Sadly Over-hyped

Nice effects though.

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Don't Believe the Hype

I've never been a great fan of Tobe Hooper's (I find him pretty average, though I do like quite a few of the movies he's shot) so I was happily surprised to find this was a treat to watch. The thing which I was unprepared for was the stylish way that Hooper directed the movie, full of vivid and startling reds and blues. Not the usual fair for Hooper though it does add an extra element to the atmosphere of the movie, as did the constant twangy country soundtrack about the most depressing things in life.The story about a Motel owner and his crocodile. Though, it's never stated you get the feeling that Motel owner Judd may be a veteran whose seen more than his fair share of action and has returned shell-shocked and schizophrenic, as some of his rantings have this impression. Either way, this man is mentaly broken. When a runaway girl takes a room for the night he get's the idea that she's a hooker who worked at Miss Hattie's place and he doesn't like those types of girls. She ends up being the entree for the crocodile who will be well fed before the end of the night.There's not much to the story and it all takes place in or around the motel, what makes this a really watchable film is the characterisations and the actors and actresses who portray them. In particular, Neville Brand who does a brilliant job with Judd from mannerisms to ticks to different personalities when the voices start speaking to him. He was the right choice for this role and very strong within it. Another strong actress is the beautiful Carolyn Jones (of King Creole and The Addams Family fame), though it's really hard to make her out as Miss Hattie. To be honest, the cast is pretty top-notch and has the likes of a young Robert England, Mel Ferrer, and Stuart Whitman.However, there is one family that turn up at the motel and the dynamic between the mother and father is damn strange, in fact, the father's personality is downright weird. This does deter from the power of the film and it's characters, to the point of severing the link of believability with the audience.Overall though this is a film that I would recommend to everybody who likes a good psychological thriller. It is definitely one to watch with the curtains drawn and the lights turned off.

After being thrown out of a brothel for refusing randy redneck Buck (Robert Englund), prostitute Clara (Roberta Collins) stumbles into a run-down hotel run by lonesome weirdo Judd (Neville Brand). Upon finding out she is a prostitute, Judd forces himself on her, and when she struggles and runs away, he butchers her with a scythe and feeds her to his pet giant crocodile. A family arrive at the hotel only to have their pet dog eaten by the croc and their daughter narrowly escaping death. The bodies begin to pile up as Judd tries to protect his beloved man- eater, and when Clara's father and sister turn up, Judd must also evade being discovered by the law.Following up a horror masterpiece like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) is hardly an envious task, but Tobe Hooper decided to stay in familiar surroundings with Eaten Alive (known as Death Trap in the UK). The Deep South provides plenty of opportunities to exploit the inbred yokel stereotype, and Tobe Hooper grabs it with both hands. Chain Saw was disturbing and occasionally genuinely frightening, but it appears that it was tragically a one-off. Eaten Alive contains none of the atmosphere or anything resembling those uncomfortable dinner scene moments of Chain Saw, and instead relies on a pleasingly over-the-top performance by Brand, and a terribly fake-looking rubber croc that appears all too fleetingly.There are some likable moments. Englund's character Buck (who has the film's brilliant introductory line "My name is Buck, and I'm here to f**k!" - homaged in Tarantino's Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003)) is hilariously vile, but he is way underused. When the family arrives at the hotel, very little seems to happen. There is a murder here and there to lighten things up, but they are blandly staged. Hooper based the film on the real-life murderer Joe Ball who fed a suspected 20 women to his alligators back in the 1930's. It's a fascinating story ripe for a good film adaptation, but it is wasted by Hooper, who fails to squeeze any tension out of the proceedings.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

It's a surprise that Death Trap (Eaten Alive) was the film Tobe Hooper followed up The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with as, at first sight, TCM is totally and utterly superior in every way. However, that is not to say the Death Trap is not without it's charm. Albeit a warped, distorted, bizarre charm that leaves you feeling as if you've been watching the film through the bottom of a jam jar… after seven pints of beer.Okay, so right off the film lacks Gunnar Hansen's iconic, brilliantly unveiled antagonist, instead delivering… Judd. He is a mumbling, demented hotelier who looks a bit like a messed up version of my father-in-law, talks stream of consciousness nonsense and at one point sings a painfully elongated rendition of a song so annoying that you will want to murder him yourself. For all that, Judd is an interesting villain when set against the physical power of Leatherface. He doesn't look particularly sinister, almost certainly isn't particularly strong and due to his inability to speak properly, we can only guess at his motives and back story. In some ways these factors makes it more shocking when he lapses into hysterical, jittering psychotic episodes which are usually followed in short order by him feeding his victims to an extremely naff-looking plastic crocodile.On the subject of Judd's victims, this is one area where the film takes a pleasantly surreal turn and sets itself aside from it's peers. The crowd who visit the hotel on what appears to be rather a brisk day for trade are even weirder than Judd himself. We start with a messed up young woman sporting a wig so fake and pathetic looking that it would have stuck out like a sore thumb in an early 80's porno. Then you have the anal-retentive, deep-south John Cleese who comes looking for his estranged Daughter and Robert Englund, looking good as an angry southern hick who's only goal in life seems to be to get a female of the species to indulge him in the love that dare not speak it's name. Next onto TCM's lovely Marilyn Burns wearing, for reasons unknown, yet another really lame looking wig and her daughter, sporting a metal leg brace. But by far the craziest character here and, indeed, the most unhinged man this side of Frank Booth is Roy. This boy, to be fair to him, is a complete and utter raving lunatic who thinks nothing of lapsing into crazed animal impersonations and descriptions of having his eye burned out by his wife in front of his weeping child.Death Trap unfolds on a few scant, cheap and sleazy looking sets, none of it appears to be shot outdoors and all of the proceedings appear murky, often lit with a trashy red hue. These things should not be considered negatives to fans of this kind of cinema (myself included) as the whole thing looks like some ungodly, nightmare 70's theme park gone wrong and the constant soundtrack of either analogue synth bleeps or wailing atonal country and western music give the film a truly evil and otherworldly atmosphere.Personally I love the days of these crude, surreal, trashy films which now seem so far behind us and if the above are to be considered pluses then sadly there must be minuses. For me my single biggest gripe is that some scenes where nothing really happens, play out just too long and too uneventful. The problem here is that Judd's character is established as being so one-dimensional that once we have discovered he is a murderer, there isn't really anywhere else to go other than to show him shambling about being irritating. I guess Tobe Hooper wanted this film to more closely follow the perpetrator, rather than the victims (as in TCM), but with so little psychological meat, it just doesn't work.The overall film is also hindered by the fact that it doesn't gather pace heading towards the climax a la TCM. There is no real feeling of ratcheting up the suspense as Judd's actions get increasingly more risky and threaten to expose him.Tobe Hooper should be applauded for following a runaway indie hit with something that was so different. Can you imagine a writer/director these days under contract to some big shadowy corporation choosing to buck a winning formula and try something completely distinct in style? It simply wouldn't be allowed to happen. Which is why we need to treasure these films and our memories of the times they come from. Because it was a time when challenging, even assaulting the audience was the film maker's first goal and if you left the drive-in after seeing Death Trap feeling like you needed a shower then Tobe had done his job.He did his job.P.S.. I love you Marilyn Chambers.

A demented inn-keeper named Judd (Brand) in the Florida bayou attracts the dregs of society, and periodically feeds those who cross him, to his pet crocodile. When runaway (Sinclaire) is tracked by her estranged father (Ferrer) to Brand's chop-shop inn, he discovers more than southern hospitality. Sheriff Whitman takes an eternity adding up the litany of crimes that go unnoticed, until finally, Judd's dumb luck comes to a fitting end. It would be unfair to compare Robert A.Mattey's crocodile effects with those he created for "Jaws" considering the relative budgets, but surely more could have been revealed in this instance. More attention is proffered on Judd's scythe wielding antics, than the bone-crushing capabilities of his reptilian garbage disposal unit, which will no doubt disappoint audiences tuning in for the famed crocodile.Bizarre content, acted with manic intensity by the diverse (and very talented) cast, and claustrophobically staged by a director whose cult status was further reinforced with this picture. Tobe Hooper's nightmarish account is thin on plot, with jagged continuity, dull lighting, stage-set sound and limited suspense – the promise and expectation earned on his former "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" is conspicuously absent here, in its place, a dark, cheap-looking stage play, peppered with gratuitous sex and violence. A veritable freak show of circus-like antics, the film has a soap opera feel, and the shaky, old fashioned sets are of similar quality.The enchanting Roberta Collins plays Finley's ill-fated wife, himself a certified nut job (playing to type), while Robert Englund and Janus Blythe are evenly paired as a redneck and his trailer-trash, who chance an encounter at Judd's knocking shop and get more than they bargained. But it's Brand, delivering an endless interminable monologue of crazed babble as he teeters ever closer to breaking point, who provides the film's deranged nucleus off which all the other lunatics pivot. Not an abject failure, yet considering the wealth of talent involved in the production, and the expectation this conjures, it's somewhat disappointing.