Eaten Alive [Death Trap] * (1976, Neville Brand, Mel Ferrer, Carolyn Jones, Stuart Whitman, Marilyn Burns) – Classic Movie Review 5995

Key genre expert director Tobe Hooper disappoints his fans in his follow-up to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with this mediocre, gratuitously violent and extremely gruesome 1976 horror film about the crazed psychotic redneck boss (Neville Brand) of the decrepit Starlight Hotel in the remote rural East Texas. In the neighbouring swampland, he keeps a pet alligator that he uses to help him kill off the clients.

It seems quite poorly written and carelessly made, with ordinary acting and lots of purposeless gore, but it is still acceptable for die-hard horror fans, who will definitely want to check it out.

In the screenplay by Alvin L Fast, Kim Henkel (from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) and Mardi [Mohammed] Rustam, there is very little in the way of a developed story. It is hardly more than a premise for endless shocks and killings. And a lofty Hooper seems curiously uninvolved with the material.

There is an interesting cast, though: Mel Ferrer, Carolyn Jones, Stuart Whitman, Marilyn Burns (from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), William Finley, Robert Englund, Roberta Collins, Kyle Richards, Crystin Sinclaire, Janus Blythe, Betty Cole and Sig Sakowicz.

It is shot on the sound-stages of Raleigh Studios in Hollywood, California, whose pool became the swamp. Hooper said he was creating a ‘surrealistic, twilight world’.

The plot is inspired by the story of Joe Ball, who owned a bar with a live alligator attraction during the 1930s in Elmendorf, Texas, and murdered several women, supposedly feeding the bodies to his pet alligator.

Passed with cuts in 1978 for its UK cinema release, in 1982 it became one of the first of the so-called video nasties prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act when it was released on home video as Death Trap, causing an uproar.

All video copies were removed from shops. But, when the film was re-released on VHS in 1992, the BBFC cut 25 seconds from the print. The film was released in its uncut version on DVD in 2000.

Hooper quit the set shortly before production ended, in a dispute with the producers.

RIP Tobe Hooper (January 25, 1943 – August 26, 2017).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5995

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