Death Trap

Hooper's follow-up to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, shot entirely on a sound stage and lit almost exclusively in red.

A man runs a swamp hotel with a crocodile in the yard and a scythe in his hand. Neville Brand plays him as a continuous mutter, and the film is essentially a chamber piece in which a series of people arrive and are fed to the animal.

The artificiality is total and deliberate: painted backdrops, theatrical light, no daylight anywhere. Hooper was reaching for a fever-dream register and the result divides people sharply between admiring it and finding it unwatchable.

Robert Englund is in it, seven years before Freddy, delivering his first memorable line.

Known under at least five titles, which is why the search here covers alternates.