Classic ’70s Sleaze Horror

Hard to come up with a horror movie title more tantalizing than 1977’s Eaten Alive. Oh sure they tried, even by re-titling this Seventies lurid gem: Death Trap, Horror Hotel and Starlight Slaughter. Meh. Eaten Alive tells you everything you need to know.

And this is why it’s so cool Eaten Alive is being re-issued on Blu-ray™ with a metric ton of extras sometime in July, 2015. So why all this fuss over a low budget sleazy horror movie that barely made it to the drive-in big screens and was left collecting dust in VHS discount bins?

First, look who was involved with this thing: Tobe Hooper directed and did the soundtrack. You may remember him as the director from another forgotten little movie called The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Then there was a starring role from Caroline Jones, widely known as Morticia from The Addams Family cult TV series (1964 – 1966) playing a brothel owner. And who is that shirtless redneck hick trying to score with a hooker? None other than Freddy Krueger himself – Robert England. Marilyn Burns, who played the endlessly screaming survivor in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, stars as an unhappy wife. How can you ever be happy after being tormented by a chain saw?

Eaten Alive has it all – a war-damaged scuzzy hotel owner, some bare boobies, some gory deaths by way of a scythe, and a GIANT CROCODILE. Set in the Louisiana swamp backwoods, Judd, the hotel proprietor, has loose noodles for brains and keeps the aforementioned GIANT CROCODILE as a pet in the stink pond the hotel (more like a shack with several rooms) ’round back. Throw in a beleaguered prostitute, a feisty redneck, some guests who shouldn’t really be there and the GIANT CROCODILE that eats you alive, you have a movie that practically writes itself.

The re-issued Eaten Alive contains so many extras, it would take me away from watching my UFO stories on YouTube™ to list ’em all here. Of the plethora of bonus stuff, I’m visibly shocked they didn’t have an interview with the GIANT CROCODILE itself, reminiscing about what Freddy Krueger tastes like. Then again, it’s not polite to talk with your mouth full.