Eaten Alive (1980)

- Mangiati vivi!
Lenzi Does Jonestown, 5 April 2006

Just as I did with Massacre in Dinosaur Valley, I've probably overrated Eaten Alive. I readily admit that it's not a very good movie. But it's so bizarre and so much fun that I can't help myself. If you throw in cannibals, a religious nut, bad dubbing, and Me Me Lai, you've got a sure fired winner as far as I'm concerned.

It seems to me that Umberto Lenzi had an idea for making a film based on the Jim Jones story, but decided to spice it up by placing cannibals in the jungle. The Jonesesque aspects of the story are undeniable – a cult, under the control of a ruthless leader, set-up a jungle compound to practice their strange form of religion. The followers are kept in line through the use of physical punishment and are threatened with death if they disobey. There's even a plan to distribute something similar to the poisonous Kool-Aid used in Guyana should the need arise for a mass suicide. Even the name Lenzi selected for his cult leader – Jonas – seems to have been done so to remind viewers of what happened in the Jungles of Guyana just a year or so earlier. While the Jim Jones story had been told before, Lenzi puts in a few of his own original twists and keeps it at least interesting.

The cannibal scenes, on the other hand, lack any form of originality. It is all too obvious that most of these scenes were lifted from other cannibal films – Lenzi's and other directors. For example, Me Me's death scene is the same one from Ruggero Deodato's Jungle Holocaust. I don't mean to imply that Lenzi shot a scene similar to Deodato's. That would have required effort. Instead, Lenzi included Deodato's footage from Jungle Holocaust in Eaten Alive. And this is not the only example. Besides originality, there's no continuity. Me Me's death scenes starts out in broad daylight but suddenly shifts to a night time as filmed in Jungle Holocaust. And the fact that the cannibals never look the same in any two scenes is a bit disconcerting.

Finally, as with most of these Italian cannibal films, those who are squeamish about real animal deaths should avoid Eaten Alive. I'm certainly not a fan of these scenes either.

6/10