The movie "It's Alive" is a most enjoyable film. Is it intellectual or a work of genius? Nah...but it's cheesy fun. I never realized until now that there were a couple sequels...and when I found "It Lives Again" I decided to try it.
The story begins at a baby shower. As it ends, the couple notice that one of the guests wasn't invited and it turns out to be Frank David (John P. Ryan)...the father of the abomination from the first film. It seems that he and his new friends suspect that the couple's baby might also be a demon spawn and he tells them he and his volunteers are ready...just in case. Well, not surprisingly, the child does end up being an ungodly killing machine...but this time the authorities are there to capture and imprison it as it's born. Amazingly, two other killing machines were born around the same time...and now they're being held in a government lab where they can be studied. Unfortunately, the folks keeping the demon babies prisoner turn out of be idiots and the babies escape! Is there any hope for mankind or possibility they could get the brood on "The Jerry Springer Show"?
The reviews for this film are mostly negative. This surprised me, as the movie was pretty entertaining. Now I am NOT saying it's great art or about to be released by the fancy Criterion Collection...but it does the trick with scaring you and keeping your attention!
On the positive side, director Larry Cohen seems to be at his best. Also, the film manages to make cheesy puppets look and sound menacing. On the negative, the writing for some characters was poor. The mother's character simply made no sense whatsoever. She changed moods and her mind so often that it just looked like bad writing. While not as bad, the governmental authorities seemed dim...I mean...how could they anticipate the births of these murder machines and not have better security?! Still, overall the good far outweighs the bad.
The story begins at a baby shower. As it ends, the couple notice that one of the guests wasn't invited and it turns out to be Frank David (John P. Ryan)...the father of the abomination from the first film. It seems that he and his new friends suspect that the couple's baby might also be a demon spawn and he tells them he and his volunteers are ready...just in case. Well, not surprisingly, the child does end up being an ungodly killing machine...but this time the authorities are there to capture and imprison it as it's born. Amazingly, two other killing machines were born around the same time...and now they're being held in a government lab where they can be studied. Unfortunately, the folks keeping the demon babies prisoner turn out of be idiots and the babies escape! Is there any hope for mankind or possibility they could get the brood on "The Jerry Springer Show"?
The reviews for this film are mostly negative. This surprised me, as the movie was pretty entertaining. Now I am NOT saying it's great art or about to be released by the fancy Criterion Collection...but it does the trick with scaring you and keeping your attention!
On the positive side, director Larry Cohen seems to be at his best. Also, the film manages to make cheesy puppets look and sound menacing. On the negative, the writing for some characters was poor. The mother's character simply made no sense whatsoever. She changed moods and her mind so often that it just looked like bad writing. While not as bad, the governmental authorities seemed dim...I mean...how could they anticipate the births of these murder machines and not have better security?! Still, overall the good far outweighs the bad.