Eaten Alive (1976)

 I starting writing this for Letterboxd and it just kept going:

This is a movie made from the minds of those equally mad and outrageous. Tobe and Henkel's sense of humor and willingness to go for the jugular, never satisfied with restraint. Neville Brand could have fit right at home with the Sawyers in Texas. Missing a leg, his room filled with Nazi stuff among other things, Brand doesn't like women much, especially if they came from Hattie's brothel. Adding to Brand's mania is how he talks to himself, uttering about his croc's just acting on its instincts (that includes clamping down on passing motorists and outsiders unfortunate to stop by his red-hued, swamp-surrounded, rat-infested, secluded dustbin tourist trap), gibber-jabbering nonsensical mental swill. Swinging a scythe or pitchfork at these "intruders" he finds a bother, Brand has the appropriate means to dispose of them with his crocodile in a pool. With a filthy mop of stringy gray hair and withered face, Brand is as good a casting for a lunatic as you could possibly find...and Hooper did. I was intrigued that this was based on an actual person in the 30s, sort of a boogeyman who purportedly killed women and fed them to his alligator. So, of course, Hooper would adapt such a notorious story in the mid 70s for the drive-in audience.

Brand chasing after a little girl whose mama (Marilyn Burns, taking some abuse yet again) he has tied up in another room, stabbing a father (Mel Ferrer) looking for his daughter (Brand thought she was a prostitute and took issue) through the neck with his trusty scythe, and making sure Buck, who loves to fuck, won't be doing so any longer. 

 Janus Blythe, before her more memorable part in Wes Craven's "The Hills Have Eyes", pops up as Robert Englund's (possibly underaged?) squeeze, while Englund -- pre-stardom before "V" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" -- as Buck, a trouble-making nuisance Brand and Stuart Whitman (as the cozy sheriff helping Crystin Sinclaire and her dying (well, dead thanks to Brand sooner than he had anticipated) father, Ferrer) get quite tired of, becomes yet another meal for the pool croc.

 Before she was Lindsay in Carpenter's "Halloween" (1978), Kyle Richards was Marilyn Burns' poor little girl, spending a large portion of the film under Brand's gross motel, crawling about among the rats and cobwebs. No matter how Brand tries to turn up the volume of his radio, Burns' fight to break from her restraints and Richards' cries for help ruin attempts to keep his actions under wraps.

 Of course this being a 70s Hooper horror show, Brand, running about with his scythe after pushing someone in the croc pool, giggles about with a crazed look in his eye, swinging for the fences within a foggy woods.

It comes as no surprise, Brand would send his pet croc after a little girl who has to scurry to an exit before she's its next meal. I'm not sure what Tobe had against Burns, but that poor woman gets slapped around, pushed down, rough-housed, and pushed off the stairs after Brand nearly fillets her with a scythe. While hanging off a ramp with just enough to beam to hold onto, little Richards eventually gets the attention of Sinclaire, calling out for her father, coming to the rescue. Burns, pulling an injured leg while on the floor, gets Brand's attention, with the maniac eventually in the pool as the croc gets a good mouthful.

There was no way a follow-up to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" -- just two years prior -- would be nearly as monumental, and sadly Tobe was always expected to not only capitalize on that infamy but somehow either best it or, at the very least, equal it. I always felt that was unfair. Even when he had a huge hit -- Poltergeist (1982) -- it seemed he was undermined by a ghost. It was Texas Chainsaw but Spielberg.

"Eaten Alive", for me, is in the same demented spirit of his very first film; equipped with a game Brand, with Finley turning in a bizarre, brief performance as Burns' troubled husband. He has this near breakdown where his arm is stretched towards Burns with his fingers clinched in a "roar claw" while eventually barking at her. And I was never quite sure why Burns wore a wig when she had all that beautiful long blond hair. There is a lot to this family I felt would have made an interesting side story...there just seems to be something off about the Finley/Burns dynamic. The little girl seems to have seen and heard quite a bit in her young life, and by the end of this movie, she would be emotionally/mentally scarred for life. I imagined little Richards awakening in a cold sweat many years down the road...the same with Burns.

Whitman as the sheriff is pretty much ineffectual as a hero, arriving after the fact. Carolyn Jones of "The Addams Family" is unrecognizable as the brothel madam. Robert Englund's casting is certain to attract horror fans who have no idea this exists unless they do a Hooper deep dive. I think despite the croc perhaps not being altogether convincing, Hooper did what he could to keep it drenched in swamp water.