Arrow Video: Trapped Alive (1988) - Reviewed

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