Eaten Alive

Tobe Hooper’s follow-up to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a mess, and not the good kind.

The plot? There isn’t one. Neville Brand plays Judd, a deranged hotel owner who feeds guests to his pet croc. People arrive. Women disrobe. Brand mutters, works himself into a frenzy, waves a scythe around, and… croc chow. Repeat until you check your watch.

Where Chain Saw kept its horrors hidden until that perfect door-slam reveal, Eaten Alive reveals itself in the first five minutes. We’re stuck with Judd muttering to himself in an empty hotel. Brand commits fully to the madness, I’ll give him that. But commitment can’t save a character who’s just a one-note psycho on loop.

The other characters? They’re not people—they’re screaming props. A couple shows up with their young daughter. The mother wears an inexplicable wig. The father, played by William Finley, descends into what I can only describe as a psychotic mime routine, barking like a dog after the croc eats their pet. The daughter screams. And screams. And screams some more.

Eaten Alive trades Chain Saw’s documentary grit for theatrical artifice. The hotel looks like a set. The swamp looks like a set. The crocodile looks like foam rubber. Carolyn Jones shows up wearing Frankenstein makeup that nobody mentions. The fog never lifts. Everything glows red and green like a carnival funhouse.

Maybe that’s the point. Maybe Hooper wanted heightened reality to sell us that phony crocodile. It’s a bad trade.

The editing betrays the soundstage origins. Hooper shoots tight because he has to. We never see the hotel in the forest because there is no forest. When someone struggles with the crocodile, we never get both in the same shot. It doesn’t feel raw, it feels cheap.

Still, I can appreciate Brand’s commitment. And Robert Englund brings rakish energy as a good ole boy, while Stuart Whitman channels Ben Johnson as the sheriff. These actors are trying.

But try as they might, they can’t overcome the flimsy story. How does Judd survive this long killing locals? Why does anyone stay at this nightmare hotel?

The film doesn’t care enough to answer. We don’t care enough to watch.