I hadn't seen Eaten Alive in quite some time. In fact, the last time I saw it was on a edited VHS copy that looked like it had been kept underwater for a year or so at one point or another.
This was Tobe Hooper's 2nd film after his surprise success and notoriety of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. People hoping for the same level of quality as that film are going to be sorely disappointed in Eaten Alive.
It's not a good movie by any means, but I've to be truthful by saying that it's one of the most entertaining and craziest movies that I've ever seen. Finally getting to see it uncut was really cool as well with the recent 2 disc special edition by Dark Sky Films.
Neville Brand plays Judd, a backwoods redneck psychopath who runs a run down hotel that just happens to have a pretty large & hungry crocodile resting in the back. The movie is set down in the bayou somewhere. There is hardly any plot, basically, he's nuts, people come to stay at his hotel and at some point and another he attacks them with a scythe usually and then lets his pet croc eat them.
Most of Judd's dialogue is just rambling almost incoherent stuff that makes me think that Neville wasn't really acting all that much at this point in his career instead of just being his own screwed up self on film.
Marilyn Burns returns in this one playing the wife of a highly disfunctional family with a little girl and a husband who has some serious "issues". In fact, almost everyone in this movie is just plain nuts in some way or another. Robert Englund plays Buck who is a sex addict of sorts. This is the movie in which Quentin Tarantino cribbed his "My name's Buck, I'm raring to f**k" line from for Kill Bill Vol. 1.
Mel Ferrer plays a guy trying to find his daughter who Judd has just happened to have fed to his pet croc at some point after murdering her. Carolyn Jones plays an owner of a local whorehouse and Stuart Whitman plays a local cop.
The cast has quite a bit of great talent who had had great success in the past but were in the twilight of their careers at this point which explains how they all wound up in this mess. But they still do great work.
The croc effects are laughable at times and decent in others. Not a good movie by any means but highly entertaining nonetheless.
One thing I couldn't shake however is how the movie mirrors a sort of mid/late 70's update on "Manos": The Hands of Fate at times.
Anyway, what do you all think of this flick?
