Eaten Alive- 70's Cheese

Wow did I watch a bad movie last night: Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive. Now I am a Tobe Hooper fan for the record. Besides Texas Chainsaw Massacre (both 1 and 2), Salem’s Lot, and The Funhouse (all horror classics), he is the man who Steven Spielberg turned to for a director of what is still the best haunted house movie ever made; Poltergiest. But Eaten Alive, his second movie, is trash…fun trash, but trash. Such trash in fact that I needed a shower after I saw it to get the stench of it off me. What else can you say about a movie where the first spoken line is Robert England saying “My name is Buck and I’m here to fuck?” Yes, this is where Tarantino got that famous line in Kill Bill Vol 1 from.

The pattern is basically this: girl goes to swamp motel (why?) and Judd (the innkeeper) gets horny. She turns him down so he feeds her to his crocodile. Another girl comes with man. Judd kills man, feeds man to his crocodile, kidnaps girl, forgets about her for most of the movie, and kills others who come to have sex at his swamp motel (why?) Repeat until clean which won’t ever happen while watching this movie.

Here’s the thing about Eaten Alive; it is just so damned weird that makes you stick around until the end. The sets, costumes, lighting, everything works…even the over the top acting. The couple that arrives with their girl and dog (actually named Snoopy) obviously has a very interesting back story, but Hooper ain’t going to tell you any of it. All you need to know is the husband is a nut, the wife is a bitch, the daughter is a whiner, and the dog is croc-food. Then there is Judd…

Like other Hooper villains, he is insane, but is lucid in his insanity. He knows he is totally gone and enjoys that fact. He almost seems as bewildered as the audience as to why people keep coming to his swamp motel (why?). He rambles to himself about nothing which is the bulk of the script and has zero back story. Not that Hooper isn’t a story teller, but like the couple, and Buck, and everyone else in this movie, what happened before the credits are not a factor in the tale. In fact, what happens after the opening credits is not a factor either: it is just a ride of weirdness, cheese, and a healthy does of 70’s Grindhouse Misogyny.

I cannot recommend this movie to most people, which would mean I heavily DO recommend it to some. If you loved MST3K, this is the movie for you. It provides an endless supply of joke set ups. Get drunk; get high; get friends and have fun.

The best part of this movie is finding the source of "My name is Buck and I love to fuck."