Eaten Alive! (1980)

aka EATEN ALIVE BY THE CANNIBALS, aka DOOMED TO DIE, aka THE EMERALD JUNGLE

Overall Rating:

Nastiness Rating:

Directed by: Umberto Lenzi
Written by: Umberto Lenzi

A young Southern girl is wondering where her older sister is. Turns out that she’s in South America stuck in a slightly cannibalistic, Jim Jones-style cult. Oddly familiar castrations and animal cruelty ensue.

This is absolutely just another Italian cannibal movie with the same lame-ass plot and same lame-ass acting as all of the others. (It also co-stars the same actress as most of them, Me Me Lai, who sings “Glory Glory Hallelujah” while topless. THAT’S class.)

The movie actually starts with a novel twist: the natives go all over the world to kill some defectors. (At least one of them helpfully looks at the camera and then DIES! All caps means it’s an emphatic death.) Then we get the horrible disco theme music. If there had been lyrics, they would have been “Eaten Alive, YEAH!”

After that, it’s the typical scarification, hanging people by hooks and disemboweling of different animals. There’s absolutely nothing new here at all. There may be a bit more nudity, but that’s probably because there’s a much larger European cast than usual. Europeans aren’t quite so hung up on that kind of stuff.

There is also the fact that the main girl, the one who had to find her sister, actually becomes beholden to Jim, I mean, Jonas, the leader of the cult. She drinks the Kool-Aid, gets painted gold (are you kidding?) and then says that she “belongs to Jonas.” Fuck it. Leave her.

It pains me that I have to watch at least two more of these stupid movies to finish up this project.

LOW POINT: Me Me and the older sister get cut up and eaten by the real cannibals. The sister gets her breast cut off. When Hero finds them he socks little sister in the jaw so she won’t see what happened to her sister.

Ok. This one’s complicated because, while I’m absolutely not ok with beating women, there was a good reason for hitting this one and the timing was perfectly executed.

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