Death Scene of the Week: Crocodile eats dog and then attacks owner in Tobe Hooper’s ‘Death Trap’

Death Trap (1977)

Director: Tobe Hopper

While I carry on the massive task of viewing and reviewing the entire list of Video Nasties, the latest film to grace my TV screen was Tobe Hooper’s 1977 horror, Death Trap (or Eaten Alive as it was called elsewhere). I should hopefully have a full Video Nasty review up tonight for this shocking and rather fun horror based around a hotel, its completely bonkers owner and his pet Croc.

While there are a number of scenes from this film which could have easily made the Death Scene of the Week, checking on Youtube I could only find one, and thankfully it is the one scene I would have picked. Extra special thanks then, to Ross Williams for uploading one of the highlights of the film.

Barely any of the death scenes in this film are weak, they all come with a superb shouty hotel owner called Judd (Neville Brand), and they are all filmed with a real sense of doing something against what would have been acceptable back in those days. To put it simply, Hooper glorified each and every death scene using all the tools he had available, and created a memorable, totally insane collection of murders. Judd forces his tenants into the jaws of his pet Croc, and then oddly seems upset that they end up being eaten.

In one of the standout scenes we actually have two deaths to talk about, a poor families barking dog and then the subsequent death of the dogs owner as he attempts to “slay the dragon”. It is fantastic stuff, with the sound all off as the dog barks at a beast ten times its size and expects to scare it (dogs eh?), and with the barking becoming increasingly annoying, the Croc does us all a favour and chomps down on the poor pooch as the daughter looks on, screaming.

Shortly after the owner attempts to shoot the Croc, but Judd is having none of it as he bellows what is barely English in the hope of stopping the man shooting his murderous pet. Judd’s waffling does not work, and so he has to resort to using his trusty Scythe, a tool he brandishes more than once during the film, to save his pet. Cue tons of screaming, maniacal laughing and a still hungry Croc coming out of the water and smashing through the wooden safety fence for his dinner. Brilliant stuff, check it out below!

By Matt Wavish