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philosoraptor42Tobe Hooper Review: A Video Nasty
As per my previous few Tobe Hooper marathon instalments, I've paired this particular film review with another movie of a similar type. This time around both films reviewed were placed on the UK's censored 'video nasty' list in the 80s for being a corrupting influence on the nation. On the one hand we have "Death Trap" (otherwise known as "Eaten Alive") from Tobe Hooper. This was his follow-up to "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre". On the other hand we have a low-budget zombie film called "The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue".
Death Trap! (1977)
Straight after "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" [sic] Tobe Hooper made another low budget horror. This one was timed right to get onto the Uk's Video Nasty list. Hooper's original Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie oddly avoided being placed on this list, though that was little consolation when the film was banned by the BBFC anyway.
Like many video nasties this has more than one title, often known instead as "Eaten Alive!". But just to make things awkward, there is another video nasty also titled "Eaten Alive!"; a cannibal-rape film directed by Umberto Lenzi. Unlike in Umberto Lenzi's film there's no cannibalism here. Also, though the threat of rape crops up a number of times, it tends to be only implied if it happens at all. (Though it's still possible that the version I watched had some cuts.) Certainly I should warn all readers that violence against women is fairly prominent in this film.
While "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" contained some relatively skimpily dressed (for the time) female characters, the main focus was the violence. Interestingly there was no actual gore though. The lack of sexual elements or clear gore may explain why the film never made the DPP list of video nasties even though it was precisely the sort of film you'd expect them to go after. It was banned, but it seemingly wasn't to be held up in court as a corrupting influence on the nation.
"Death Trap", however, is much more typically exploitative and the combination of female nudity, sexual references and violence against women clearly helped to raise its profile. There's actually some blood this time around too.
"Death Trap" is about a slightly-mad woman-hating motel owner who kills a woman he believes to be a prostitute and then feeds her body to his pet alligator. Or at least, the locals believe it is an alligator. The motel owner Judd believes his pet is actually a Nile crocodile worthy of reverence. (The idea the crocodile has mystical significance is later brought up again in Hooper's film "Crocodile".) Judd hopes to hide all evidence of the murder and the taste his alligator/crocodile now has for human flesh, but it turns out that this may be tougher than he thinks.
The opening scene introduces us to a prostitute who is being expected to perform a sexual act not previously agreed. (For anyone who's seen "Mallrats" she's being expected to have sex in a particularly uncomfortable place - and it's not the back of a VolksWagen.) Thankfully this is interrupted by the Madam of the whorehouse who turns out to be a pretty well developed character in her own right. This means, oddly enough, that this film passes the Bechdel Test. (Also, pretty cool side-note, the Madam is played by Carolyn Jones who is perhaps most well known for her role as Morticia from the original Addams Family TV series.)
The man who is insisting on getting his own way is a character known as Buck who has his name written on his knuckles. It is this character that Quentin Tarantino is referencing in "Kill Bill: Volume One" and both share the same line of "my name's Buck and I'm here to f***". This part is played by Robert Englund of Nightmare On Elm Street fame, though overall his part in the film is fairly small.
The prostitute at this point becomes an ex-prostitute as she is tossed out on her ear. A maid at the whorehouse gives her a little money and suggests a nearby motel. Turns out that the motel is run by Judd, a complete nutcase and woman hater. Oh great...
Anyway, while the film starts out slow it becomes pretty amusing when the deaths build up. Anyone the motel owner kills is going straight to feed the alligator and so it becomes almost like a bet as to which of the characters is going to get eaten next.
That being said, the violence against women in the film is pretty nasty. While it would be nice to excuse the film on the basis that misogynists are all clearly villains in the story, there is also quite a lot of gratuitous female nudity.
"Death Trap" clearly suffers for the loss of the cinematographer Daniel Pearl, who worked on "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", meaning that this film looks a lot less professional despite probably a fairly similar budget.
The pacing is not great, the acting is not great, Neville Brand (who played Judd) mumbles and rants just a little too much, yet there's something about the theme of Judd getting increasingly worried as he feeds more and more people to his alligator that is oddly enchanting and kind of hilarious. Arguably Judd's ranting towards the beginning of the film sets up just how unhinged his character really is. On the other hand while the points where female characters are shown getting undressed may have been intended to produce suspense, they were mainly just boring. But once the bodies start piling up, the film is genuinely fun to watch so long as you remember that this is seriously low budget exploitation film. (It may be that recently watching the whole series of Jason and Freddy movies prepared me quite well for this.)
To say that this film could have been done better is a pretty big understatement, but this film has an odd sort of charm in spite of its failings.
D+
The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue (1974)
My other video nasty I'm pairing up with Tobe Hooper's also has a number of alternate titles. In fact there are a hell of a lot of them including: "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie", "Don't Open The Window", "The Living Dead", "Breakfast with the Dead", "Brunch with the Dead" and "Weekend with the Dead".
It seems that the DVD must have been remastered, since while this is clearly a low budget seventies zombie flick, the picture looked really crisp. We open with an antique store owner grabbing a set of items and then getting onto his motorcycle and making his way into the countryside. He starts out in Manchester city centre and, while still in traffic (seemingly because it's some kind of unwritten mandatory law for low budget video nasties) we have some unnecessary nudity from a flasher needlessly running naked across the road through the unmoving cars. He then reaches the open road with some gorgeous-looking intensely green English countryside being taken in expertly by the camera.
What happens next is still pretty early on and it's so ludicrous that I can't help but write about it. Our protagonist is stopping for petrol when the car in front accidentally backs into his motorcycle, seriously damaging his front tyre. Apparently while the motorbike can be fixed at the petrol station, his new tyre needs to be ordered in specially and will take days to arrive (apparently being ordered from Glasgow... um what?).
Our protagonist, angry at the damage to his motorcycle and the delay to his trip, insists that rather than worrying about insurance companies he wants the driver to take him to his destination. What's more, he insists on driving the car himself. There's a definite "bloody women drivers" vibe to this whole exchange. It's quite bizarre and sets up our protagonist as very hot-headed, which is actually a consistent feature. As much as some parts of the film might feel a little silly the characters are actually pretty well-handled.
The first sighting of a zombie turns out to be pretty low-key, with a figure being spotted walking jerkily with red eyes, but the scene is shot brilliantly. If you want to get an idea of the quality of the film then click here to see this first zombie encounter.
Still, later in the film we get some pretty awesome low-budget gore. Sure, it's generally pretty obvious how the effects were achieved, but that's not a big concern when you are watching zombies pull bloody organs from a person's body and then start eating them. One rather neat little moment shows a zombie consumed by flames. They clearly didn't have the budget to use stuntmen with a full body flame suit, so the flames are in the foreground with the zombie behind them, but the end result is very dramatically effective.
Our two protagonists come to discover that a local process is being used to kill parasites in the fields. What's more it involves 'radiation'! (It's ALWAYS radiation in these films!) The process sets the various parasites killing each other and we even get to see some footage of two ants (clearly entirely different types of ants, but whatever) fighting one another.
The protagonist we started the film with is clearly antagonistic towards the police and his scepticism turns out to be warranted by the equally hot-headed approach by the detective overseeing the investigation into recent murders. He's not at all keen on youth today and their rock music. On the other hand, other police officers do get to acknowledge that this guy is over the top, so the film doesn't give us a one-sided tirade against the police force as a whole. I admittedly didn't go into the film expecting nuance, so I was actually pretty impressed to see the characters reasonably well-balanced. This isn't like a Lucio Fulci movie where the zombie attacks happen randomly and it's a more consistently plot-driven film than David Cronenberg's 'sex-crazed zombie' flick "Shivers" released the following year.
For a low budget film like this, I actually thought the acting was pretty good, though reviewers don't generally appear to agree on that. The one point where the acting goes downhill however is ANY scene where the actresses in particular are expected to act hysterical. But that's one negative point in what was otherwise a pretty damn amazing film.
"The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue" was released six years after "Night Of The Living Dead" and four years before Romero's "Dawn Of The Dead". The zombie effects (surprisingly) utterly surpass those of Romero's first colour zombie movie and were apparently a big influence on Italian horror filmmakers. The horror scenes are excellently set up and the plot is actually pretty intelligent. All in all I'd say this was one of the best zombie films I have ever seen and I'd be impressed if anyone could point to a zombie flick with this level of quality released this soon or sooner after "Night Of The Living Dead". It seems incredibly ahead of its time as far as zombie films are concerned.
The placing of this film on the video nasty list actually feels somewhat political. It's filmed in the UK and that must have stung a bit for Mary Whitehouse and her campaigners against filth, but it's also very pro-hippy and anti-establishment in its sentiment. There's even a point where the opening protagonist is accused of being a satanist. While I'm sure the lambasting of this film was mostly argued to be over the gore, I'd be surprised if the political side of things didn't play its role too.
Of the few films I've seen on the DPP list, "The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue" and "The Beyond" are definitely both my favourites. If you are a zombie movie fan, you HAVE to check out this film.
A+
As per my previous few Tobe Hooper marathon instalments, I've paired this particular film review with another movie of a similar type. This time around both films reviewed were placed on the UK's censored 'video nasty' list in the 80s for being a corrupting influence on the nation. On the one hand we have "Death Trap" (otherwise known as "Eaten Alive") from Tobe Hooper. This was his follow-up to "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre". On the other hand we have a low-budget zombie film called "The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue".
Death Trap! (1977)
Straight after "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" [sic] Tobe Hooper made another low budget horror. This one was timed right to get onto the Uk's Video Nasty list. Hooper's original Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie oddly avoided being placed on this list, though that was little consolation when the film was banned by the BBFC anyway.
Like many video nasties this has more than one title, often known instead as "Eaten Alive!". But just to make things awkward, there is another video nasty also titled "Eaten Alive!"; a cannibal-rape film directed by Umberto Lenzi. Unlike in Umberto Lenzi's film there's no cannibalism here. Also, though the threat of rape crops up a number of times, it tends to be only implied if it happens at all. (Though it's still possible that the version I watched had some cuts.) Certainly I should warn all readers that violence against women is fairly prominent in this film.
While "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" contained some relatively skimpily dressed (for the time) female characters, the main focus was the violence. Interestingly there was no actual gore though. The lack of sexual elements or clear gore may explain why the film never made the DPP list of video nasties even though it was precisely the sort of film you'd expect them to go after. It was banned, but it seemingly wasn't to be held up in court as a corrupting influence on the nation.
"Death Trap", however, is much more typically exploitative and the combination of female nudity, sexual references and violence against women clearly helped to raise its profile. There's actually some blood this time around too.
"Death Trap" is about a slightly-mad woman-hating motel owner who kills a woman he believes to be a prostitute and then feeds her body to his pet alligator. Or at least, the locals believe it is an alligator. The motel owner Judd believes his pet is actually a Nile crocodile worthy of reverence. (The idea the crocodile has mystical significance is later brought up again in Hooper's film "Crocodile".) Judd hopes to hide all evidence of the murder and the taste his alligator/crocodile now has for human flesh, but it turns out that this may be tougher than he thinks.
The opening scene introduces us to a prostitute who is being expected to perform a sexual act not previously agreed. (For anyone who's seen "Mallrats" she's being expected to have sex in a particularly uncomfortable place - and it's not the back of a VolksWagen.) Thankfully this is interrupted by the Madam of the whorehouse who turns out to be a pretty well developed character in her own right. This means, oddly enough, that this film passes the Bechdel Test. (Also, pretty cool side-note, the Madam is played by Carolyn Jones who is perhaps most well known for her role as Morticia from the original Addams Family TV series.)
The man who is insisting on getting his own way is a character known as Buck who has his name written on his knuckles. It is this character that Quentin Tarantino is referencing in "Kill Bill: Volume One" and both share the same line of "my name's Buck and I'm here to f***". This part is played by Robert Englund of Nightmare On Elm Street fame, though overall his part in the film is fairly small.
The prostitute at this point becomes an ex-prostitute as she is tossed out on her ear. A maid at the whorehouse gives her a little money and suggests a nearby motel. Turns out that the motel is run by Judd, a complete nutcase and woman hater. Oh great...
Anyway, while the film starts out slow it becomes pretty amusing when the deaths build up. Anyone the motel owner kills is going straight to feed the alligator and so it becomes almost like a bet as to which of the characters is going to get eaten next.
That being said, the violence against women in the film is pretty nasty. While it would be nice to excuse the film on the basis that misogynists are all clearly villains in the story, there is also quite a lot of gratuitous female nudity.
"Death Trap" clearly suffers for the loss of the cinematographer Daniel Pearl, who worked on "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", meaning that this film looks a lot less professional despite probably a fairly similar budget.
The pacing is not great, the acting is not great, Neville Brand (who played Judd) mumbles and rants just a little too much, yet there's something about the theme of Judd getting increasingly worried as he feeds more and more people to his alligator that is oddly enchanting and kind of hilarious. Arguably Judd's ranting towards the beginning of the film sets up just how unhinged his character really is. On the other hand while the points where female characters are shown getting undressed may have been intended to produce suspense, they were mainly just boring. But once the bodies start piling up, the film is genuinely fun to watch so long as you remember that this is seriously low budget exploitation film. (It may be that recently watching the whole series of Jason and Freddy movies prepared me quite well for this.)
To say that this film could have been done better is a pretty big understatement, but this film has an odd sort of charm in spite of its failings.
D+
The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue (1974)
My other video nasty I'm pairing up with Tobe Hooper's also has a number of alternate titles. In fact there are a hell of a lot of them including: "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie", "Don't Open The Window", "The Living Dead", "Breakfast with the Dead", "Brunch with the Dead" and "Weekend with the Dead".
It seems that the DVD must have been remastered, since while this is clearly a low budget seventies zombie flick, the picture looked really crisp. We open with an antique store owner grabbing a set of items and then getting onto his motorcycle and making his way into the countryside. He starts out in Manchester city centre and, while still in traffic (seemingly because it's some kind of unwritten mandatory law for low budget video nasties) we have some unnecessary nudity from a flasher needlessly running naked across the road through the unmoving cars. He then reaches the open road with some gorgeous-looking intensely green English countryside being taken in expertly by the camera.
What happens next is still pretty early on and it's so ludicrous that I can't help but write about it. Our protagonist is stopping for petrol when the car in front accidentally backs into his motorcycle, seriously damaging his front tyre. Apparently while the motorbike can be fixed at the petrol station, his new tyre needs to be ordered in specially and will take days to arrive (apparently being ordered from Glasgow... um what?).
Our protagonist, angry at the damage to his motorcycle and the delay to his trip, insists that rather than worrying about insurance companies he wants the driver to take him to his destination. What's more, he insists on driving the car himself. There's a definite "bloody women drivers" vibe to this whole exchange. It's quite bizarre and sets up our protagonist as very hot-headed, which is actually a consistent feature. As much as some parts of the film might feel a little silly the characters are actually pretty well-handled.
The first sighting of a zombie turns out to be pretty low-key, with a figure being spotted walking jerkily with red eyes, but the scene is shot brilliantly. If you want to get an idea of the quality of the film then click here to see this first zombie encounter.
Still, later in the film we get some pretty awesome low-budget gore. Sure, it's generally pretty obvious how the effects were achieved, but that's not a big concern when you are watching zombies pull bloody organs from a person's body and then start eating them. One rather neat little moment shows a zombie consumed by flames. They clearly didn't have the budget to use stuntmen with a full body flame suit, so the flames are in the foreground with the zombie behind them, but the end result is very dramatically effective.
Our two protagonists come to discover that a local process is being used to kill parasites in the fields. What's more it involves 'radiation'! (It's ALWAYS radiation in these films!) The process sets the various parasites killing each other and we even get to see some footage of two ants (clearly entirely different types of ants, but whatever) fighting one another.
The protagonist we started the film with is clearly antagonistic towards the police and his scepticism turns out to be warranted by the equally hot-headed approach by the detective overseeing the investigation into recent murders. He's not at all keen on youth today and their rock music. On the other hand, other police officers do get to acknowledge that this guy is over the top, so the film doesn't give us a one-sided tirade against the police force as a whole. I admittedly didn't go into the film expecting nuance, so I was actually pretty impressed to see the characters reasonably well-balanced. This isn't like a Lucio Fulci movie where the zombie attacks happen randomly and it's a more consistently plot-driven film than David Cronenberg's 'sex-crazed zombie' flick "Shivers" released the following year.
For a low budget film like this, I actually thought the acting was pretty good, though reviewers don't generally appear to agree on that. The one point where the acting goes downhill however is ANY scene where the actresses in particular are expected to act hysterical. But that's one negative point in what was otherwise a pretty damn amazing film.
"The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue" was released six years after "Night Of The Living Dead" and four years before Romero's "Dawn Of The Dead". The zombie effects (surprisingly) utterly surpass those of Romero's first colour zombie movie and were apparently a big influence on Italian horror filmmakers. The horror scenes are excellently set up and the plot is actually pretty intelligent. All in all I'd say this was one of the best zombie films I have ever seen and I'd be impressed if anyone could point to a zombie flick with this level of quality released this soon or sooner after "Night Of The Living Dead". It seems incredibly ahead of its time as far as zombie films are concerned.
The placing of this film on the video nasty list actually feels somewhat political. It's filmed in the UK and that must have stung a bit for Mary Whitehouse and her campaigners against filth, but it's also very pro-hippy and anti-establishment in its sentiment. There's even a point where the opening protagonist is accused of being a satanist. While I'm sure the lambasting of this film was mostly argued to be over the gore, I'd be surprised if the political side of things didn't play its role too.
Of the few films I've seen on the DPP list, "The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue" and "The Beyond" are definitely both my favourites. If you are a zombie movie fan, you HAVE to check out this film.
A+
