Eaten Alive is one of those movies that I’ve wanted to watch for years and years. For whatever reason I never got around to it. I came close a few times, I even picked it up on DVD, but still it just sat on my shelf, never to be watched. When Arrow announced they were going to give the film it’s first ever Blu-ray release I decided that I would finally take the plunge. And I did. And I’m glad I waited for Arrow because the film looks gorgeous and the special features are pretty jam packed.
The plot for Eaten Alive is kind of nonexistent. There’s something going on, but I wouldn’t really call it a plot. Here’s how IMDB describes it:
A psychotic redneck who owns a dilapidated hotel in rural East Texas kills various people who upset him or his business, and he feeds their bodies to a large crocodile that he keeps as a pet in the swamp beside his hotel.
That’s a pretty accurate and complete description. Neville Brand plays Judd, the man who owns the run down hotel known as the Starlight Hotel. He’s really an off-the-wall crazy person. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to how he decides to kill people. The first person he kills is an ex-hooker. She heads to the hotel after being kicked out of her brothel by Miss Hattie (the lovely Carolyn Jones). This is after she has a less than pleasant experience with a fellow named Buck, played by a young Robert Englund. Why does Judd kill this hooker? Who knows! Things start off well enough, he’s super nice to her. And then just like that, he kills her. Quite brutally, too!
The movie basically plays like this for it’s entire runtime. Judd just runs around like mad man, sometimes being nice and sometimes killing. Occasionally he feeds the dead bodies to his crocodile, but not always. It’s all very, very bizarre.
Eaten Alive was released in 1977 and was Tobe Hooper’s follow up to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Given this was a young director’s follow up to one of the greatest horror films ever made, it brought with it some high expectations. These expectations are admittedly a bit unfair, so it did take me some time to actually digest the film and judge it on it’s own merits. If I compare this movie to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, it doesn’t fair too well. Looking at it for what it is though, and it has a certain charm.
You know how the last twenty minutes or so of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is Marilyn Burns running around like a crazy person, screaming at the top of her lungs with Leatherface chasing after her? Eaten Alive is best described as that twenty minutes happening for an entire movie. There’s all this frantic, crazy energy exploding across the screen. You don’t know where it’s going to go and I don’t think it does either. It’s absolute madness in every possible way.
As a whole this feels a bit like a debut feature. Like it was made by a director who wasn’t quite sure what he was doing yet. The movie doesn’t appear to follow any rules and you get the sense that it’s because Hooper didn’t know any at the time. TCM has that same feel but for that movie it gives off more of a raw realism. With Eaten Alive it feels a little more amateur and quite cheesy – which is not to say it’s bad, because I love cheese. I think part of that stems from the movie taking place on an obvious set. It’s pretty clear from that start that this is a movie set and as a result there is no sense of realism. But this is a movie that features a giant man-eating crocodile, so do we really want realism? I think not.
Speaking of the crocodile, that’s a bit of a let down. And not because it looks fake either, I’m fine with that. My issue is that the crocodile is more of an afterthought. I always thought the crocodile was the focus of the movie. It’s featured in all the advertisements and posters and the movie is called Eaten Alive, but in all actuality this movie is more about Judd and his hotel. After watching the movie and then checking out the awesome booklet included with the release I learned Eaten Alive wasn’t the original title. In fact the movie had a ton of titles and it sounds like maybe the intent wasn’t to make it all about the crocodile, but I suppose that’s easier to sell.
This release is one of the best from Arrow. It looks absolutely incredible. Granted, I had never seen the film before, but I can’t imagine previous versions looking this good. It’s pretty much flawless. The aforementioned booklet is nice and talks about how the movie isn’t really “good” but something you should see. The artwork isn’t my favorite from Arrow, however. Luckily, per usual, Arrow gives you reversible artwork so you can go with what was originally used. As far as special features go, this one is LOADED! You’ve got stuff with Burns, Englund, Hooper and more. Really wonderful. Highly recommend the interview with Englund as he discusses his career as a whole.
So, there you have it. Eaten Alive. It’s not the best film from Hooper and it’s not really a movie about a giant crocodile, but it has a madness worth checking out. As a movie, it’s a solid 3 skulls out of 5, as an Arrow release it’s 5 skulls all the way.