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In It's Alive a couple are having their second baby,
but it appears to be unusually large. When the child is born
it is a demonic creature with carnivorous and cannibalistic
tendencies. It kills everyone in the delivery room, aside
from the mother, and escapes the hospital. For his own safety
the couple's existing boy is packed off to his grandfather.
While the mother begins to act unnaturally lucid as if nothing
has happened, the father sets out on a personal vendetta to
kill the abomination. He hasn't accounted for the baby's homing
instincts, however...
Every
parent's nightmare that their baby may be born abnormal is
exaggerated and explored in this average but decent film from
1973. As it should be, the creature is seen only in sporadic
half-glimpses, the majority of the film probing the reactions
from family, associates and the media. The music is jazzy
and over-dramatic, reminding me of a cross between the original
Outer Limits and The Streets of San Francisco,
thereby dating the film more than the setting itself.
In It's Alive 2: It Lives Again (1978) Frank Bradley,
the father from the first film, is back as part of a group
dedicated to saving any of the mutant babies which are being
born periodically across the country. A crack team of government
armed police are arriving with speed at the scene of each
birth and killing the creatures. Frank and his team warn a
couple and spirit the baby off to a secret location where
they care for and study the mutants as the next evolutionary
step of mankind. When the couple's wife is taken to the location
the armed men follow, and all hell breaks out when the babies
get loose.
Here
we have much of the same, with more set pieces, the best perhaps
being when a woman gives birth in the back of a taxi near
the beginning of the film. This film seems to suggest that
the mutants might be the result of mankind's manipulation
of nature and neglect of the environment.
In It's Alive 3: Island of the Alive (1986) a father
becomes a minor celebrity by fighting for the rights of his
child and other mutants. When the case reaches the supreme
court the judge decides it's unlawful to kill them, but also
agrees that they cannot be integrated into normal society.
He decrees they should be left to their own devices in a secret
location (in this case an island). Four years later the judge
dies and the policy is reversed. The father and others visit
the island to discover the mutants have developed and multiplied,
but still have that instinct for home.
This
is where it all gets silly, but also somehow more enjoyable.
It's almost as if writer/director of the trilogy Larry Cohen
realised this and started to throw in some humorous visuals
and ridiculous lines. This is fine except it makes the poignant
ending difficult to take seriously.
Extras
are a commentary and trailer for each film.
Ty
Power
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