Tell me if you've heard this one before: Three prison escapees, two women on the way to a party and a deputy sheriff all get trapped in a mine with a cannibal.

Yes, but Cameron Mitchell is in it.

Director and writer Leszek Burzynski gets my watch only because he wrote the absolutely berserk Tiny Tim vehicle Blood Harvest. Man, Wisconsin is a weird place, huh?

The bad guys - Louis "Face" Napoleon, Mongo and Randolph "Hot Rod" Carter - kidnap Monica and Robin early - she's Mitchell's daughter - and proceed to drive their car right into a mineshaft. Deputy Billy Williams is on the case, right after he makes some sweet love for the foreign buyers, and then drives off to Forever Mine, which was the name of this movie while it sat on the shelf gathering dust.

But what if that woman he's arrdvarking had a connection to whatever is in that mine? What then, huh?

Also: a Christmas movie.

I seem to have enjoyed Trapped Alive a tad more than most. Is it a work of art? Definitely not. Is it a groundbreaking horror that trucks convention? That'll be a big 'no'. But is it fun? Well, I thought so. It's cheesy, sleazy, and occasionally gory, with that unmistakable '80s vibe that makes even a bad movie entertaining.

Pretty teen Robin Adams (Sullivan Hester, in her one and only movie) leaves her father's Xmas get-together to drive to a more lively party with her pal Monica (Laura Kallison). On the way, the girls are stopped and taken hostage by three criminals on the run from a local penitentiary: Louis 'Face' Napoleon (Alex Kubik),Mongo (Michael Nash) and Randy 'Hotrod' Carter (Mark Witsken),who was forced to take part in the escape by his ruthless cellmates.

In order to avoid a roadblock, Randy steers the car down a country lane that leads to an old deserted mine. Driving over a disused shaft, the car plummets into the ground, where the survivors come face-to-face with a deranged cannibal. Investigating the area, Sheriff Billy Williams (Randy Powell) follows the criminals and their hostages into the mine but isn't prepared for the horrors that await.

This one was apparently shelved for five years before finally seeing the light of day (in 1993),but it isn't any worse than many similar films from that era, and definitely better than quite a few. The plot is routine and the dialogue predictable, but the cast put in decent performances given what they have to work with. Alex Kubik is particularly great as slimy child-killer Face, the actor hamming it up a treat at every opportunity. Kudos also to Elizabeth Kent as Rachel, the strange woman who lives in the old pay office above the mine: her show-stopping speech at the end of the film is an audacious exercise in over-acting that is a marvel to behold. At the other end of the scale, Cameron 'never one to turn down a gig' Mitchell sleepwalks through his role as Robin's father, the movie sporadically cutting to the concerned old man to justify the actor's star billing.

Mitchell's scenes aside, director Leszek Burzynski keeps the brace brisk, and whenever things threaten to drag, he throws in something trashy to keep the viewer entertained, whether it be a some gratuitous nudity (during a hilarious impromptu sex scene, and when Face forces Monica to strip for him),some gore (the discovery of the half-eaten remains of Mongo being the most grisly moment, made all the more revolting when Randy has to fish his torch out of the dead man's innards),or having his lead actress strip to her underwear to take an underwater swim (granny pants alert!).

6.5/10, rounded up to 7 for crazy Rachel's mine-related sexy talk: "You go down.... down... until you find a shaft."

TRAPPED ALIVE is one bad movie. It's hilariously bad, but only in spots. Most of the movie just drags but if you fast forward through the dull spots and watch the really unintentionally funny moments, then this film delivers in the "it's so bad it's good" way.

The plot (what plot?) is this: two bimbos drive on a deserted road on some winter's night. At the same time, three prisoners escape from prison nearby. The prisoners actually end up hijacking the bimbos' vehicle and as they drive along, the vehicle gets stuck in a snow bank at the the end of the road. Everyone gets out of the vehicle but then they fall through some hole, into some abandoned mine shaft. Now this whole moment has to be seen to be believed. Really badly conceived.

In the meantime, a deputy is roaming around the road, looking for the escaped prisoners. He arrives at a house near the mine shaft. The woman in the house seduces the deputy and they have sex (arf!!!!). Remarkably, the woman is nuts and she's the guardian of sorts of the mine, and its secret psychotic inhabitant: an old crazed cannibal (who looks like a cross between Yeti and an old man). The cannibal starts killing the bimbos and prisoners one by one in the most unconvincing ways. Eventually, the deputy finds the vehicle and goes down the mine and finds the remaining survivors, only to be attacked by the cannibal.

The big shock ending, which is really not big or shocking, is that the old man in the mine is the crazy woman's father and at the end she tries to kill the remaining survivors after her father was killed by one of them.

The whole thing is so clunky and funny, Ed Wood would have loved it. But like I said, there are several dead spots throughout the movie (including the scenes with Cameron Mitchell. Did he ever refuse a script in his entire career?). But the funny bits are so amateurish and stupid that they're actually worth watching if you're into bad movies.