bayou, who feeds those who upset him to a large crocodile that lives in a swamp beside the hotel.
Although the film did not receive a warm reception when it was released, it has gained a cult following in its time, and with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre from 1974, Eaten Alive helped Hooper advance in his career, allowing him to direct his first major studio film, The Funhouse, in 1981.




Plot


After refusing a demand for anal sex from a customer named Buck, naïve prostitute Clara Wood is evicted from the town brothel by the madame, Miss Hattie. Clara makes her way to the decrepit Starlight Hotel, located deep in the remote swampland of rural Texas, where she encounters the hotel's mentally disturbed proprietor, Judd. Judd chases her outside, then attacks and kills her with a pitchfork before feeding her to his pet Nile crocodile that lives in the swamp beside the hotel.
Some days later, a fractious couple, the well-dressed, pill-popping Faye and her disturbed husband Roy, arrive at the hotel with their young daughter, Angie. Shortly after their arrival, the family dog, Snoopy, is brutally attacked by the resident crocodile, which shocks little Angie. In retaliation, Roy goes out to kill the carnivorous swamp creature but is attacked by Judd, who is wielding a large scythe. In the struggle, Roy manages to shoot Judd in the foot, but Judd—who has a false leg—is uninjured and kills Roy. Judd then violently beats and straps Faye onto her bed and attempts to grab Angie, but she escapes and hides under the hotel's porch.
Later, Harvey Wood and his daughter Libby also arrive at the Starlight Hotel, seeking information on the now-deceased Clara, who is Harvey's runaway daughter, but they leave when Judd denies having seen her. Accompanied by Sheriff Martin, Harvey and Libby question Miss Hattie, who also denies ever seeing Clara. Harvey returns to the creepy swamp hotel alone, while Libby goes for dinner and drinks with the sheriff. After Harvey discovers a captive Faye in her hotel room, Judd murders him, once again utilizing his large scythe.
Meanwhile, after being kicked out of a bar by the sheriff, scummy Buck and his underaged girlfriend Lynette venture to the Starlight, much to the annoyance of Judd. When Buck hears screams coming from Faye and Angie crying under the porch, he gets pushed into the swamp by Judd and devoured by the crocodile. Lynette runs outside and is spotted by Judd. She runs into the woods screaming, and he pursues her. However, the fog causes Judd to lose sight of her, and Lynette is saved by a man in a passing car.
Later, Libby arrives back at the hotel and manages to untie Faye from her bed and retrieve Angie from under the porch. Consumed with madness, Judd chases the three survivors into the swamp, where he is finally attacked and killed by his pet reptile. Sheriff Martin then arrives at the hotel and rescues Libby, Faye, and Angie. Before the credits roll, Judd's false leg comes up from the water.




Cast


Neville Brand as Judd
Mel Ferrer as Harvey Wood
Carolyn Jones as Miss Hattie
Marilyn Burns as Faye
William Finley as Roy
Stuart Whitman as Sheriff Martin
Roberta Collins as Clara Wood
Kyle Richards as Angie
Robert Englund as Buck
Janus Blythe as Lynette
Crystin Sinclaire as Libby Wood




Production


Following the success of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (TCSM), Hooper (alongside TCSM co-writer Kim Henkel) worked on scripts for the murder mystery Bleeding Hearts and another project titled Dead and Alive. However, neither came to materialize and Hooper was approached by Psychic Killer producer Mardi Rustam to direct Eaten Alive. The film's budget was mainly gathered on Hooper's name alone and is reported to have been $600,000.
The concept came from Rustam and Alvin Fast but the screenplay was written by Henkel and Hooper. The plot was very loosely based on the story of Joe Ball (also known as the Alligator Man or The Butcher of Elmendorf) who owned a bar with a live alligator attraction during the 1930s in Elmendorf, Texas. During this time, Ball murdered several women. Legend has it that he disposed of his victims' bodies by feeding them to his pet alligators, but this was never proven.
Working under the title Death Trap, Eaten Alive was filmed entirely on the sound stages of Raleigh Studios in Hollywood, California, which had a large-scale pool that could double as a swamp. Shooting on a sound stage instead of a practical location contributed to the atmosphere of the film, which director Tobe Hooper described as a "surrealistic, twilight world." The film eventually proved to be problematic for the director, though, who left the set shortly before production ended, due to a dispute with the producers. Hooper's good relationship with his actors remained intact, though. The director later recalled how he worked with actor Neville Brand to fully develop the character of Judd, declaring, "He understood what he was doing exactly.”




Release


The film was initially released in 1976 under the title Starlight Slaughter by Virgo International, then re-released as Eaten Alive by New World Pictures in 1978. On its 1978 release, the film received an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. This was upgraded to an X rating by Chicago's film review board, but the rating was rejected by New World Pictures on free speech grounds. The film was one of the first to challenge a Chicago law allowing films to be banned for under-18s due to violent content (rather than sexually explicit content). However, the film review board's decision was upheld by an appeal board and later in court. The film went on to be a commercial flop, and was re-released under various titles in an attempt to recoup losses.
Although passed with cuts for its theatrical release in Britain in 1978, an uncensored version was released on home video by VIPCO in 1982 under the title Death Trap. Its gratuitous violence became the focal point of many social critics in the UK, including vocal conservative activist Mary Whitehouse, and the film became one of the first of the so-called "video nasties" to be prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act 1959. As a result, the master tapes for Eaten Alive were confiscated from VIPCO's offices and all video copies were removed from retail stores. The film was removed from the list of banned video nasties in 1985 and was eventually re-released on VHS in 1992, although 25 seconds were removed from the original cut by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). An uncut version was released on DVD in 2000, and a Blu-ray was distributed by Arrow Films in 2015.




Critical reception






= Contemporary reception

=
Eaten Alive was largely ignored by audiences upon release and received negative reviews from critics. David Bartholomew of Cinefantastique complained of the "unevenly directed" cast and predictable plot, claiming the film's only saving grace was the "airless, claustrophobic set, supposedly exterior but obviously built on a sound stage" which called back to horror movies of the 1930s and 40s such as Strangler of the Swamp. Linda Gross in the Los Angeles Times called the script "implausible and offensive", taking particular issue with the "gratuitous violence, nudity and soupcon of kinky sex". In The Monthly Film Bulletin, Martyn Auty criticized "the linear and predictable pattern of slaughter" that he felt eliminated the possibility of suspense, and the use of female characters as the victims of sexual violence that "suggests that sexism remains an unconscious force in exploitation cinema".




= Retrospective reviews

=

Since its initial release, Eaten Alive has come to have a more mixed reception. According to Quentin Tarantino, the movie's reputation began to improve amongst horror fans throughout the 1980s, and some critics claim its initial reception was due to a delayed critical resentment following the success of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Writing in 2002, John Kenneth Muir stated "Today, the critical community is polarized about the film. Some reviewers see it as pure exploitation, whereas others see it as a compellingly lurid companion piece to Hooper's work in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." The movie holds an approval rating of 33% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 18 reviews, with a weighted average rating of 4.6/10. Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 48 out of 100, based on 6 reviews, indicating "mixed or average" critical reception.
A number of reviews compared Eaten Alive negatively to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. One point of departure was the explicit use of violence in Eaten Alive as opposed to the mere suggestion of violence in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Josh Goller of Spectrum Culture called the approach "tawdry" and said "it simply doesn’t possess enough transgressive power to truly shock". The use of a soundstage as opposed to on-location filming was also commented upon by critics. Scream Magazine writer Cleaver Patterson felt it "kills the sense of reality which made TCM [Texas Chain Saw Massacre] so chilling" and Dread Central's Dave J. Wilson dubbed the set design "cheap, tacky and fake". However, Wilson did think it added to the strangeness of the film, and critics from Syfy Wire and Starburst remarked that the obviousness of the sets in conjunction with Caramico's bright, colourful lighting helped the film achieve a surreal, dream-like atmosphere.
Stefan Jaworzyn in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Companion and Josh Goller in Spectrum Culture felt that the sound design and score added to the surreal feeling of the film. This opinion was mirrored by composer Fabio Frizzi, who states that the "mix of country western songs and paroxysmal effects" effectively symbolises Judd's madness for the viewer. An obituary for Hooper for the British Film Institute cited the film's "musique concrète concerto" as one of the factors making the movie "one of the most grating, oppressive films ever made" and compared it favourably to the album Metal Machine Music. Other reviewers were less enthusiatic, with Doug Brod writing for Entertainment Weekly about the "garish lighting and intense dentist-drill 'score'."
In general, reviewers felt that the characters as written were unlikable and it was hard to root for them, but some individual performances received praise. Brand's performance as Judd was pointed to as a highlight, described as "enough to make the movie a minor genre classic" by one critic and "one of the great overlooked characters in horror cinema" by another. Englund was also praised as Buck in IGN and Scream Magazine; Tarantino particularly enjoyed Englund's "sensational" performance, so much that he referenced Englund's opening line "Name's Buck and I'm rarin' to fuck" in his 2003 movie Kill Bill.




Themes


One of the key themes of Eaten Alive is summed up by Screen Slate as "homo homini gatorus: man is bloodthirsty killer gator to man." Throughout the film, each of the characters represent and are driven by base desires: Judd by murderous instincts, Buck by lust, and even the sheriff who is romantically interested in Libby. This idea is echoed in Judd's rambling monologues—his justifications that "he makes no distinctions" and "you've got to do what you've got to do" apply equally to the crocodile as to Judd or any of the other characters—and by the sound design, which overlays human screams, radio music and animal sounds to suggest an equivalence between the human characters and non-human animals.
A number of critics identified black comedy in the film. For Screen Slate, the film's satirical take on human nature as animalistic and violent represents a shift towards more overt comedy compared to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Literature and media studies professors Kristopher Woofter and Will Dodson list Eaten Alive as among Hooper's films that are "infused with dark humor in their unsettling of America's sacrosanct vision of family and nation." Muir argues that the violence throughout is so messy, error-laden and over-the-top that it become comedic.




See also


Crocodile (2000 film)




Notes






References






= Books

=
Bleiler, David (2005). TLA Video & DVD Guide 2005. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9781466867826.
Cettl, Robert (2003). Serial Killer Cinema: An Analytical Filmography. McFarland & Company. pp. 239–140. ISBN 9780786437313.
Hanke, Ken (2016). "Eaten Alive". In John, McCarty (ed.). The Official Splatter Movie Guide, Volumes I & II: 1963–1992. Crossroad Press.
Jaworzyn, Stefan (2003). The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Companion. Titan Books. pp. 116–119. ISBN 9781840236606.
Martin, John Wiley (2007). Seduction of the Gullible: The Truth Behind the Video Nasty Scandal. Stray Cat. ISBN 978-0-9533261-8-1.
McKenna, Mark (2020). Nasty Business: The Marketing and Distribution of the Video Nasties. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-1-4744-5110-9.
Milne, Tom; Willemen, Paul; Hardy, Phil (1986). The Encyclopedia of Horror Movies (1st ed.). Harper & Row. pp. 311–312. ISBN 978-0-06-055050-9.
Muir, John Kenneth (2002). Eaten Alive at a Texas Chain Saw Massacre: The Films of Tobe Hooper. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-4461-8.
Muir, John Kenneth (2012). Horror Films of the 1970s. McFarland & Company. pp. 391–394. ISBN 9780786491568.
Normanton, Peter (2012). The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies. Little, Brown Book Group. ISBN 978-1-78033-041-9.
Petley, Julian (2011). Film and Video Censorship in Contemporary Britain. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-2538-3.
Tafoya, Scout (2021). Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper. Miniver Press. ISBN 978-1-939282-46-0.
Tarantino, Quentin (2022). Cinema Speculation. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-1-4746-2425-1.
Thorn, Mike (2021). "Lizard Brain Ouroboros: Human Antiexceptionalism in Tobe Hooper's Eaten Alive and Crocodile". In Woofter, Kristopher; Dodson, Will (eds.). American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper. University of Texas Press. pp. 116–134. ISBN 978-1-4773-2283-3.
Woofter, Kristopher; Dodson, Will, eds. (2021). "Introduction". American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-1-4773-2283-3.




External links



Eaten Alive at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
Eaten Alive at AllMovie
Eaten Alive at IMDb
Eaten Alive at Rotten Tomatoes
• Source: Eaten Alive!

Eaten Alive! (Italian: Mangiati vivi! — same meaning but with plural expressed) is a 1980 Italian horror film directed by Umberto Lenzi. The film is about a young woman (Janet Agren) who is searching for her sister after her abduction by a cult in the jungles of New Guinea.




Plot


A woman named Sheila is searching for her sister, Diana, who has disappeared in the jungles of New Guinea. Sheila joins up with Mark, and they encounter many perils during their search. Diana has joined a cult run by a man called Jonas. Jonas physically and sexually abuses his followers and local people alike. In one scene, he rapes Sheila with a dildo covered in snake blood, and decapitates a native. In another, a native widow named Mowara is ritualistically raped after her late husband's body is burned on a pyre. A group, consisting of Mowara, Mark, Sheila and Diana escapes into the jungle, where Diana and Mowara are caught by a group of cannibals, with Diana raped and then both slowly cut up and eaten before being hacked to death, while Mark and Sheila helplessly watch from the cover of the bushes. They quickly escape back to New York when helicopters sent by the authorities come looking for them. Back in the village, the rest of the cult commits ritual suicide, leaving one young female survivor for the authorities to find.




Cast


Robert Kerman as Mark Butler
Janet Agren as Sheila Morris
Ivan Rassimov as Jonas Melvin
Paola Senatore as Diana Morris
Me Me Lai as Mowara
Mel Ferrer as Professor Carter
Fiamma Maglione as Alma
Franco Fantasia as Reeves
Franco Coduti as Karan
Michele Schmiegelm as a Native Girl




Production


Eaten Alive! was part of the cannibal boom and filmed before the release of Cannibal Holocaust. The film uses a more traditional adventure film narrative opposed to the mondo film style of previous cannibal films. The film uses footage taken from other cannibal films, including Man from the Deep River (1972), Last Cannibal World (1977) and The Mountain of the Cannibal God (1978).




Release


The film was released in Italy on March 20, 1980. It was released under the alternative title Doomed to Die in the United States.




Reception


From contemporary reviews, the Monthly Film Bulletin noted that the plotting and staging of the film as "chaotic" while finding that the film was "brightened by occasional moments of unintended hilarity, as when the drugged ambrosia is ritually consumed to the accompaniment of a robust chorus of 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic.'"
From retrospective reviews, the assistant professor Danny Shipka of Louisiana State University described the film as Lenzi capitalizing on public interest in cult leader Jim Jones and referring to it as a "ridiculous film". Online film database AllMovie gave the film a one and a half star out of five rating, noting that the film includes "Stone Age cannibals, a Jim Jones-type cult, hired assassins, and gratuitous animal slaughters thrown onscreen every five minutes just to keep the viewer awake." The review also commented on the themes of the film, stating that "both of the leading characters are given a backstory of having exploited blacks in their Alabama cotton mill, only to lose all their ill-gotten money and – in one case – pay the ultimate price, as one underclass avenges another half a world away. In more talented hands, there could have been a real statement made with this film. As it turns out, the only statement most viewers are likely to come away with is 'yuck.'"




See also


List of Italian films of 1980
List of horror films of 1980




Notes






= References

=
Shipka, Danny (2011). Perverse Titillation: The Exploitation Cinema of Italy, Spain and France, 1960–1980. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-4888-3.
Kawin, Bruce F. (2012). Horror and the Horror Film. London: Anthem Press. ISBN 978-0-85728-449-5.




External links


Eaten Alive at IMDb
Eaten Alive! trailer is available for free download at the Internet Archive
• Source: Eaten alive

Being eaten alive may refer to the act of being consumed while still living, or more colloquially to the act of overwhelming someone.
Eaten alive may also refer to:




Film


Eaten Alive, a 1976 American horror film directed by Tobe Hooper
Eaten Alive!, a 1980 Italian horror film directed by Umberto Lenzi
Eaten Alive (TV program), a 2014 American television nature documentary




Food


San-nakji, Korean octopus dish sometimes eaten live
Drunken shrimp, Chinese shrimp dish sometimes eaten live
Ikizukuri, live sashimi
Odori ebi, Japanese live shrimp dish
Yin Yang fish, Chinese live fish dish
Eating live seafood or eating live animals in general




History


Damnatio ad bestias, the Roman practice of execution by wild animals such as lions
Scaphism, an alleged ancient Persian execution method where a victim would be eaten alive by insects




Music


Eaten Alive (album), a 1985 album by American singer Diana Ross
"Eaten Alive" (song), the title track off of Diana Ross' album
Eaten Alive Tour, a series of performances by Diana Ross in support of the album of the same name
The Eaten Alive Demos, a collection of demos for the Ross album by British-American musician Barry Gibb

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