It's Alive (1974) Movie Review, Trailer, Film Still and Poster

USA 1974
Director: Larry Cohen
Cast: John P. Ryan, Sharon Farrell, James Dixon, Daniel Holzman, Guy Stockwell, Shamus Locke
Rating: PG
Release Date: October 1974; 5 October 2004 (DVD)
Running Time: 1 hour 30 minutes 58 seconds

The Movie Review

It's Alive film still 1


IT's ALIVE
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You can practically get almost anything in any form from the 70's world of movies. An era where we could easily find movies where some important production aspects (quality-wise) were exchanged for some cheesy popcorn entertainment. It's Alive is a horror movie about scary infant, or to put it simply, a bloody happy-go-bitey mutant baby! No need for ghost, no need for redneck serial killer because a baby has now appeared to do their job, to butcher people. Mm-hmm, that's right, so I hope that you don't take a movie like this too seriously, it's rather pointless to do so anyway.

Frank Davis (John P. Ryan) and his wife Lenore (Sharon Farrell) are expecting their second child. At the hospital, Lenore already feels something different about her new baby, but the doctor assures her that it's only a matter of weight and size. Well, probably the good doctor should have not underestimated the situation, because the Davis' baby is a mutant baby equipped with long fangs and claws. And now the cops is declaring manhunt and doing extensive search for the killer baby, leaving Frank and Lenore shocked and unsure of what to do. What will the Davis' baby do?

Larry Cohen wore the director's hat as well as being the producer and the writer of It's Alive. I first knew the works of Larry Cohen from his Blaxploitation movies which are Bone (1972), Hell Up in Harlem (1973) and Black Caesar (1973). But there were so many Blaxploitation films back then that his films were nothing of especially new or extraordinary. But Mutant Baby? Now that's something alright. However to make this premise of scary baby comes alive (read: believable), the special effects team had to be awesome including the makeup artist. Thankfully it was Rick Baker who responsible for this job, a man with resume including Men in Black (1997), The Howling (1981) and of course the awesome-but-gross Squirm (1976). This means, you'd have no trouble in enjoying the look of the baby where he (it's a baby boy!) eventually shows up.

Unfortunately, the Davis' baby always appears in annoying mode... aka blink-and-you-miss-it. It's a shame since the baby is naturally scary with his big eyes and long claws. And the pacing was a total snooze fest, the movie crawls so slow and giving us almost nothing interesting to behold, let alone scary. PG rating is a sign of relatively no gore at all. The baby attack scene is almost as ridiculous as the ones with the bunny rabbits in Night of the Lepus (1972). Yep yep yep, it's doubtful that many horror fans would piss on their pants watching this 70's horror film. Besides the movies mostly filled with drama instead of horror, the effects of having delivered killer baby to the daily life of Frank, Lenore and their first son, Chris (Daniel Holzman). Although the drama is good and the performance of John P. Ryan is top-notch, still it could not save this movie. The premise is good but the execution is weak. But I don't say that you can't enjoy this, some movies of the 70's were indeed weak in production-wise aspects but could develop cult followers. If killer baby is your thing, you might want to rent It's Alive.

> Can't get enough of the deadly cuddly babies?: It Lives Again (1978), It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987) and It's Alive (2008 remake).