Movie: Eaten Alive (1977)
Directed by Tobe Hooper
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL
Plot:
Creepy weirdo runs a hotel in the swamp, and he feeds his guests to an alligator. Hilarity ensues.
Background and Reaction:
I really enjoyed the atmosphere in this one. It was incredibly claustrophobic, and fog was used to obscure the fact that it was filmed on a small set. But that just enhanced the atmosphere. Between that and the neon backgrounds, this felt like a Creepshow movie.
Neville Brand stole the show as the psychotic hotelier. Scary and comical at the same time, he looked like a demented chimpanzee as he watched his victims get eaten by the alligator. And Robert Englund, as Buck, was particularly amusing as well. Another high point came late in the film when Judd has a guest tied up in one room (but she's bouncing around loudly trying to escape), an amorous couple trying to have sex in another, and an escaped little girl crawling around under the house. As the camera alternates between the multiple scenes, it brilliantly captures the chaos and Judd's descent into madness. I enjoyed this so much that I didn't really notice that the plot was weak -- something that Joe pointed out in his comments.
Joe's criticism was spot on, and almost made me feel bad that he went before me. I was set to rate the film a 10, but his comments made me reconsider. There were, in point of fact, other reasons that I wasn't sure about the high rating. I've given very high marks to the last several films we saw, including 10s for both Deranged and The Hills Have Eyes. Can so many movies really be deservign of the highest grade? Does that devalue it? Eventually, despite my doubts I gave it that 10 because it was so much fun to watch.
I did question Joe's rating of 9.5. He said that he'll have to rewatch this; with subsequent vieings, his rating for it may go up, but will definitely not go down. From my perspective, keeping Bayes' Theorem in mind, it seems to me that that means he should rate it higher. If one of several events will occur, and his rating of the movie will be determined after that event, than the expected value of his rating is the weighted average of the possible values of the rating (weighted by their respective likelihoods). If Joe's rating will be 9.5 or higher (and the probability of it being higher is nonzero), then the expected value of his rating has to be greater than 9.5. I suppose one can argue that his rating of the movie now doesn't have to be the expected value of the rating he gives it after subsequen viewings. But that offends my probablistic aesthetics. Maybe I just need to get that pole out of my ass.
Anyway, this was another one of those movies that just got me really excited and into it. Yet it was comical enough to not really scare me.
Ratings:
Joe: 10 for the exploitation and 9 for the plot, averaging out to 9.5
Dave: 9.5-9.6
Sean: 4 out of 4
Rich: 6
Scott: 6.5
Me: 10
Ethan: 9
Bechdel:
Eaten Alive passes the Bechdel test.
Tangentially-Related Anecdote:
Years ago, on a family roadtrip, we were trying to find a campground in Sopchoppy, Florida. It was the middle of the night and raining, and there wasn't a clear boundary between the campground and the home of its caretaker. In my confusion, I ended up driving all over the caretaker's yard. Once I realized that, I drove off and we stayed at a hotel -- fearful that the sherriff would show up and arrest me for vandalism.
The thought behind my rating is simply this…
ReplyDelete“10 for the exploitation and 9 for the plot, averaging out to 9.5”
The exploitation elements of the film were so good that I remain dead certain that future viewings will not diminish them in my personal view. Thus, “10” they will remain.
The story, or plot, which I regarded as flawed and/or poorly constructed, received a 9.0 – somewhat low on my scale for a genre film – averaging the film out to a 9.5. Math so simple, even *I* can do it!
However, it is my opinion (and strictly nothing more than a possibility) that, upon a subsequent viewing, or viewings, I *may* see something in the in the plot that I may have overlooked. Something that could RAISE it in my estimation.
IF, such a thing were to occur, and my revised opinion of the story/plot aspects of the film were revised high enough to raise my story/plot rating of the film above a 9.0, that would (at least to this merely average math student) raise my overall rating of the film.
The 10 rating for exploitation will not be lowered, nor would the 9.0 rating for story/plot – as long as it is a “genre” film. Therefore, a subsequent viewing can only RAISE, and not lower, my (purely subjective) rating.
Although, my overall rating of mathematics – considering that “Bayes' Theorem” looks to be telling me how I should rate films – has just been lowered. :-)
Geez! About 270 words (and one crudely constructed emogee) to explain? That wasn’t nearly as “simple” as I thought! Wonder what “Bayes” would think of that?
Ah... So your rating is essentially a measure of how you feel an out the film now -- not an expected value of how you will feel about it in the future. I can live with that.
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