Eaten Alive - 1977

I correctly guessed the year, motherfyucker.  MuthAFYUCKA!  Someone needs to start a viral whatever where they now spell it that way.

I have myself a Tobe Hooper marathon now, adding on to Spontaneous Combustion.  It ends here though, cause honestly I'm not super interested in continuing it.  I might watch Night Terrors or I might not, we will see.

This was Tobe Hooper's follow up to Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  How is it, in all this time, no one has made a rip on Texas Chainsaw Massacre called Taxes Chainsaw Massacre, and it's about doing your taxes at the last minute in April?  Fuck yo.  Comedic gold right there.  Well, I was sort of wrong, Cracked did an article about it, and wtf I'll link it, why not.  Here.

Robert Englund and Neville Brand star in this backwoods horror thingy about a guy who has a shitty motel out in the woods.  It's obviously not the most popular place, but people trickle in, and one by one they fall victim to either the hotel keeper himself (Neville Brand as Judd) or to the crocodiles he has in a small swamp right by the hotel.  Robert Englund is a weirdo local guy who knows Judd and knows what's going on, and is sort of in on it.

This one mimics some of the things that made Texas Chainsaw good, while dropping some of the other things.  The psychotic characters are back, and everyone in this is overdoing it, with the exception of Robert Englund.  William Finley as Roy is especially awful, and Neville Brand walks a line between decent and awful.  The women are all annoying as well, and their nudity is often exploitative feeling and not done well.

Gone is the jarring, cool camera work from Texas Chainsaw, and gone is the cool music and grittiness of that film.  Instead, this was all filmed in a really minimal, uninterested style, and it feels like every movie ever made.  The lighting, not to pick on a minor thing, also sucks.  There would have been ways to make this all seem creepier, but instead it's just averagely dark, and stuff like the crocodiles thus don't come off well.  Points for having a real crocodile though.

There was some behind the scenes drama going on with Hooper and the film producers, and we can possibly blame studio interruption.  Whatever the reason, it's still watchable, but it's unnecessary, and definitely not for everyone.  I'll give it 2 stars.