It's Alive |
  • USA • 1974 • 91m •   • Directed by: Larry Cohen. • Starring: John P. Ryan, Sharon Farrell, Andrew Duggan, Guy Stockwell, James Dixon, Michael Ansara, Robert Emhardt, William Wellman Jr., Shamus Locke, Nancy Burnett, Patrick McAllister, Daniel Holzman, Diana Hale. • Music by: Bernard Herrmann.     Heavily pregnant Lenore Davis tells her husband, Frank, that she is in labor. They leave their eleven year-old son Chris with their friend Charley and they head to the Community Hospital. Lenore feels that something is wrong and delivers a monster that kills the team in the delivery room and escapes through a skylight. Lieutenant Perkins comes to the hospital to investigate the murder and the press divulges the identity of the parents. Frank discovers a dark secret about Lenore and the baby.
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Review:
Coming from writerdirector Larry Cohen (creator of fun little movies such as Q: The Winged Serpent, God Told Me To and The Stuff, to name just a few), this "killer baby" movie is a cult favourite among many fans but is very much a product of it's time and it's budgetary limitations. There is much talk of radiation and chemicals both before and after the baby is born and I can only suppose that we are to believe these things may have contributed to the mutation - the perils of modern life and all that. The baby itself, wisely, isn't shown all that much. While the effects are not terrible (despite some absurdly bright red paint masquerading as blood when streaked over people lying down pretending to be dead) it's more effective to keep the killer infant in shadow and give us only small, partial reveals. Yes, there are times during the first half of the movie when you glimpse something resembling a Sesame Street puppet gone horribly wrong but the second half of the film redresses the balance and works much better for it.
The acting varies between terrible and average although John P. Ryan does better than most people as the father who disassociates himself from the horror and gains a grim determination to deal with something he does not even acknowledge as his own offspring. In fact, acting apart, it is with Sharon Farrell (playing the mother) that we get the more interesting aspects of the movie. Cohen has often layered even his schlockiest outings with subtext and issues and this movie is no exception. We're looking at parental responsibility and how far people will go to protect or look after their children, no matter what they have done. The "It" of the title is the very epitome of a child who has gone off the rails while his parents just want him to get back to normal. It's an interesting take on some wild material that is not recommended for pregnant women.
See this if you like: C.H.U.D, Rosemary's Baby, Blessed.
Review by tyler-and-jack from the Internet Movie Database.
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