You Check In Alive... But Check Out Dead! (Eaten Alive [1976] (DVD))

Name: hogsflesh

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Product:	Eaten Alive [1976] (DVD)
Date:	20.04.08 (80 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Kind of entertaining, good sound

Disadvantages: Overblown and camp

A review of the Video International DVD. This should not under any circumstances be confused with the unpleasant cannibal film of the same name directed by Umberto Lenzi.

This is a horror film from 1977, director Tobe Hooper's next film after the classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It was on the video nasty list (under the name Death Trap), although it's pretty harmless. It's a great disappointment when compared to Texas Chainsaw, but it is moderately enjoyable on its own terms.

At a remote hotel in the bayou a crazy old guy named Judd is murdering guests and feeding them to his crocodile. That's more or less the whole of the plot; the first victim's father and sister turn up to look for her, but they're blatantly only there to add to the stock of potential victims.

The problem this film will always have is that its director had just made what is probably the best horror film of the 1970s. Eaten Alive is all the things that Texas Chainsaw isn't, and not in a good way. TCM was savage and terrifying; Eaten Alive is cosy and predictable. TCM didn't include any real gore, while Eaten Alive has some really ineffective scythe-through-neck business and a rather nasty rake murder. Above all, TCM had realistic characters thrown into an unrealistic situation; Eaten Alive has cliché characters interacting with other clichés.

The hotel - the location for almost all of the film - has none of the horrific ambience it should have. It's far too obviously a sinister hotel - it needs that Bates Motel outwardly-normal vibe to be truly sinister. Only the wallpaper is banal enough to be scary. And there's no explanation for why so many people decide to stay at such an obviously shabby place - especially the family whose dog has just been eaten by Judd's crocodile, and who only stopped to use the toilet! The hotel exterior is obviously a studio set, which is just odd, but does at least give the film a bit of novelty, especially as it's always bathed in unrealistic red light. There's nothing resembling natural light in the film at all, and I don't think any of it is set during the day.

The biggest let down is the acting. Neville Brand is a great presence as Judd with his shambling limp and shaggy hair, but his incessant hyperactive mumbling becomes deeply annoying after a while (it's a little like the piano biopic Shine in that respect). We also see far too much of Judd - Texas Chainsaw's amazing freak show psychos were over-the-top, certainly, but we only got to see them as their victims saw them; we get a *lot* of scenes of Judd just wittering on to himself, which seriously diminishes him as a threat.

The rest of the cast unfortunately go almost as far over the top as Judd, which means that we can't care about them at all. The great horror films of the era have very ordinary, underplayed performances from the 'normal' characters, the better to underline how weird the things that happen to them are. When a film gets enough of a budget to hire 'real' actors things often go downhill. Some of these actors are even quite famous - Mel Ferrer is well-known (he's a little more restrained than some of his colleagues here, but only a little). Other familiar faces include Texas Chainsaw's Marilyn Burns and later-to-be-Freddie-Krueger Robert Englund (a particularly overblown performance as a local redneck).

There's a lot of female toplessness towards the end of the film, but that just goes to make this feel even more like a regular slasher film. The suspense scenes don't work in the slightest, perhaps because the characters aren't likeable, but also because there are serious problems with the film's pacing. A climactic chase is just way too perfunctory to generate any excitement, and the scenes in the crawlspace under the hotel are pitifully lacking in intensity. None of this is helped by a particularly unconvincing crocodile.

The best thing by far about Eaten Alive is the soundtrack. There's a continual stream of country and western played on Judd's radio, which combines with swamp noises, screams and the occasional synthesiser screeching to generate a rather interesting soundscape. The radio half-drowns other noises, and the screams or shouts or arguments just audible under the cheerfully inane country songs are about as close as the film ever gets to the Texas Chainsaw aesthetic, creating something far more disturbing than any of the fake crocodile attacks or scythe murders.

This is quite an entertaining film, to be fair. It's funny in its own way. But after the astonishing grotesquery of the director's previous film, the rather more conventional grotesques on display here can't help but disappoint. Hooper never made anything else that came close to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a film that probably owes its success more to its art direction than anything. Eaten Alive is good for an hour and a half of silly giggles, but not worth paying much attention to beyond that.

The DVDs currently on offer are all priced at about £10. The only region 2 available right now, the Video International release, has indifferent picture quality and no extras at all.

Summary: A disappointing video nasty from Tobe Hooper