Just the Ticket #199: It's Alive!

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Merry TixMaster.

Or, I would be Merry if Christmas were still coming. And if I hadn't started writing this after watching the first movie in the series up for review today (re-up your vision insurance if you don't know what that is...and if vision insurance still exists). Instead, I'm feeling more than a little sacreligious at the moment (and I was in that mindset months ago when I chose this series of three movies and a remake for the week of Christmas) because the original, pre-commercialism but post-pagan, religiously appropriated purpose of the holiday was to celebrate the birth of a magic bastard child who got gold and herbs from some old hippies as a baby and grew up to be a carpenter, get all the bitches, spread peace and love,

perform divine parlor tricks for his twelve closest bros, get betrayed, tortured, and executed over money, and cause centuries of sociopolitical justification for overpopulation because he might be a Jewish Christian Buddhist with Zombie Mode DLC that we miss out on if the wrong baby dies. Oh, and the It's Alive movies are abortion allegories about supernatural monster babies who kill people. Which of the two previous sentences is more sacreligious?

Tying back to last year's Maniac Cop Trilogy review, It's Alive was birthed from the mind of writer, director, and producer Larry Cohen (who also wrote and produced the Maniac Cop films) in 1974.

As evidenced by the fact that Josh Spiegel could summarize the intricacies of the plot in less than a minute and a half, not much happens in It's Alive, but I'll do my best here.

Distributed by Warner Bros. (who were recently bought out by Netflix and who designed their old logo by operating a telegraph while intoxicated), It's Alive is a "having a baby can literally ruin a man's life" movie thinly veiled as an uneventful, "tiny terror" slasher movie wearing the skin of an anti-contraceptive environmental awareness film. On second watch (yes, I saw this movie twice to clarify some details, against my better judgment, because it put me to sleep several times), the pesticide/contraceptive conversation in the hospital waiting room is brilliant foreshadowing of what's to come, even if the "children are invasive, sympathy-mongering invertebrates" allegory is disturbingly chauvinistic.

After the opening credits treat cellular mitosis like a lightsaber fight, we're introduced to Frank (Class Of 1999's John P. Ryan) and Lenore Davis (Sharon Farrell, Out Of the Blue), who leave their son with a neighbor while they calmly drive to the hospital (the logo for which is in Batman: The Animated Series font before it was cool) to have their second child.

Apparently, Lenore had been taking birth control for years to not "weigh down" her successful PR agent husband (who is an asshole and seems like he'd suck at his job because his vocabulary is so limited that he repeats most of his dialogue in triplicate) with the birth of another child (which is where that "pesticides only make stronger roaches" allegory comes in, along with air pollution and lead poisoning in the ground water, because the 70s...and LA in any time period, really). So the baby (who is almost double the average birth weight for the time and has fangs and claws because of problematic environmental factors and special effects legend Rick Baker—An American Werewolf In London—even though we only see it for a few, poorly lit minutes of this hour-thirty-one slog) is able to kill the entire delivery team offscreen by splattering them with maraschino cherry syrup before it escapes through a skylight unseen (again, like Batman) and goes on a reactionary killing spree consisting of Carnosaur-esque POV shots and "actor flails limbs amid geysers of milk and cranberry juice" shenanigans. Meanwhile, being associated with a killer mutant baby (a Baby Killer, as the film's original title suggests) has cost Frank his job, leading him to join the manhunt for the creature out of obsession and revenge (and become a Baby-Killer, as the film's original title suggests), only for him to learn that his wife has been harboring the child in their basement for weeks, leading to the neighbor's death (the baby didn't kill him; Frank shot him in the head while trying to kill the baby because we're supposed to sympathize and see Frank as some kind of tragically heroic Final Guy). In the end, Frank comes around to the sloppily swaddled bundle of dirty laundry and crying sound effects before conforming to social pressures and surrendering it to the panicked, trigger-happy mob mentality of the LAPD (who shoot the mutant baby monster to death, along with what might have been one of their own men if the editing wasn't incongruous dogshit). Sequel bait prompts our "hero" to leave his hysterical, traumatized wife behind in LA while he chases a lead to Seattle even though he isn't a cop, is an infamous, of-the-moment celebrity, and has been shown to be unreliable and mentally unstable.

Don't fuck this movie because it may spawn something worse, if that's even possible.

F

In 1978, Cohen, Ryan, and Baker would return, but not with a direct follow-up.

Enough time has passed between the events of the previous film and It's Alive 2 (a.k.a. It Lives Again, which is a deceptive title based on the end of the first movie because it's not the same baby, and Larry Cohen missed out on an opportunity at being the first to title his movie They Live!) that people have almost forgotten who Frank Davis is, and the government has instituted systemic gene testing and police death squads to keep the world from being overrun by mutated babies (including the Seattle case mentioned at the end of It's Alive, which was dealt with offscreen). Having become sympathetic to the children, Frank is now working with a clandestine medical operation to study and...domesticate them (because training aberrations of the natural order to imprint on humans in service of the national interest will work out perfectly in every future film with this plot and subtext, like Austin Powers, Day Of the Dead, Resident Evil, Jurassic World, and my sarcasm).

At a baby shower, Frank attempts to warn Eugene (Frederic Forrest, Apocalypse Now; also, everyone in the movie about mutant babies calls him Gene—subtle) and Jody Scott (Kathleen Lloyd, Magnum, P.I.) about the fate of their baby, but Gene's a macho asshole and Jody thinks Frank hates women and might be "queer" (because the 70s), so a bunch of disbelief, paranoid chauvinism, and missed connections shenanigans ensue. The baby is born and kills some of the doctors before being transferred to a safe house/research facility with two others like it.

Yes, Nute; we know that from reading the poster! Anyway, this movie has spycraft, so while things are expectedly going super-wrong for the researchers and the Scotts (and Frank, eventually), the police locate and storm the facility, leading to the deaths of the Adam and Eve babies and the escape of the Scott baby.

So, yeah; the suggestion is that the facility was going to socially acclimate the babies and raise them to maturity so they could reproduce (hence Adam and Eve). That's gross. Also, the scientists clearly intended Adam and Eve to be their first names, but when the Scotts' baby is taken to the facility, they just designate it as Scott, like his name is Scott Scott, so now this movie has reminded me of the 90s  Super Mario Bros. Movie, which is almost as wrong as intentionally cross-breeding mutant babies. As for the babies themselves, the Rick Baker effects look...okay, I guess. We get to see more onscreen action from the tiny terrors here, and even what they fully look like, but even with three of them crawling around, that still isn't much (more blurred and doubled POV, a few prop hands and silhouette, some shot-reverse-shot attacks, and a whole lot of swaddled nothing between a few full shots that, like I said, are just fine).

The obvious subtext has gone from anti-birth control to anti-abortion with a smattering of anti-fascism (I don't disagree with the latter point, I just think the combination of the two verges on extremism of the "immigrants will take our jobs and eat our pets" and "schools are operating secret sex-change clinics to make everyone sterile and woke" variety—dated MAGA Conservative conspiracy theory bullshit, is what I'm saying—even if it does make for compelling, fictional world-building here) and environmental awareness (stop the cause, stop the killing, basically, which I can once again get behind), while still adhering to the "mutant babies are an infestation" allegory (the police tent the Scott house to kill it near the end like they're fumigating for termites or bedbugs or something) and the "parents must kill their own baby and live with the consequences while the father devotes his life to spreading awareness to other families" resolution.

It Lives Again is literally more of the same, but with something actually happening and some worthwhile world-building to fill its runtime. Like the Baker effects, it's just about fine.

C

In the 80s, series director Larry Cohen was asked by Warner Bros. (now using their ubiquitous shield logo as well as their "drunken Morse Q" logo seen in the 70s films) to direct...direct-to-video sequels for the Salem's Lot miniseries and It's Alive. Cohen said he would not do a third It's Alive film if it was going to be more of the same, and he wanted to provide a satisfying resolution to the story and explore more of the babies' life cycle. So, in 1987, we were granted passage to It's Alive III: Island Of the Alive.

Aside from one secondary cop character who was in the first two films (frequent Cohen collaborator James Dixon), and the director himself, there are no major returning players (Rick Baker gets a design credit, but the effects are handled by different artists here). The movie gets its re-establishment stuff out of the way (mutant birth, super-strong killer baby, police death squads, etc.) to introduce the only good (if a little strange about the things that turn him on) male protagonist in the series with former actor Stephen Jarvis (Michael Moriarty, The Stuff). He steps up to defend the rights of his mutated son in a court of law, leading to some sick Harryhausen-inspired effects and the relocation of the remaining babies/monsters/creatures to Jurassic Park. I made this joke while I was watching because I thought the titular island looked familiar, but yeah; Island Of the Alive was shot on Kaua'i, where parts of Jurassic Park and Jurassic World were later filmed.

Five years later, Stephen is a snarky, divorced shoe salesman (Al Bundy would be jealous) trying to dodge his own infamy and deal with waning interest in the babies and the AIDS-alike stigma of siring one. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical scumbag responsible for the birth control drugs that caused the mutation (TV actor William Watson, for whom this was his final role before ironically dying in Kaua'i ten years later) takes an awesomely ill-fated hunting trip to the island to destroy evidence. And just like that, I feel like I blinked away an hour of the movie, it's so entertaining.

Despite Moriarty's nofux performance brightening things up and the grown creatures (Jason/Toxie bullet sponges who follow the Critters Guide To Dealing With Assholes) getting ample screentime, the third act does drag a bit with the addition of a "more people with guns go to an island populated by hulking, psychic toddlers for science" plot so the movie can have another "creature tracks down its birth mother and bad things happen" ending while throwing in silly jabs at 1980s Cuba, literally blunt and pointed commentary on rape (two handsy biker gangs getting ripped apart and ragdolled by sexual abominations), and a subtle advocacy for vaccinations that our world has needed to hear for six fucking years at this present time (literally, babies will die without vaccinations for diseases that were wiping out entire cities three centuries ago; autism is the least of your worries, and if you think otherwise, you're already mentally challenged and should probably do the world a favor by following your own advice as Darwin intended).

Except, because Stephen is absolutely the man, the trilogy ends on a happy note‽ Seriously, aside from the later pacing issues (and maybe the vaccine messaging feeling a little mixed because the mutation is itself a biochemically caused affliction, so the movie is cherry-picking what qualifies as a disease for the sake of popular opinion and comfort), Island Of the Alive does everything right as a story, a horror movie, and a character piece.

B+

The beginning of the 2009 remake really made me want to like it.

Directed by Josef Rusnak (Berlin, I Love You), the remake features a more likable Frank Davis (James Murray, The Crown) and a different, youthful take on his relationship with Lenore (Bijou Phillips, Venom), now with the last name Harker because they're an unmarried couple in college, and so I can watch yet another disappointing movie making me wish it had vampires in it. The rush to the hospital is even shot, paced, and scored to feel more believably urgent, and the movie's down moments have a more suspenseful atmosphere to them, like the baby (given a name in this version: Daniel) could be anywhere at any time. And a few of the kills are pretty creative and gruesome.

But the real quality of the film begins to set in (which has little to do with the direct-to-video release of the thing or the tri-national casting of "actors" who can't hold American accents for longer than it takes to pronounce Jack Robinson unless they're being ADR'd, or the massive list of production credits that usually scream "STUDIO MEDDLING!!!" in a project this small) with the poorly dubbed doctor (because his actor's delivery was garbage—such that the crew thought the living text-to-speech bot they ultimately went with sounded more natural and sinister, which he doesn't—not for the language barrier reasons that the viewing audience might expect, though there's a ton of that, too), the baby looking normal for most of the film despite the script adhering to the "abnormal size" conceit from the original trilogy (aside from being born as a bloody, CGI Chucky-slug and being a grey, sharp-toothed, late-2000s CGI cutscene abomination by the end), and Lenore being the successful one who has to put her future on hold to raise the baby, so that Frank just feels like Man Who Is Also There.

I don't mean this last as a personal statement of a chauvinistic, anti-woke grifter bullshit opinion; it is literally bad writing to have a focal character (if not a main one) whose characteristics are somewhere between forgettable and nonexistent, and whose purpose in the story is to be a conversational companion to a more important character if it doesn't suit the genre. And it is a bad adaptation tactic to give a main character the identifying qualities of another on top of their own while also keeping that shell of a character around simply because they were important in the source material. So, because Lenore is both Frank and Lenore in this version, Frank isn't a character here; he's a reactionary sounding board. He's a companionable rhetoric filter. He's an appendix in both the literary and biological senses.

And to move on from a dead horse, the movie doesn't try to tell us anything timely or important, anyway. At least, not in a way that doesn't feel like more, "we had to because it was in the original, and remakes have to slightly change the original to avoid seeming pointless, even if the changes don't work." Like, the "having children can upend your life, but abortion will feel bad, too" messaging is there, but it comes off soulless and obligatory, and isn't helped by the "oops! We fucked around long enough, so it's time for this part of the movie to happen now...and now it's wrap-up time!" plot progression. As such, so much of the movie is spent building up suspense and fitting more kills into a shorter runtime that the environmental messaging of the original isn't a factor, and the character of Perkins (a proactive, sometimes antagonistic force throughout the trilogy, here played by Game Of Thrones' Owen Teale) merely threatens or offers information about the birth massacre to further a mystery that goes untold, and to give the characters (specifically Lenore, because Lenore is the only one who matters in this version—again, not misogynistic rage; just a restatement of literary imbalance) something to react to so the movie can keep happening. Also, when Lenore reveals why baby Stephen is the way he is (she changed her mind during a newly developed at-home abortion, and made him survive the process through sheer willpower), it presents one of those, "why isn't this hundreds of other movies I've seen do this concept better? I could have watched those instead!" moments. Like, if Lenore basically prayed her gestating infant son back to life, why isn't Stephen a demon? Or some movie-original take on a vampire? They could have even just gone in hard (heh...they) on the hyper-intelligent mutation angle that had been built up to that point. None of these options might have made the movie qualitatively better, but some of them would have at least been silly and entertaining. Instead, the movie went with a little bit of everything, and in so doing, it conceived nothing.

F

Getting the remake review out was kind of like trying to delay the simultaneous delivery of four oversized monster-babies from my urethra, and I'm glad it's finally over.

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