Eaten Alive!/Mangiati Vivi!/Doomed to Die (1980) - Lenzi's Jonestown trash

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Savages and nude, sexual ecstasy in a sensational combo on a poster for Umberto Lenzi's Eaten Alive!

A woman from New York worries about her sister, who has gone missing with an occult sect in Borneo. She decides to travel there with a brusque Vietnam veteran to bring her sister home. On the island, the two find a small community centered on 'charismatic' leader Jonas, surrounded by savage cannibals!

Eaten Alive! is a cannibal exploitation flick inspired by the Jonestown, Guyana mass-murder/suicide of 1978, in which more than 900 people died, written and directed by Umberto Lenzi (The Manhunt/L'uomo della Strada fa Giustizia (1975)). With this genuinely frightening material in mind, the film is a thin cup of tea. It stars Swedish beauty Janet Agren (City of the Living Dead/Paura Nella Città dei Morti Viventi (1980)) as the gullible Sheila and porn star Robert Kerman (Lust at the Top (1985), video) as the jungle-war veteran with the sly smile. Ivan Rassimov (Blade of the Ripper/Lo Strano Vizio della Signora Wardh (1971)) plays the Jim Jones-based cult leader and seems genuinely mad.
Eaten Alive! is a wildly tasteless blend of animal deaths, (footage of real animals getting killed are a stable in cannibal movies), endless gratuitous shots of breasts and beavers, (lady beavers, not real beavers), rapes, mass suicide - and funk music. It is simply not a good movie. It also incorporates brutal scenes taken from at least 3 other films. - Eaten Alive! is, in short, awful!

Watch Lenzi talk of the making of his giallo movie Spasmo (1974) in a video here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
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[Eaten Alive! was released 20 March (Italy) and runs 91 minutes. Shooting took place in New York, Italy and Sri Lanka. It was released unrated in the US and banned in Norway and West Germany. In the UK, it was released with an X-rating in a heavily cut version. Information about its budget and theatrical performance are regrettably not available online. 2,649 IMDb-users have given Eaten Alive! a 5.2/10 average rating.]

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