Death Trap (1977)

	Also Known As: Eaten Alive, Le Crocodile de la Mort (french)
	Year of first release: 1977
	Director: Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist)
	Actors: Neville Brand, Mel Ferrer, Carolyn Jones, Robert Englund (Nightmare on Elm Street)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 14.09.2013, Sao Jorge theater, MotelX2013
Synopsis: The owner of a motel in the Florida swamps (Brand) starts to kill his customs and feed them to his crocodile imported from Africa.
Review: I remember watching this movie on an old French René Chateau Vidéo VHS at least 15 years ago (maybe I still have it somewhere...) and finding it cheap, but fitting with my horror films taste of the time. Now I could watch it again as part of the retrospective on Tope Hooper at the MotelX 2013 festival, but the quality was not better. It looks like an original copy: heavy grain, red images and most annoyingly: high-pitched ear-piercing sound. The movie is as slow and cheap as I remembered, but has this quality of the 70's to be perverse and sick. The main character is indeed crazy and scary, when he chases his victims with his scythe. So there are some interesting moments and the movie is part of history (you have to watch it if you like Tobe Hooper), but it cannot be called a good movie, because of the uneven rythm and the poor characters, and some badly done scenes (like the little girl crawling under the house for half a day!). Note that the first sentence of the movie said by the character of Robert Englund "Name's Buck... and I'm rarin' to fuck" was quoted in Tarantino's Kill Bill.
Rating: 3 /10