Stay Signed In
Do you want to access your site more quickly on this computer? Check this box, and your username and password will be remembered for two weeks. Click logout to turn this off.
Stay Safe
Do not check this box if you are using a public computer. You don't want anyone seeing your personal info or messing with your site.
1980 - Italy Directed By: Umberto Lenzi. Starring: Robert Kerman, Janet Agren, Ivan Rassimov, Paola Senatore, Me Me Lai, Mel Ferrer, Fiamma Maglione, Franco Fantasia and Franco Coduti.
Aka
Mangiati Vivi!
Eaten Alive By The Cannibals!
The Emerald Jungle
Doomed To Die
Current Availability
For most the US R1 DVD release from Shriek Show will serve them just fine. Presented fully uncut and in its original anamorphic widescreen format Shriek Show's presentation is of a very high quality considering the haphazard way the film was originally put together. The disc also boats some amateurishly conducted but nevertheless illuminating video interviews with director Umberto Lenzi and stars Robert Kerman and Ivan Rassimov. However, the more picky A/V connoisseur's may wish to check out the Remastered Dutch DVD from EC Entertainment, which reportedly features a slightly better transfer than Shriek Show's release but lacks the bonus interviews. Whatever you do however, be sure to steer clear of both the UK DVD releases from Vipco and on the grey market 23rd Century label as both feature the old UK threatrical print which features a whopping five minutes of cuts, removing practically every instance of flesh-eating, sex and animal cruelty thus rendering the film worthless.
Recommended?
For gorehounds and fans of the Italian cannibal subgenre Eaten Alive! is well worth checking out. Given the manner in which Umberto Lenzi hastily cobbled this effort together the results are far more entertaining than they have any right to be. While many of the gory highlights are actually reused footage from previous cannibal pictures, Eaten Alive! features enough grisliness, sleaze and comically poor dubbing to qualify as a enjoyably brutal jungle adventure in its own right.
Review (Contains Spoilers)
The Italian cannibal subgenre of the seventies and early eighties has long enjoyed a well deserved reputation amongst trash movie buffs as one of the most justly notorious avenues of exploitation cinema. In some ways the infamous Umberto Lenzi could be argued to be the godfather of this grisly subgenre. A prolific and generally efficient maker of exploitation and horror films, Lenzi carved out a reputation for himself in his native Italy as a filmmaker capable of turning his hand to everything from zombie gorefest's to hard-bitten crime thrillers with competence and occasionally a dash of inspiration.
Without doubt it was his 1972 jungle adventure Deep River Savages (aka - Man From Deep River – itself fairly derivative of both Cornel Wilde’s The Naked Prey (1966) and Elliot Silverstein’s classic A Man Called Horse (1970) – which kick-started the whole Italian cannibal craze. However, despite proving a modest hit Deep River Savages was quickly superseded by superior and infinitely more brutal cannibal pictures in the shape of Ruggero Deodato’s spirited yet gruelling Jungle Holocaust (1976) and the talented Sergio Martino’s Mountain Of The Cannibal God (1978) which inexplicably featured two bankable name stars in the form of Stacy Keach and Ursula Andress. However, the Italian cannibal cycle reached its zenith in 1980 when Deodato unleashed his now legendary shocker Cannibal Holocaust, which took the cannibal movements trademark brutality to new and unforeseen heights of sadism whilst also combining it with a potent sense of pseudo-documentary realism.
Despite professing that he possessed little regard for the cannibal subgenre, Umberto Lenzi was not about to let himself be outdone by the Deodato’s and Martino’s of the world and promptly returned to the jungle intent upon gorily raising the bar set by his fellow countrymen. This would eventually lead to Lenzi directing the most purely violent Italian cannibal picture of them all in the shape of the hollow yet gut wrenchingly brutal Cannibal Ferox (aka – Make Them Die Slowly) (1981), but before that the belligerent exploitation specialist delivered the less severe, predominantly laughable yet at times still formidably horrific Eaten Alive!
Shot mostly on location in both Sri Lanka and the United States, Eaten Alive! sees Lenzi pressing the cynical opportunism button as he combines the usual cannibal movie mixers of graphic mutilation, flesh-eating, nudity, rape and dodgy animal abuse with a “jungle cult” narrative transparently derived from the case of the infamous Reverend Jim Jones and the Jonestown Massacre which had occurred just two years prior. Made at a point when Lenzi was either short of time and funding or just in a lackadaisical mood, Eaten Alive! sees the seasoned exploitation filmmaker blatantly cribbing numerous gory “highlights” from previous cannibal films such as his own Deep River Savages and messrs Deodato and Martino’s aforementioned Jungle Holocaust and Mountain Of The Cannibal God. This stolen gore footage was spliced by Lenzi into his own freshly penned narrative alongside his own freshly shot scenes of sexual degradation and grisly cannibal antics to create his own typically exploitative and extreme flesh munching jungle yarn.
Eaten Alive begins on the streets of New York City where a number of people are murdered by a deadly blowpipe wielding assassin. When the assassin himself is mown down and killed by a speeding lorry a piece of 8mm film footage found on his person links him to the fanatical religious extremist Jonas Melvyn (Rassimov) who has reportedly set up a reclusive “cult of purification” deep in the heart of the New Guinea jungle.
Attractive young American Sheila Morris is given the grim news that her missing sister Diana has fallen in with Jonas’s cult. Despite being warned that the jungles of a New Guinea are a perilous region occupied by cannibals Sheila is unperturbed and journeys there intent of finding her endangered sister. Upon her arrival Sheila quickly forms an alliance with military deserter turned hired gun Mark Butler (Kerman) and with a couple of native guides in tow they trek off into the jungle to begin the hunt for Diana. However, things quickly go awry when their guides are horrifically killed and Mark and Sheila find themselves being hunted by the cannibalistic tribe who occupy the jungle.
The pair are saved from certain death by Jonas’s followers who soon whisk them off to their commune where Sheila is reunited with Diana. It soon becomes clear that Jonas is a depraved psychopath who has brainwashed his people in subservience whilst he sexually abuses and abuses the commune’s nubile female occupants. When Sheila begins falling under Jonas’s spell Mark realises that they must escape from the commune but with cannibal infested jungle surrounding them on all sides it soon becomes clear that this will be easier said than done…
Initially Eaten Alive! seems destined to be an unintentionally amusing chunk of prime celluloid cheese, opening with several scenes set at Niagara Falls then on the streets of New York City which involve a strange looking tribal executioner offing several people with a blowpipe before he himself meets with a sticky end courtesy of an oncoming lorry. With a truly toe curling yet oddly catchy funk infused score – dubiously accredited to “Budy Maglione” – blaring away in the background, these early moments offer inadvertent laughs due to the hilariously hokey facial expressions of the victims who were seemingly under instructions to enact the most unconvincing death throes in cinematic history.
When the actions swiftly switches to the jungles of New Guinea with Mark and Sheila beginning their desperate search for the missing Diana things get decidedly cheesier as Lenzi lays on the obligatory gory attack by a giant plastic crocodile before Mark and Sheila become earmarked as dinner by the local cannibal tribe. To his credit Lenzi injects some welcome spiritedness into the jungle scenes and keeps gorehound appetites whetted by serving up some grisly dismemberment and flesh-eating which appears to have been culled from his own earlier Deep River Savages.
Once Mark and Sheila are “saved” then whisked off to the commune of to Jonas’s “purification sect” things really begin to get bizarre as we are subjected to lots of comical scenes of the gullible whites and brutal natives who make up the sect supping enthusiastically on mind-controlling, drugged ambrosia whilst crowing “Glory, Glory, Halleluiah!”. Clearly patterned upon the infamous Reverend Jim Jones, the charismatic Jonas is soon revealed to be not only a few sandwiches short of a picnic, but also a brutal, self-gratifying sadist as he sexually degrades sisters Sheila and Diana whilst mercilessly meting out death and violence to any of his flock who stray from his fanatical doctrine of “purification”.
For Eaten Alive! Lenzi manages to assemble a fairly distinguished cast of familiar Italian horror and exploitation faces. However, most of them are either wasted, hamstrung by typically comical English dubbing or phone in their performances. The only real exception to that rule is former porn star and unwitting Italian cannibal movie regular Robert Kerman who makes up for his lack of any real acting talent by approaching the physical role of jungle savvy hero Mark with an obvious and highly engaging enthusiasm. Meanwhile the bulk of the film is dominated by character actor Ivan Rassimov – star of Lenzi’s earlier Deep River Savages – whose naturally sinister presence graced many an Italian giallo and exploitation picture. However, Rassimov is too suave in his demeanor to really be suited to the role of the nutty Jim Jones like cult leader Jonas and his eye shadow smeared scenery chewing is frankly awful, although in fairness it does feel curiously at home in a film such as this. Leading ladies are assigned to Swedish born blonde starlet Janet Agren, another spaghetti exploitation regular who also notably appeared in Lucio Fulci’s classic City Of The Living Dead that same year. Whilst Agren as usual looks great she once again proves that she it an expressionless, feckless excuse for an actress and her irritating southern drawl seems like someone on the dubbing team’s idea of a joke. Additional eye candy is provided by both the Italian cannibal subgenre’s first lady Me Me Lai as a sympathetic native widow and Paola Senatore – who later starred in a hardcore porn feature, following a regrettable descent into heroine addiction – as Sheila’s missing sister Diana. Elsewhere veteran acting great Mel Ferrer – by this point in his career a veteran of low budget exploitation pictures – crops up ion the films New York City scenes as a boorish professor and looks thoroughly bored throughout his brief screen time. It is worth noting that the Jonestown Massacre had been given a similarly exploitative big screen treatment in Rene Cardona Jr’s Guyana: Cult Of The Damned (1979) just a year earlier – a film which also featured Ferrer in a supporting role.
However, all of the bad acting typically ropey dubbing and the laughably opportunistic narrative elements are largely atoned for by the generous manner in which Lenzi ladles on the sleaze and gory prosthetic sadism. Indeed, no sooner as Sheila and Mark arrive at Jonas’s loopy commune we are treated to the spectacle of Lai’s native widow Mowara being ritualistically screwed senseless by the three brothers of her deceased husband. On the same front it must also be conceded that whilst Janet Agren as usual proves she cannot act for toffee, she does in Eaten Alive! reveal a welcome willingness for participating in kinky soft-core nudity. In a sexploitation twist on a similar scene in the classic Bond film Goldfinger (1964) Agren reveals all as a naked, heavily drugged Sheila is daubed in gold body paint. Quickly on the toes of this comes a sequence in which Jonas ritualistically violates Sheila (off-screen) with a stone dildo drenched in cobra blood.
In addition to mild sexual depravity Eaten Alive! once in its stride also delivers ample quantities of gore, although jungle cannibal movie veterans may experience some annoyance over the fact that much of the carnage is cribbed from previous Italian flesh eating opuses. Unfortunately Eaten Alive! relies fairly heavily upon the familiar yet depressing cannibal movie trend of depicting genuine scenes of live animals being mutilated or artificially goaded into fighting each other. Whilst in fairness these scenes are not as vile as those seen in the likes of Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox they still leave a nasty taste. On a more impressive note Lenzi keeps his inadvertently comic Jonestown-esque narrative bubbling along nicely by serving up a rather eye-watering castration and a brutal beheading although the former is admittedly stolen from Sergio Martino’s Mountain Of The Cannibal God.
However, it is not until Mark and Sheila together with Diana and Mowara make their escape from Jonas’s commune that the real nastiness kicks in. Diana and Mowara are soon waylaid by Jonas’s sadistic henchmen leading to a graphic rape sequence which proceeds until the impromptu jungle gang band is rudely gate crashed by the omnipresent cannibal tribe who proceed to (quite literally) make mincemeat out of Jonas’s goons. What follows is one of the most horrific scenes the Italian cannibal subgenre has to offer as actresses Senatore and Lai whilst lying naked and helpless are protractedly dismembered and eaten by the cannibals whilst still conscious and vacantly observing their grisly fate. Replete with a gruelling shot in which one of the jungle fiends carves off Senatore’s breast and greedily devours it, despite the relatively rubbery nature of the prosthetic effects work this must surely rank as one of the most gruelling gore scenes that the outrageous world of Italian trash cinema has to offer. Following on from this Lenzi then shamelessly steals and tacks on the infamous “human barbeque” scene from Ruggero Deodato’s Jungle Holocaust in which Me Me Lai’s corpse is pried open, stuffed with hot coals, roasted then devoured. In its original context in Deodato’s film this was an unforgettably brutal scene of butchery, but here it just feels obviously spliced in and its effect is therefore largely lost.
Nit content to end the film on a grisly high note Lenzi instead concludes by switching the focus back to Jonas’s commune where everyone’s favourite insane cult leader is busy orchestrating the Kool-Aid induced mass suicide of his followers. Clearly intended as a full on re-enactment of the Jonestown Massacre it is possible that Lenzi may have been aiming for pathos, but instead he just offers more badly staged, unintentional amusement. Still if nothing else this sequence at least lends Eaten Alive! a pleasing symmetry in that it at least finishes the film in the same way in began, with an assortment of crap supporting actors enacting ludicrously unconvincing death throes. Prospective viewers are also advised to keep an eye out for a hysterically funny moment in which a Pakistani helicopter co-pilot fluffs his one big line of dialogue. It’s the little things like that which make my job worthwhile!
Whilst essentially the runt of the Italian cannibal litter, with its mixture of spirited jungle adventuring, unabashed sleaze and leering cannibalistic grisliness Eaten Alive! qualifies as a definite guilty pleasure. Offering as it does a combination of kinky nudity, graphic mutilation, cannibalism and opportunistic sensationalism, which is in turn counteracted by atrocious dubbing, bad acting and the films all prevailing air of cheerful cheesiness, Eaten Alive! makes for a decidedly heady concoction to say the least. On the whole Lenzi admittedly fall short of matching either the disturbing intensity of Cannibal Holocaust or the stomach churning excess of his own Cannibal Ferox, but nevertheless this patchwork effort stands as a guiltily endearing example of Italian trash cinema in its own right. Given the second hand nature of most of its gore Eaten Alive! is essential only for the most ardent of Italian cannibal movie completists, however the way in which the film wildly alternates between inane, unintentional hilarity and unflinching brutality should keep trash fans entertained and if nothing else the films engagingly brisk pace ensures that Lenzi’s cobbled together exercise in spaghetti jungle carnage is seldom dull to watch.
Also Try… Cannibal Holocaust / Cannibal Ferox / Mountain Of The Cannibal God / Deep River Savages / Jungle Holocaust / Emanuelle And The Last Cannibals / Cannibal Terror / The Cannibals / Guyana: Cult Of The Damned.
Please place any comments or queries about this film / review on the message board below. Please note that the newest comment is always displayed first so if you wish to read the comments in order start from the bottom and work your way up. Thanks.
