Eaten Alive (1976)

Fantastic!

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Judd owns a motel in the rural south-he also happens to own a pet alligator which he keeps in a large building on the property. All of this would be fine and well, except that Judd has murderous impulses, and his alligator has a taste for human flesh.Panned by many and beloved by some, "Eaten Alive" likely got a great deal of the flack it did simply by virtue of being Hooper's follow-up to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." Make no mistake, "Eaten Alive" comes nowhere near "Chainsaw," but it is a respectably entertaining, morbid, and sometimes darkly funny horror film. It is not at all a frightening film, but it is demented enough to command attention.Where "Chainsaw" reveled in gritty realism, this film is far more elaborately-staged, and features meticulously-designed sets; exterior night scenes are often bathed in bluish fog, and the interiors are lush and colorful. This strips the film of any tangible realism, but does lend it a nightmarish disposition that is reminiscent of television films of the era; it is, however, considerably more violent, offering several on-screen murders bloodshed. The film also boasts a cast of would-be horror royalty, including performances from Robert Englund, Marilyn Burns (returning from "Chainsaw"), and an even-younger Kyle Richards, pre-"Halloween."Overall, "Eaten Alive" is an unusual offering from Hooper, and though not one of his best, it's certainly not one of his worst films, either. The colorful compositions and generally bizarre narrative make it worth watching. It lacks brilliance, but it offers plenty in the way of demented backwater hysterics. 6/10.

"Eaten Alive" is directed by the same guy Tobe Hopper who also directed the infamous "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", but not as great, but a pretty decent movie though. The storyline is also quite interesting it starts off with a young woman named Faye who runs away from her father and ends up working as a hooker, but is thrown out and ends at the Starlight hotel which is owned by an unstable war veteran Judd who has a pet crocodile, and soon after Faye ends up getting butchered and fed to the crocodile. Faye's father and sister turn up looking for her and then more guests show up at the hotel, that's when the real trouble begins."Eaten Alive" firstly does echo Psycho in a way where at the beginning a blonde woman in trouble ends up at a motel and then meeting her end, and the film itself does have flaws but it's still a fascinating watch, and the quirky characters is what makes this film work also. Neville Brand gives an interesting performance as the unstable Judd, and even Marilyn Burns makes an appearance playing another screaming victim but pretty good at it and it was a stand out scene, and it was also nice to see Robert England in an early role as a sex addict which was rather fun. I must say though that this movie is well and truly bizarre and at some points does seem to lose focus like featuring scenes that are pointless, but I did like the mixture of genres by adding a killer crocodile, the scene in which it goes after the little girl, was a highlight, and the fact that this movie is more gory than Texas Chainsaw, as it contains plenty of stabbings and impalement's, each filled with plenty of blood, which I always enjoy. Another thing that works for this movie is the atmosphere and it really captures the eeriness of its surroundings.All in all I'd say that Eaten Alive is a decent enough movie and it does have charm.

This movie is bizarre as well as creepy. "Eaten Alive" gives the meaning of making your skin crawl. You got this hotel keeper name Judd(Neville Brand) who not only runs an decrepit inn, but has a crocodile for a pet! The first person to meet their end is a prostitute named Clara(Roberta Collins) who came from a brothel to get away from a very wild customer (Robert Englund). She escaped from one bad place and into another that's far worse. Judd here's is considered a "grim reaper" with a deadly reptile. He feeds next, a father who is quite off kiltered. He goes off the deep end when his daughter Angie loses her dog to the crocodile. He does get back at Judd, only to become croc-bait. Now the mother get beaten and tied up by the madman, the daughter runs for her life underneath the hotel. Now that there's two prisoners, the victim's father and other daughter arrives and start to demand answers. Now that everyone is looking for answers, the madness has just began. Judd hacks away the victims he comes in contact with, then he feeds them to his pet. Although, he had it turn on him, costing him his right leg. There's plenty of scare factor in this movie, the crocodile was very vicious, and very deadly. Somebody must put a sign saying "DANGER! CROCODILE IN WATER, NO SWIMMING"

After being thrown out of a brothel for refusing randy redneck Buck (Robert Englund), prostitute Clara (Roberta Collins) stumbles into a run-down hotel run by lonesome weirdo Judd (Neville Brand). Upon finding out she is a prostitute, Judd forces himself on her, and when she struggles and runs away, he butchers her with a scythe and feeds her to his pet giant crocodile. A family arrive at the hotel only to have their pet dog eaten by the croc and their daughter narrowly escaping death. The bodies begin to pile up as Judd tries to protect his beloved man- eater, and when Clara's father and sister turn up, Judd must also evade being discovered by the law.Following up a horror masterpiece like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) is hardly an envious task, but Tobe Hooper decided to stay in familiar surroundings with Eaten Alive (known as Death Trap in the UK). The Deep South provides plenty of opportunities to exploit the inbred yokel stereotype, and Tobe Hooper grabs it with both hands. Chain Saw was disturbing and occasionally genuinely frightening, but it appears that it was tragically a one-off. Eaten Alive contains none of the atmosphere or anything resembling those uncomfortable dinner scene moments of Chain Saw, and instead relies on a pleasingly over-the-top performance by Brand, and a terribly fake-looking rubber croc that appears all too fleetingly.There are some likable moments. Englund's character Buck (who has the film's brilliant introductory line "My name is Buck, and I'm here to f**k!" - homaged in Tarantino's Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003)) is hilariously vile, but he is way underused. When the family arrives at the hotel, very little seems to happen. There is a murder here and there to lighten things up, but they are blandly staged. Hooper based the film on the real-life murderer Joe Ball who fed a suspected 20 women to his alligators back in the 1930's. It's a fascinating story ripe for a good film adaptation, but it is wasted by Hooper, who fails to squeeze any tension out of the proceedings.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com