Eaten Alive (1976)

[Gilliam85 0]

If June had problems with "Monkey Shines" ... oh, boy ...

 

This review sums up the scummy vibe of "Eaten Alive" perfectly.

 

"One is tempted to wonder aloud if drugs and booze didn't actually direct this relatively woeful flick." Scott Weinberg reviewing "Eaten Alive" for DVDtalk.com in 2006.

 

The director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre followed up his directorial debut with a movie so baffling that Rotten Tomatoes is confused about its plot synopsis.

 

"A snake researcher attempts to capture an anaconda in Peru."

 

That's actually a description of Paul Rosolie's 2014 Discovery Channel documentary "Eaten Alive," but that is nevertheless the text you'll find attached to RT's page dedicated to Tobe Hooper's 1976 disasterpiece, so maligned and forgotten is this movie.

 

Hooper took a deliberate left turn with his second feature, opting to shoot on a soundstage instead of reverting to the handheld field photography of his debut. The only thread that links this film to its predecessor is the story, which is based on a Texas legend (Hooper is a native of the Lone Star State) about a serial killer who fed his victims to his pet alligator.

 

"Eaten Alive" is nauseatingly garish in every sense. Its use of Mario Bava-esque colored filters, the Moog score by Hooper himself which seems to have been deliriously tapped out during a nap in the midst of a speed binge, the cheap-but-strangely-ostentatious studio sets, and its disconcertingly unhinged performances (should Neville Brand, who plays the killer, have been in a mental institution instead of being encouraged to got off the rails on camera by an alleged cokehead director?) all conspire to make one feel teenage-kegger drunk before the inciting incident.

 

"Eaten Alive's" real claim to fame is one immortal line, which was later referenced in Kill Bill: Vol. 1: "My name's Buck, and I'm here to fuck," which is delivered by none other than Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund.

 

I haven't even gotten to the dead monkey and the alligator prop. I'll leave that to the pros.

 

You can find "Eaten Alive" on DVD, but I'd recommend Arrow's unnecessarily gorgeous and extras-packed region-free Blu-Ray.