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.
