Eaten Alive!

Eaten Alive! (Mangiati Vivi!) (1980)

Runtime: 92 minutes

Directed by: Umberto Lenzi

Starring: Robert Kerman, Janet Agren, Ivan Rassimov, Paola Senatore, Mel Ferrer

From: A few Italian companies

Why not discuss my Thanksgiving week plans in the beginning of a review of a cannibal movie? Unlike typical, I will be out of town for a few days; the plan is to postpone posting a review for a few days-that would allow me to put up an appropriate review on the holiday itself while I am elsewhere. That's another rarity for me: watching a Thanksgiving picture. As for what I saw last night, don't confuse this with the 1976 Tobe Hooper picture which has the same name except for an exclamation mark... even though hilariously both feature Mel Ferrer. This movie was watched on Arrow's streaming service.

The plot: a woman from Alabama goes to New York City to try and locate her missing sister. She discovers that sis went to Papua New Guinea (Sri Lanka stood in for that country) in order to follow a guy I'll call “Not Jim Jones”... the Jonestown tragedy is ripped off her and it does not seem in good taste as that was filmed mere months after it actually happened. Then again, if you thought there were many animal deaths in Cannibal Holocaust, wait until you see this—barf. The plotting here, how the story is told and some of its beats were not good, IMO. The exploitative elements (random racial slurs, sexual assaults, all the nudity) was a bit much even for someone sleazy & trashy like Umberto Lenzi.

Anyhow, in New Guinea our lead meets up with Vietnam War deserter Robert Kerman & this is how the sister is found in the village ran by Not Jim Jones. In case you're confused, Not Jim Jones and his followers are NOT the cannibals: it's the “natives” in the area. The movie gets a meh rating from me-instead of a bad one-due to the gore being effective, some decent kills (even if most are clips lifted from earlier films), music that at times was discofied/always catchy & the scenes shot in the New York City of Old are always of interest to me. It was amusing to see that in the holiday season of '79, besides the XXX features the films you could see in Times Square included Star Trek: The Motion Picture, 10, and the Frank Zappa concert movie Baby Snakes. Experiencing all of those in a seedy joint with some people that are probably wearing raincoats no matter what... probably better than this although perhaps the cannibal genre just isn't for me.