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Eaten Alive (1980)

Dir: Umberto Lenzi.

We start with a number of Americans being bumped-off by a mysterious native and his handy blowpipe that fire needles tipped with cobra venom. When the native is run over after fleeing through the traffic (no need to learn the highway code in the jungle) a pack of film with the address of Diana Morris is found on his body. The police summon her sister, Sheila (Janet Agren) and it turns out Diana went missing after being recruited by a strange cult.

Sheila goes to Professor Carter (Mel Ferrer, who had a much bigger role in Lenzi's "Nightmare City") who is an expert on cults. She shows him the film (cue mondo footage of tribal piercing) and he tells her that the cult is the 'Purification Sect' based in New Guinea who are led by a Jim Jones style religious zealot called Jonas (the late Ivan Rassimov) and who practice the philosophy that pain gets you closer to God and mother nature!

With this handy information, Sheila takes off for New Guinea where she hires a military deserter Mark Butler (Robert Kerman), who is introduced in true manly fashion participating in an arm wrestling match where the losers hand is pushed onto a knife blade, to guide her through the jungle to find the cult.

Nothing is easy in Italian trash cinema though and before you know it they are attacked by a giant plastic crocodile that sinks their canoe and eats one of their native porters. Now on foot they head into the jungle only to have their last porter run off and end up eaten by the local cannibal tribe.

On the run from the cannibals (but finding time for a 'this could be our final chance' bit of loving) Mark and Sheila are captured by a group of cultists and taken to their village. Here, Sheila finds Diana brainwashed by Jonas and drugged on his 'special brew'. His power over her is explained in a great bit of dialogue; "He turns you off and turns you on 'till your poor head is a total mess", and with the cannibal tribe surrounding the village people dare not try to escape through the jungle.

It turns out Jonas is also bit of a sadist who gets his religious pleasures by abusing the female followers and killing any who go against God's divine wishes, this explains the murders in America as it turns out the victims were traitors. He also presides over native rituals that include a widow (Me Me Lai) having sex with her three brothers In Law on her dead husbands ashes! I bet Jerry Falwell never had this much fun...

 

This strange hybrid of cannibal film and jungle thriller is the kind of cheap cut and paste job that could only be created in the Italian exploitation factory that was so prolific during the 80's. Here it's good old Umberto Lenzi who is the mastermind behind this trashy bit of sleaze.

The Budy-Maglione funk/sleaze score kicks-in over the opening New York title sequence as we are given a tour of the Grindhouse cinema area (where Lenzi's films would ultimately end up) but the theme is nowhere near as good as his later excellent main theme on "Cannibal Ferox". Some of the other music would later be re-used in "Ferox" as well but it would be more effective there than it is here.

Lenzi not only 'borrows' footage from Sergio Martino's "Mountain of the Cannibal God" (of a castration and gratuitous eel eating) but also 'borrows' the infamous butchery sequence from Deodato's excellent "Jungle Holocaust". Although this sequence is indeed extreme (it's still one of the strongest scenes in Italian horror cinema) "Eaten Alive's" original effects, by Paolo Ricci, that lead up to this footage are very good anyway and Lenzi had no need to cheapen his film with such an obvious (the film quality noticeably changes) bit of plagiarism.

In fact this double killing sequence is far stronger than anything Lenzi would include in the later and more infamous "Cannibal Ferox". The sight of the still conscious women lying on the bloodstained ground as their limbs are eaten in front of them (and after one of them has her breast graphically sliced off and consumed) leaves a satisfyingly nasty taste (excuse the pun) in the mouth. It is a brutal example of the kind of material Italian exploitation movies did so well. We also have various half-eaten bodies on show and a decapitation.

Sadly we are still treated to lots of animal snuff, the most viscous of all being a sickening scene of a monkey being fed to a python (mor "Cannibal God" footage). How do we know the monkey was fed to the python and had not fallen from the trees, which the film tries to make out? Because a crudely painted bunch of leaves suddenly appears on the edge of the screen obviously covering up someone's arm pushing the monkey into shot. Shame on all involved.

The cannibals on show are a motley bunch as well and have none of the authenticity of Deodato's tribes in "Cannibal Holocaust" and "Jungle Holocaust". The ones that attack the native girl look like they have been blacked up! The others look like they were hired from 'Cannibals Are Us'.

Performances are pretty non-descript as well, with only Kerman making an impression as the cliché hard man hero. Rassimov shows little emotion and spends half the time giving 'hello ladies' type smouldering looks to the camera. It's always a pleasure to see Me Me Lai and she gives yet another sympathy inducing turn but everyone else is typically bland in that dubbed Italian movie fashion. The wonderful turn by John Morghen that raised "Ferox" up is sadly missed here.

Unlike Deodato, Lenzi shies away from full on male nudity giving us only a few 'hairy bobbing man asses' (to quote the late Bill Hicks), whereas nearly all the female cast are shown completely naked at some point in the film, but only when it's essential to the plot of course!

So it's a faster moving film than "Ferox" (the gory cannibal action happens much earlier) but comes across as a blander production with only the nudity and well handled gore holding the attention. Enjoyably cheesy but only really recommended to Italian trash cinema completists.