Trapped Alive

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.

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.

A good few years before X-Factor, many years after Max Factor, neophyte horror director, Leszek Burzynski was,perhaps, percolating ideas for 'Trapped Alive'', and, I, for one, am jolly glad that he did! Quite frankly, if he didn't, this devilishly diverting, dirty minded horror film would have remained a mere figment, and with all the good will I can muster, any figment, no matter how well intentioned will ever play on my Sony region 2 Blu-ray player! (That said, should you be an avid fan of figments, I certainly meant no offence!) By the end of the 80s, the slasher cycle neared extinction, and, sadly, Leszek Burzynski's likeable, modestly satisfying subterranean, skin-flaying backwoods blood spiller 'Trapped Alive' was prematurely entombed as a Slasher relic.

It is a joyful experience to finally experience, Leszek Burzynski's previously buried underground shocker in this new, glisteringly gussied up Blu-ray presentation. Is it worth the wait? Well, that entirely depends on how receptive one's 80s horror gland is, fortunately mine remains an uncommonly virile organ, thrustingly appreciative of any lovingly reclaimed, long-forgotten historically hysterical horror opus from the gory days when film meant just that, film. Like any form of art, good, bad or indifferently made, its perceived beauty lies wholly in the perversely inclined peepers of said B-Movie beholder! If you still relish the likes of the majestically mutilating 'The Mutilator', or eccentric Mephistophelean murder-fest 'Satan's Blade' then you should embrace the Cameron Mitchell-starring, creepily claustrophobic, mine shaft-trapping, rot-faced cannibal redneck mutant rampaging shocker 'Trapped' with all the brutal tenacity of a Prison Yard coupling!

'Trapped Alive' aka 'Trapped', like Mapplethorpe's intimate photography, or that second over-generous serving of Blow fish Sushi, certainly isn't going to be everybody's fulsome chalice of frothing grume! For those with lead-lined stomachs and a more refined appreciation of the cinematic absurd may well 'unearth' much schlocky spectacle to amuse themselves in 'Trapped Alive' This is a roughly hewn, frequently fun, rumbustious slasher obscurity you can laugh 'with' or 'at', making it an ambidextrously amusing underground shocker! Burzynski's Trapped Alive maintains it's own unique charm which raises it far above the mirthless mire of routinely plagiarized horror grot clogging cinema's sinless slasher sewer of today.

I first saw this in the late 90s on a vhs. Revisited it recently aft reading Ba_harrison's hilarious review. This movie is indeed unintentionally funny. The old geezer's/monster's white hair, the girl's out dated undergarments, the end speech and Mongo's face n guts. On a snowy Christmas nite, three convicts break outta prison n they carjack taking two women as hostages but things turn ugly when the car plummets down a mine shaft, trapping all the five fellas down. Well, like they say outta the frying pan into the fire. Unknown to em, an ol Alexander Pearce with snowy hair has been inhabiting the mine. The film lacks tension n the twist is very predictable. The kills r very few n nothing gory, except for the offscreen one. I thot that Mongo the Rubeus Hagrid lookalike will put up some fight man. Cameron Mitchell is totally wasted.

I give this film a 7 only as an enjoyably bad movie - so it gets that score for being cheesy and fun. To its credit, you never know what is going to happen next - it seems like five screenplays were thrown into a blender and they filmed that. Escaped prisoners, two innocent girls driving home late at night, abandoned mines, sleazy cops, cannibal miners, a little gore, ta-da! We laughed and enjoyed how bad it was. Everything you would want in a 80's horror/action movie. Veteran actor Cameron Mitchell (who was on Broadway in the original cast of Death Of A Salesman and then became an International B-movie actor) plays a worried father of one of the kidnapped girls but he's hardly in it. He must of had a mortgage payment due. Check out this bizarre cheesefest. You Will Be Trapped & Entertained!