Eaten Alive... Yummy

Eaten Alive (Mangiati vivi!): 8 out of 10: I seem to have much lower standards for the Italian Cannibal films genre than almost any other. Those darn cheesy exploitative jungle pictures just keep putting a smile on my face.

First, the bad news; similar to the other films in the genre, this movie has many scenes of animal cruelty. Despite the fact Eaten Alive's animal cruelty scenes are cribbed (in the form of stock footage) from other cannibal and Mondo extreme films this simply doesn’t excuse this remarkably unnecessary and disturbing footage. T hat aside this movie simply delivers the goods.

The plot consists of a Jim Jones style cult (complete with King Kong masks!) out in the middle of a jungle surrounded by stone-age cannibals. The cult has been reading up on the Old Testament's naughty parts so we get the old brother in laws duty scene among other surprisingly graphic sex. (Moreover, of course it is the jungle so only the guys wear shirts.).

The acting has some better than expected performances (cannibal film regular Robert Kerman as our prerequisite hero and Ivan Rassimov as the Jim Jones preacher) and everyone else is at least watchable (okay okay Janet Agren looks and acts coked to the gills the entire film and the other (white) female lead is an Italian porn actress but they are both attractive and naked for much of the movie and in my book that counts as "watchable"). The over the top cannibal scenes are appropriately gory and graphic but it really is the bizarre twists I enjoyed. The Goldfinger paint job, the death by poison dart attacks at Rockefeller Plaza, sets that would not be out of place in the original Star Trek, and of course the giant stone dildo of death.

With enough footage to cause either an animal rights activist or a feminist a brain aneurysm and Cannibal watching regulars a serious case of deja vu Eaten Alive is nevertheless an entertaining fun time.



"Janet Argen unimpressed with Carnival Cruise excursion"


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