It's Alive!

Ah, the 70s. That time of bell bottoms, afros, cool FM radio, and bad horror movies of all kinds. Now, it seems like when we look back at any 70s movie, they're either exploitation movies, where blood flows for relatively little reason or they're the 'made for TV' style where we're not showing anything for any reason. Well, I think I found one that falls somewhere in between and is actually a movie worth seeing!

It's called It's Alive and it's clearly the Rosemary's Baby of the B Movie genre, with one exception, this movie is actually scary in places, Rosemary's Baby never gets scary. And the two movies differ in one other respect too, in this movie, you actually get to see the monster baby! That's always been a pet peeve of mine, naming the movie after the monster, and then, never letting us see the damned monster!!! At it's core, It's Alive is an environmental movie. For some reason, that's blamed on the smog in Los Angeles mostly, a mutant baby is born to Frank and Lenore Davies. The mutant is not even out of his mother for a minute before he's on a killing spree. The baby kills almost everyone in the delivery room! In his defense, they were using the foreseps on his head, and that would really cheese anyone off, but to kill that many people shows a huge lack of restraint!

After his initial killing spree, the baby flees the hospital and starts making his way across the city, where he's going, no one's sure. Well, after a couple more killings and an hour later, we realize that the baby's heading home. Now, this might just sound like another really crappy 70s horror flick, and for the most part, you'd be right, but there's something more to this.

The stars, John P. Ryan and Sharon Farrell, are real actors, you'll recognize them and they can actually act! Something that's pretty uncommon in the genre movies of the time. Second, the monster is seen, but only in glimpses. It seemed like, the director or producer, someone, had the good sense to say, if this thing can't look completely cool all the time, let's just give people a taste and let their imaginations do the rest, rare clear thinking from the movie makers of the time!!!

It's Alive is classic 70s Drive In fare, and it's well worth taking a look at. Well written, good acting and special effects from the, then up and coming, Rick Baker, it's 70s horror at it's finest! I give this a solid three cigars, it's worth your time and money. So, until the next time, when I'll disclose my past as a killer mutant mongoloid baby, remember, the best movies are bad movies!