Eaten Alive (1977)

Tobe Hooper made Eaten Alive soon after The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but it certainly doesn't possess any of the horror that TCM does.

It is about hotel owner Judd, who likes to kill people that aren't as morally up to par as he is. His first kill is a prostitute, who seeks refuge from her line of work in his hotel. As soon as he finds out what she does, he feeds her to his pet crocodile. Others who get too close to his secret (or his crocodile) soon follow suit, including a traveling family, a few young locals, the family who comes looking for the prostitute and others.

Robert Englund plays a horny local boy and Marilyn Burns returns as my favorite scream queen. Englund and Burns are about the only good things in this movie...the rest is just stupid and boring. The pacing is horrible, the character of Judd isn't menacing and it just drags on and on...

Skip it unless you want to see a very young Robert Englund.

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Masters of Horror - Dance of the Dead (2005)

Tobe Hooper's installment for the Master's of Horror series, this film is generally predictable, especially the "twist" ending. I enjoyed Robert Englund, the club scenes and the flashback/dream sequence opening of this film.

In a postapocalyptic world, survivors struggle to go on with their normal lives, even though the dead come back to life. Peggy is the typical naive, good girl who has been sheltered her whole life by her mother. It seems when the apocalypse happened that it was Peggy's birthday party. Peggy, her sister and her mother escaped to their house while they watched their friends die by chemical/acid burn outside. Since then, Peggy's mother has kept a close eye on her, especially after her older sister ran away.

Soon, Peggy is lured into the "real world" by a cute biker, probably the first guy who has told her she is pretty. They head to a notorious town, which Peggy's mom has warned her to stay away from. Here, they go to a club that features "The Dance of the Dead." It seems that the club owner and M.C. (Robert Englund) buys the living dead to put them on stage and makes them "dance" by shocking them until they collapse into a quivering, twitching heap.

Peggy's mom follows her to the club and soon a horrible family secret is revealed...

I would say skip this installment of the Master's of Horror series...Hooper peaked with his first film, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and has never made a film to top that. I wasn't expecting much, but this film was still a bit of a let down...one thing to watch for is the zombie oral sex!! Definitely disturbing...

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The Funhouse (1981)

Directed by Tobe Hooper and released in 1981, The Funhouse tells the story of two couples who decide to spend the night in the funhouse of a carnival. They witness a murder, and spend the remainder of the movie trying to escape from the deformed killer.

Don't be mistaken, the "deformed killer" is no where near as scary as Leatherface from Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. He's more of a pathetic character, and there are times where I felt sorry for him. His father, who works at the carnival as a barker, is the real villain here, though there are times where I felt sorry for him as well. The killer works at the Funhouse, wearing a Frankenstein mask, and is constantly heckled by his father. The murder the kids witness is when he kills the carnival's fortune teller, whom he pays for a sexual service. She refuses to give his money back after he finishes a bit prematurely, and in a fit of rage he strangles her. His father finds out what he has done and soon they discover that they are being watched by the two couples. Though the father is enraged that his deformed son has killed "one of their own," he orders him to track down the kids and kill them.

The couples try to escape, but realize that they are locked in the Funhouse. One by one, they are killed off by numerous devices in the Funhouse. The characters were all pretty unlikable, so I don't even remember their names. One interesting plot line had one of the girls' little brother following them to the carnival, where he is traumatized by the killer. The rest of the movie was pretty boring. It had some cool kills, but the deformed killer looked ridiculous, the acting was bad and it didn't have very much suspense. It is not a memorable movie.

One cool thing was seeing how carnivals used to be - complete with an animal freak show and a nudie review! There are better, more suspenseful and less annoying movies to watch besides Funhouse, though...I recommend you check something else out unless you really like carnivals.

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