everyday is halloween!

 eaten alive [1976]

tobe hooper's second feature is a brutal mash of surrealistic imagery & psychotic brutality.  judd, played by neville brand, is the owner of a run-down motel in the louisiana bayou.  judd's companion is a giant crocodile living in the waters that border the motel.  brand plays judd to the uppermost limit of intelligibility.  the dude is either mumbling or shouting in a language that barely approximates sanity.  with his long hair, his broken granny glasses [like the kind john lennon wore], & his saggy khakis, along with his rifles hung on the walls of his motel, plus what looks like a swastika flag draped over a chair? it is difficult to discern what the hell is wrong with judd.  other than being a psycho who doesn't like attractive ladies.

but he doesn't feed his croc only nubile young women.  he uses his giant scythe to slash anyone who appears in his lobby or his doorstoop.  why?  cuz he's the star of a horror movie!  robert englund [who helped develop one of the icons of contemporary horror villains, freddy krueger] plays buck, the local troublemaker & ne'er-do-well who shows up at judd's starlight inn chiefly to antagonize the proprietor.  stuart whitman plays the local sheriff & mel ferrer plays the father of the daughter, clara, essayed by roberta collins, who is the first victim of judd's croc we see.  we can assume there's been many more thrown as food to a giant hungry croc living beside the starlight inn located in the deep swampy abyss of the bayou.  marilyn burns reprises her role as The Final Girl [as she was in hooper's great gritty film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre [1974], faye, captured by judd, tortured & bound to a bed, while her very young daughter hides from judd  & the croc under the motel.

& like hooper's earlier film there is no linear thought to the script.  instead, we are thrust into the bowels of chaos.  chance & bad luck determine the actions onscreen.  the editing is wonky, but the score, partly penned by hooper, is atonal electronic clanks, glitches & fuzz.  this flick is lit like a deranged christmas tree farm with saturated reds, blues & greys.  the result is not the hard-lined documentary reality like in Texas Chain Saw Massacre but rather a wonderland of dantean horrors.  the kills are gory & bloody.  the croc is enormous & so chubby no wonder he never gets full even after eating one bony human being after another!  i guess one of the reasons the croc sticks around the motel is for the easy eats.  even if human beings don't provide a great meal, we are mere sacks of bone, gristle & blood, judd supplies enough to keep ol' crocy happy.

another thing about this pic is american culture of the mid-1970s.  nearly everyone smoked, outside, inside, allover!  where even in the office of the madam of the brothel, miss hattie, played by carolyn jones, where our good sheriff takes mel ferrer & his other daughter, libby, played by crystin sinclaire, to inquire about the whereabouts of the very first victim, clara, i couldn't take my eyes off the billows of hovering cigarette & cigar smoke!  yes, we once lived with all that smoke that was everywhere!  & i had forgotten how popular wigs were with many women.  clara, miss hattie & faye all wore wigs!  well, then, that was the '70s for ya!  

if there was one winner-take-all in this flick it is the croc.  for him it was always dinnertime!  what happened to the croc after the last frame?  more easy eats?  who knows!  but like real life chance is what rules the world.  the only thing certain in this world created by hooper & co. is that a giant hungry croc is always nearby ready to take a chomp out of your life!

boo!