The happily married couple Eugène and Jody Scott are eagerly making preparations for the birth of their first baby when Frank Davies, the unfortunate father of the first monster-baby adventure, comes to their house to warn them that their child will be a malevolent creature. He succeeds in convincing the parents that the baby should be born outside the hospital, where doctors and police men are going to kill it right after leaving the womb... After a hectic escape from the authorities, Eugène and Jody flee with their to a secret observation institute where already two companions in distress are homed. Larry Cohen's successor to his own mini cult-classic "It's Alive" is a lot more appealing than I first feared! Here, even more than in the original, Cohen gives a human and dramatic angle to the story by focusing on the initially perfect family situation of the Scotts and examining this exact same relationship afterwards! The result is a touching social drama in which the monstrous baby is secondary to the agony of parents left behind! "It Lives Again" only turns into an exciting horror movie half way through, when the 3 ferocious babies break loose and start a murder spree again. Especially in this second half, Cohen proves his brilliant horror-directing skills by suggesting a whole lot...but showing little. The kids' birthday party is an excellent example of this! This sequel is less blackly humorous than the original and it looks like the gore-budget was even smaller than four years earlier. Yet, I found it more tense than the first, with some ingeniously, but simply conceived shock-images such as the babies crawling slowly under sheets. If you're a fan of cheap B-horror and if you're familiar with the other marvelous work of Larry Cohen ("The Stuff", "God Told Me To", "Maniac Cop"...) you should definitely give this a try. I'm going to check out the final chapter "Island of the Alive" soon as well and I hope it equally entertaining.
Review of It Lives Again
