IT'S ALIVE (1974)
Directed by:
Larry Cohen

Starring:
John P. Ryan ... Frank
Sharon Farrell ... Lenore
James Dixon ... Lt. Perkins
William Wellman Jr. ... Charley

Country: USA
Runtime: 91 min
     
         
     

I may be wrong but I think this is the grand-daddy of killer baby films. I bought the trilogy not too long ago thinking it would be fun to review for the site. It is a peculiar film - from the way it’s shot to the overall mood. It feels like a freaky television movie of the week. You never see the baby killing anyone, instead there’s a lot of him in attack mode. There are some good looks of his face towards the third act but nothing to throw a party about. The main thing here is how the realization of giving birth to a mutant can make you go nuts and question your normalcy.

Mrs. Davis is in labor and about to give birth at any moment now, but what happens will blow everyone’ s minds. The thing that was born then was a mutant killing machine. In this first bloody scene we see the aftermath of a freak child gone crazy. The whole place is covered in blood and the injured are screaming and clutching at their wounds. From here on everyone scrambles to realize what went wrong and the manhunt for the killer baby is on.

The father gets fired from his public relations job. The baby keeps killing people everywhere it goes, including the milkman. The police hunt the baby in a public school but manage to loose him. You can witness the descent into madness of the family. It’s allover the news and television. In one scene a nurse taking care of the mother sneaks in an undercover microphone to pick up juicy bits of info. The father tries to separate himself from his child and even wants to be the one to kill him but this changes as you will soon see.

The third act is tracking and chasing the monstrosity through the sewers. A bunch of police and media scramble about to see where our killer babe will turn up. Among these is the father, armed with a shotgun and wanting to end this mess himself. But when he comes across the mutant baby his fatherly heart opens up to take the crying thing in. He wraps it in a blanket and attempts to safely carry it out of the sewers alive. But we all know this is impossible. The police corner him and force him to drop the child. As soon as this happens the police open fire killing the abomination. The last bit of information we get is that another mutant killer baby has just been born in Seattle!

I liked this movie. I must admit I was expecting some real gore but the story of psychological breakdown and fear made up for a good tale. The acting was good and the directing was very original. You truly felt as spooked out as those parents having just given birth to a monster. So just come into this movie for a good horror drama instead of a monster massacre and you’ll be all right. But to touch upon the few death scenes; they were good creepy fun. I recommend this film with a box of chewy creepy crawlers and cherry cola!

- Jorge Antonio Lopez

 

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