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| Images courtesy of Arrow Video |
Cameron Mitchell goes way back to the Golden Age of
Hollywood with his first screen appearance in 1945, in everything from The
Robe to How to Marry a Millionaire and even the hit musical Carousel. But like most distinguished screen veterans
who have more than put their time in, the renowned character actor found
himself drifting towards television work and eventually through the 1980s
started gravitating towards bit parts in horror films tailored for the youth
market. Among his horror stints are Without
Warning, Blood Link, Night Train to Terror, Memorial Valley
Massacre and notably Trapped or as it is commonly recognized Trapped
Alive rescued by Arrow Video in their ongoing effort to unearth regional
slashers and forgotten horror oddities.
Though Mitchell takes a backseat to most of this movie, his presence in
it lends a bit of credibility to the production it might not have had on its
own.
On a cold winter’s night, girlfriends Robin (Sullivan
Hester) and Monica (Laura Kallison) are on route to a Christmas party when they’re
carjacked and abducted by three escaped convicts including the leader Face (Alex
Kubik), knucklehead heavy Mongo (Michael Nash) and young getaway driver Randy
(Mark Witsken). Soon policeman Billy (Randy
Powell) is on the hunt for the escaped trio and their new hostages, that is
until the criminals and hostages find themselves in more trouble than they
bargained for when their truck crashes through and plummets down an abandoned
mine shaft and traps everyone underground.
As Face tries taking matters into his own hands, it becomes apparent
something else is down with them in the mine shaft and its hungry for living human
flesh.
Shot in 1988 under the working title Forever Mine before
hastily being changed to Trapped and then rebilled Trapped Alive,
the film by Leszek Bursynski in only his second other directorial effort, was
the first production for Hellraiser producer Christopher Webster by Wisconsin’s
now defunct Windsor Lake Studios which produced a number of Fangoria titles
including Mindwarp with Bruce Campbell.
Despite not being released until 1993 after sitting on the shelf for
over five years and going straight-to-video after an intended theater release, this
survival chamber piece of sorts mixes together elements of claustrophobia,
grisly gory kills, surreal lighting by cinematographer Nancy Schreiber and a
wacky synthetic score by Entertainment Tonight theme composer Michael
Mark.
Acting wise, though featuring Cameron Mitchell in a
glorified recurring cameo bookending the film, the real stars of this thing are
Alex Kubik as the maniacal, violent and sexually predatory Face who spends the
first half of the film making the audience hate him so much his eventual
onscreen demise is kind of glorious and Randy Powell as the policeman who
approaches the crime by the book but soon finds the circumstances within the
mine shaft are beyond his skills set.
The two scream queens played by Sullivan Hester and Laura Kallison give
solid and spunky performances with one of the two shaping up to be quite the
mighty heroine near the end. One actress
who goes the whole distance in terms of sex and nudity before dialing up the crazy
eyes is Elizabeth Kent as Rachel, a middle-aged woman starved for sex who may
know more about the mine shaft that she’s telling.
A slick little regional slasher featuring an inspired underground
setting aided by the isolating wintry timeline with just a hint of Christmas
music in the background, Trapped Alive became another horror movie that
got dumped straight-to-video that gradually built up a cult following on its
own. Initially unwatchable with muddy
VHS prints, the film got a massive upgrade from Arrow Video’s 2K original
camera negative restoration supervised by the director of photography replete
with plentiful extras. Also fellow
Michiganders, there’s an Upper Michigan Tonight archival news special
from 1988 which captured behind-the-scenes footage of the shoot. Seen now Trapped Alive is an inspired sort
of holiday horror movie that feels somewhere between Silent Night, Deadly
Night, The Descent and even a little bit of The Kindred sprinkled
in. Not a masterpiece but just spooky
and outlandish enough for it to stand apart from the pack of weird previously
lost-on-video horror gems rescued from oblivion by Arrow Video.
--Andrew Kotwicki
