It's Alive

1974 *** 1/2

JPX made this comment on Julie's review of this movie:

"Octo will never admit it, but he's obsessed with It's Alive for some reason."

Ah, but I will admit it! And here's the reason. I've only ever seen this movie once, and that was just a few years ago. But it's been on my mind since -- if you can belive this -- it came out. Because I saw this poster.



We were waiting for someone to pick us up at the Swansea Mall.* I was with one parent and my sister, or friends, or something. And here is this scary poster for some movie called "It's Alive" that is obviously way too scary for me to even consider seeing. But the movie's about IT and all it tells us is that It's ALIVE and apparently that fact is horrible, just horrible -- because the very words that are telling us this are made of veins and gore. That's not blood splattered on a wall, it's tissue, with veins in it, but there's a terrible gravity to it that has big gloopy bits dripping off the bottom. Until I found this poster last week I didn't even remember that there were other images behind those words, so closely did I observe their gooey menace.

I never forgot those words. If this happened exactly when the movie came out, I was six, but I suspect it was a couple of years later. Movie distribution was a more loosey goosey thing in the '70's; a cheap product like that could get farmed around for a few Halloweens in a row. It's even possible the poster was different (or so I like to think, since it looks different from my memory of it.)

Cut to a hundred years later and I get Netflix. One of the great things about Netflix, of course, is suddenly thinking of a movie you'd always wondered about but never rented. So I watched this a few years ago and was kind of disappointed. If you've seen a Larry Cohen film before (Q, The Stuff, God Told Me To), you might be familiar with the usual pitfalls. There's a fever-dream sense of detachment to it all, a sense that the actors were given too little direction and just winged it a lot, a tendency for conversations to be held in low tones so as to keep the audience from nosing in. Like maybe the boom mike guy kept going out for a smoke and they just kept shooting without him. (When Jules and I watched this on Friday, we just left the subtitles on for the whole movie.)

One thing that did strike me on the first viewing was the SEVENTIES, screaming at you from the corners of every scene. Look at that wallpaper! How was that ever considered acceptable, really? You can watch movies like Boogie Nights or Almost Famous, but nothing plays like the original.

Oh, look. Go-go boots and scrubby desolation. Must be LA in the '70s

Watching It's Alive this time was more of the same, although it did come off better on a second viewing. The flavor of this movie is just plain weird, but behind the clumsy script and overcooked performances it's completely sincere. Everybody was expecting a killer mutant baby even though this is the first time this has ever happened. "These things happen" is said a couple of times. The generalized paranoia of the era is raised to clownish levels, but it's all delivered with the seriousness of a hangover headache.

And nobody adds to the weirdness more than this guy. Monsterbaby dad Frank Davies (seen here before the mayhem starts), plays a successful PR man, but watching John P. Ryan's performance you just keep thinking "gangster," "mobster," "gangster." First he's a swaggering, gum-chewing, New York-accented happy dad and for the rest of the movie he's uncomfortably grim and intensely nonchanlant about the coming demise of his own offspring. But jeez, does he pull if off at the end!

Without giving too much away, the climax takes place in the LA sewer system (where the movie grabs some of its few eye-catching moments as the police cars actually drive into the tunnels, sirens and headlights providing the only light). John P. Ryan has a great scene and it kind of pulls together his whole performance. I can't belive my status as a new dad actually redeemed -- even slightly -- a Larry Cohen movie. But I thought the last ten minutes of this movie were pretty damn good.

Also worth mentioning is the monster baby's screen time, which is practically none. The shot at the top of my post is the clearest you ever see it, so it is that pet peeve of mine: a monster movie that doesn't show enough monster. However, the resultant mystery of the thing is a decent payoff. For most of the movie, everyone who sees this thing gets killed by immediate throat slash. It doesn't make any sense that a baby could do that, no matter how mutant... but they're coy enough with the stupid puppet that they let you believe it. The end result is actually effectively creepy.

Well, at least a little. It's Alive definitely has some stuff going on, but it's not what I call a treat for the senses. And it will never, never meet the expectations of that poster.

* And now, a little something for those who know the Swansea Mall
Here's a shot of the mall I snagged from Google (it's bigger if you click on it). It's out of the picture, but the Toys R Us would be below what you see here. The black-roofed section is where Wal-mart is now, where Caldor used to be. On the tan-colored section just next to it, you can see the stupid glass dome thing.

If you can remember when there was a theater, it would've been the the west-most corner of the white-roofed building below that, just off the capital S in "Swansea Mall." If you can remember further back, that used to be the outer edge of the mall, the tan and black-roofed sections were added later. When I saw that poster, we were waiting just inside the big glass doors to the mall, right outside the entrance to the theater. Kay-Bee, Spencers, Just Fun -- none of that was there yet.