Eaten Alive

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Year:	1977
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Tobe Hooper
Genre:	Redneck yawnfest
Starring:	Neville Brand, Marilyn Burns, Robert Englund
Rating:	2/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074455/
Tagline:	He's out there and he's got murder on his mind!
Favourite line:	None worth mentioning

Tobe 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' Hooper's second feature length horror is a real disappointment, I am sorry to report.
I guess it was inevitable that the follow up to the majestic 1974 masterpiece was never going to live up to its predecessor, but I didn't expect anything this poor.

The plot:
A deranged old geezer runs a clapped out hotel somewhere in the Deep South of America.
He also owns a very large crocodile that he keeps in a pool behind the hotel.
People turn up, he imprisons them, before feeding them to said beast.
And that's all folks.

There is little or no logic to proceedings and, whilst that isn't always a problem in horror (just look at Fulci or Argento's output) it does help if things happen for a reason.
The gore quotient is reasonable here, far higher than in Chain Saw Massacre and, in a way that is its downfall. Hooper here opts for viscera, whereas in his previous effort he went for plain old atmosphere.
Crucially, also, you just don't really care for any of the characters, and I found it impossible to empathise with any of them. Great horror puts you in the victims place, and their tortures become, vicariously, your torments.
Just doesn't happen here.
Whilst in many ways this echoes it's predecessor - the alienating, sound effect soundtrack in place of incidental music, the sense of dilapidation and grimness, the crazed rednecks - somehow the ingredients just don't hang together nearly as well. Robert 'Freddy Krueger' Englund pops up as a horny hick, and Marilyn Burns, the ultimate 'scream queen' turns up again, but that aside there is nothing here to get excited about.
Disappointing.