Directed by the same man responsible for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tobe Hooper, Eaten Alive starts out as many Hicksploitation Films do—in a whorehouse. Buck (Robert Englund, who would go on to win fame as A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger) is a dissatisfied customer of Miss Hatty’s (Carolyn Jones) establishment. Seems he wanted a little something extra from Clara (Roberta Collins), who refused to perform as requested. Anxious to keep a regular customer happy, Miss Hatty sends him to another room with two young ladies, then turns her attention to Clara. There’s no room in Hatty’s place for a girl who won’t do what it takes to keep a man happy, and she’s in the wrong damn line of work for a girl with scruples. Hatty tells her she’s fired, to get her things, and clear out.

    Left with few options, Clara winds up at the Starlight, a seedy, run-down hotel ran by Judd (Neville Brand). Judd seems happy to have a customer, but once he realizes that Clara’s a former resident of Miss Hatty’s, his demeanor changes. He attacks the girl, chasing her throughout the hotel, beating her savagely. She breaks away and gets outside, but Judd has grabbed a pitchfork, and plunges the tines deep into her body, over and over. She collapses on the porch, and Judd tosses her, still alive, into a pond in front of the hotel.

    The pond doesn’t exist merely to add its scenic beauty to the hotel. It houses Judd’s pet crocodile. This happy coincidence makes disposing of Clara’s body simple, since, as Judd is fond of telling people, “… crocs’ll eat mos’ anything.” And so it does, neatly removing the evidence of the prostitute’s murder.

    In short order, the Starlight becomes the most popular spot in town. A family of three arrives, followed closely by Harvey Wood (Mel Ferrer) and his daughter Libby (Crystin Sinclaire). The latter are here looking for Wood’s other daughter, who had ran away some time earlier. When they show Judd her picture, he recognizes the girl—Clara, who is presently serving as dinner for his crocodile. Judd directs them to Miss Hatty’s, insisting that he’ll have nothing to do with the affairs at the, “bawdy house.” They visit the Sheriff (Stuart Whitman), and explain the situation to him. He agrees to take them around to Hatty’s place to look for the girl.

    Meanwhile the road trip for the family of three is not going very well. Their daughter Angie (Kyle Richards, who a year later would play Lindsey Wallace in John Carpenter’s Halloween) encounters a dead monkey in a cage on Judd’s porch, her dog “Snoopy” becomes an after-dinner mint for the croc, and the young girl comes very close to the same fate herself. Her father, Roy (William Finley), is either suffering a psychotic episode or using large amounts of PCP—or some combination thereof. Her mother Faye (Marilyn Burns) doesn’t help matters, ridiculing her husband until he rushes from the room determined to seek vengeance for his daughter’s dog. Rushing out to his car, Roy retrieves a shotgun from his trunk, determined to kill the beast in the pond and avenge the attack on his daughter and the loss of the family pet. Judd intervenes to save his beloved crocodile, beginning the crazed innkeeper’s rampage of terror.

    Written by Alvin L. Fast and Mardi Rustam, and adapted for the screen by Texas Chainsaw Massacre co-writer Kim Henkel, Eaten Alive is undoubtedly one of Hooper’s strangest films. Pivotal scenes are filmed in a way that makes them almost cartoonish, similar in tone to George Romero’s 1982 film Creepshow. Many of the characters, such as Roy and Buck, are as dysfunctional as is Judd.

    However, other aspects of the film are typical Tobe Hooper. None of the characters are people whom the audience can truly like—even the nominal heroes are less than likable. The action, once it begins, is fast and frenzied, assaulting the viewer with sound and imagery nearly as effective as what he demonstrated in TCM. Like TCM, the ending is brutally abrupt, coming as it does when the violence is at its peak.

    To compare this film to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as the author has been doing, is perhaps treating it unfairly. Still, it’s difficult to name another film of Hooper’s that bears so close a resemblance—the same type of backwoods psychopath, the same isolated setting, the same type of bloody, vicious killing spree. That it’s not the equal to Hooper’s earlier effort is obvious. That it serves as an excellent example of its type is likewise true.