OK, so, last Saturday I told David I wanted to watch something "fun." You know, where you check your brain in at the door. He had recorded "It's Alive," which I had heard of but never seen, and let me tell you it is a BAD movie. Not fun bad, not as humorless as "The Monolith Monsters," but it has to be seen to be believed.
First, writer-director Larry Cohen, whose only known film work this was--and when you see it, the reason will become clear--I feel was out to do some comic riff on Ira Levin's "Rosemary's Baby," which was a hot property several years back, then.
So, he comes up with this story, set in Los Angeles--where John P. Ryan and Sharon Farrell play a couple, Frank and Lenore Davies, who give birth to a mutant baby. Before I go further, let me say that John P. Ryan was a lifelong member of the Actors' Studio. Many luminaries were, but what good did it do him? Sharon Farrell, who plays his wife, Lenore Davies, when young, started out as a dancer in ABT. Obviously, she did not make it, but ending up here? Be careful, with a career in the arts, boys and girls! You never know where it is going to take you.
The only actors of any note in this crap, is Andrew Duggan, and Guy Stockwell, the less talented brother of Dean Stockwell.
But, the mutant baby! It steals the show!
To believe this story, it must be accepted the thing, which weighs 11 pounds, and is a boy--pretty large for a baby, but not a human--can just leap out of the vagina, never mind cutting the umbilical cord, has teeth and claws, and devours everyone on sight in the delivery room. It can pull toys a child his size would never be able to, and you have to see the scene where the baby is hiding in the bushes, and you can see the tech moving the wire!
Apparently, this baby can move faster than the adults can! They are afraid it will go into the LA sewage system, where it will emerge from to kill anyone. During the course of all this, it is discovered that the baby has been sequestered at the Davies house, because Lenore has been bonding with it, feeding it and tending to it. In fact, it bonds to all the Lenore family! So, they rush to the sewage system, and, in a scene right out of "THEM!," (visually, that is), Frank and a doctor plead with authorities not to kill the infant, who has feelings, and a doctor wants to study it. But, in a moment straight out of today, trigger happy cops open fire, killing the doctor and the infant.
Isn't this baby cute?
I just have to end this post with Buzz Clifford's "Baby Sittin' Boogie!"
Truly one of those movies where the poster is the best thing about it: staring at the poster for 90 mins until one falls into a trance is way more entertaining than the actual movie. The producers must have known this, because the (quite gripping) TV commercials that made this a huge hit were literally a camera slowly panning THE POSTER IMAGE, while the announcer ominously intones the POSTER TAGLINE ("there's only one thing wrong with the Davis babyy...").
ReplyDeleteEVERY kid in my 7th grade class wanted to see this, because of the TV ads, but few of us managed it. The flick had weirdly limited distribution in NYC, never really hitting the neighborhood theater circuit until it had been forgotten. Most of us had to wait years until it turned up uncensored on HBO, where inevitably it did not live up to the promise of the poster/TV ads (honestly I thought "Monolith Monsters" more worthy of a rewatch: it was less dull).
Amazingly,"Its Alive" was so lucrative it spawned two sequels and a remake! You'd think word of mouth would have killed it, but I guess it hit a nerve with frazzled parents and tasteless teens in 1974. Even more amazing were the heavy hitters involved with it: seriously, how desperate for work was Bernard Hermann that he agreed to compose a score for this tripe? Scoring Brian De Palma's early B horror pics like "Sisters" was one thing, but Larry Cohen? Really? Then you have makeup genius Dick Smith, who wisely fobbed this off on his ambitious protege Rick Baker (also a legend).
At least it gave Sharon Farrell a taste of notoriety and real fame. Talented, engaging B-list actress: any time you saw her "guest starring" in the credits of a TV show you knew she'd be great. Her biggest triumph was playing a cunning ex-prostitute (and manipulative mother trying to push her daughter to the right side of the tracks) for nearly a decade on the wildly popular soap opera "Young & Restless".
ReplyDeleteMy Dear,
I did not Sharon Farrell was
on Y and R, as I never heard of her
before. I knew about the sequels,
but after this have no interest
in them. My eyes bulged when I saw
Bernard Hermann's name on the credits.
How did he get roped into this piece
of crap? And, really, his work was
as lackluster as the film itself.
I wonder if it was his last film?