Atrapados

The 80s have spawned countless low-budget slashers, and many of them are so terrible that you wonder how anyone even considered investing money in them. When you then bump into a late 80s slasher that apparently remained on the shelf until the 90s before it was released, you are even more wary. Is this slasher so disastrous that producers thought it was too bad to release even in the 80s?

"Trapped Alive" is one of them, but I can immediately reassure everyone: it is not worse than your average 80s slasher, and certainly not after the splendid restoration for BluRay. Of course, it's not good, either. The plot is about two beautiful young ladies who want to go out on Christmas Eve but are taken hostage by three escaped and very dangerous convicts. By avoiding a roadblock, they get stuck in an old abandoned mine, which turns out to be inhabited by a bewildered and cannibalistic monstrosity Talk about bad luck, right?

The script is full of annoying clichés. One of the gangsters - a pretty boy - is actually kind-hearted, the owner of the mine is all too aware of the presence of the creature, the inevitable Stockholm syndrome plot twist, etc. Of course, it also takes way too long before we get to see the monster, BUT ... He is worth the wait! "Trapped Alive" contains quite a bit of unsavory gore and a few wonderfully absurd dialogues. To make the film a bit more appealing, there's a touch of nudity, and the presence of genre veteran Cameron Mitchell (although his scenes are the dullest and most redundant ones). Certainly not mandatory viewing, but worthwhile for slasher fans.

Three convicts escape from a maximum security prison on Christmas eve, and hijack a vehicle on a snowbound backwoods road holding the two women hostage. In trying to avoid a roadblock, they go off road and crash through a rotting cover over an old mine shaft. The survivors now find themselves trapped in a maze of old tunnels, but soon realise they might not be alone. Meanwhile a local deputy sheriff is on their trail.

I don't know what to say... this is an odd genre film trying to balance a whole range of genre elements. I kind of like it, yet still felt somewhat disappointed. There's something there, but I don't think it fully taps into it and the lack of a budget adds to it. It's schlock material, but it doesn't entirely act like it. Well, not exuberantly so... with the exception of one character sub-plot. Story starts off straightforward with quite a long-winded setup, where the acting, and dialogues are ham-fisted in their serious delivery. For the first hour you got deal with a lot of it. Plenty of predictable character arches, and restless friction between unwanted company in the caves to move the story forward, but when the underground cannibal hermit (a wrinkly old man with scraggy white hair and a beard) makes himself known to the group. It sort picks up the pace, the dark is no longer playing tricks and what develops is downright nonsensical and unhinged, especially the events surrounding the mysterious women that lives nearby and the cartoonish nature of her inclusion. There are a couple eerie, and unpleasant jolts with decent looking make-up FX... just not enough when it came to shove.

One thing though that had me bug-eyed, and probably the most effective horror moments are the scenes where a mechanical claw (like out of a plush toys machine?!), would come down and clamp down on his meals. Quite a pro too, as it only took him one go each time.

For star power Cameron Mitchell sleeps through his tiny part, where he spends a good part of his role literally doing just that, and when not rolling around in bed, there's a Christmas party to host at the beginning, or talking on the telephone in his best attempt to look worried about his missing daughter. Oh, he wasn't even trying. Go back to sleep Cameron.

Three convicts escape from prison at Xmas time. They hijack a car containing two young women who are off to a party, and they all find themselves trapped in an abandoned mine. Not much horror so far but eventually, one by one, they are attacked by a hideous cannibalistic mine dweller. A cop also joins the group, but not until after he has broken off his search and had sex with a frustrated housewife who lives next to the mine! There are two ways of looking at movies like these. Firstly there is the honest review, based on merit. In this instance I would score it 3/10. This is a BAD movie, be it the terrible, over the top acting, the laughable scenarios within the film or the whole cheesiness of it. The other way of looking at it is entertainment value, and this one did make me chuckle numerous times, on the grounds that it was so laughably bad. For that I would score it 6/10, so I'm going with 5/10 overall. Cameron Mitchell is in the cast, a good actor who just looks completely out of place. The rest of the cast can't act but they seemed to be having fun. There is a little sex & nudity but it doesn't have a great deal of gore.It is also a little slow to go going horror-wise, and even then it does not come to much. The sets used for the mine were pretty good.

It's fair to say that a lot of dross was made in the 1980s and TRAPPED ALIVE (aka TRAPPED) is a good example of this. It's a cheesy, low budget piece of nonsense that attempts to combine the thriller and horror genres but does neither successfully. The plot is the most interesting thing in it but even that's mishandled, leaving this a near unwatchable viewing experience.

The film sat on the shelf for five years before release which gives you some idea of the quality. The story sees some violent criminals bust out of prison and take some young people hostage. The local police department are in hot pursuit, but all of the characters end up being trapped in an abandoned mine where they're pursued by a cannibalistic killer.

It's predictable stuff indeed and feels so slapdash that it's impossible to enjoy. The early scene-staging stuff is quite dull but when the action shifts to the mine things get really dark (visually) so you can't figure out what's happening. There's some gloopy gore here and a lot of bad acting from the cast, including Cameron Mitchell in one of his '80s-era anything-goes B-movies. The killer is a visual disappointment looking just like an old man and there's no bang here, just fizz.

The most frustrating thing about this film is that it had all the right pieces to be so much better. A creepy abandoned mine setting, a deformed cannibal hunting unsuspecting victims... but we end up with maybe five minutes of that promised premise at the most, with the film wasting 95% of its run time on multiple storylines of unrelated, unentertaining drama. It could have been up there as a classic, memorable slasher, had it done away with all the unnecessary filler in favour of bloody kills and more cannibal action, but unfortunately we're just left with a brief taste of what could have been in the end. The acting and production value are decent enough at least, but those things are wasted on a film as boring as this.