It's Alive (1974 film)
It's Alive | |
---|---|
Directed by | Larry Cohen |
Written by | Larry Cohen |
Produced by | Larry Cohen |
Starring |
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Cinematography | Fenton Hamilton |
Edited by | Peter Honess |
Music by | Bernard Herrmann |
Production company | Larco Productions |
Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
Release dates |
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Running time | 91 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $500,000[3] |
Box office | $7.1 million |
It's Alive is a 1974 American science fiction horror film written, produced, and directed by Larry Cohen. It stars John P. Ryan and Sharon Farrell as a couple whose infant child turns out to be a vicious mutant. The film's cast also includes James Dixon, William Wellman Jr., Shamus Locke, Andrew Duggan, Guy Stockwell, and Michael Ansara. The baby was designed and created by special effects make-up artist Rick Baker, and the film's score was composed by Bernard Herrmann.
It's Alive was distributed by Warner Bros. and received mixed reviews upon release. It spawned two sequels, It Lives Again (1978) and It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987), as well as a 2009 remake.
Plot
In Los Angeles, Frank Davis and his wife Lenore are expecting their second child. Frank is a successful public relations consultant and his wife is a stay-at-home mom for their first child, Chris. The couple avoided having a child for several years while Lenore took contraceptive pills. When their child is ready to be born, they leave Chris with a family friend, Charley, and go to the hospital. Their second child, a baby boy, is born monstrously deformed, with fangs and claws. Immediately after birth it kills the doctors and nurses in the delivery room and flees through a skylight. Lenore is left alive, screaming for her child as a horrified Frank discovers the carnage.
Frank and Lenore are allowed to leave the hospital while the police, including Lt. Perkins, investigate the killings. Frank and Lenore receive attention from the press, which results in Frank being fired from his job at a
The doctor who prescribed the contraceptive pills to Lenore is contacted by an executive of a pharmaceutical company. The executive acknowledges that the Davis' child's mutation may have been caused by the drugs. He tells the doctor that the child must be destroyed to prevent discovery of the company's liability. Meanwhile, the child makes its way to a school. Frank learns of the child's location and arrives at the school, where police officers are present. Frank informs Lt. Perkins that Chris attends the school. The baby attacks and kills an officer in a classroom before escaping through a window into the night.
Later, Frank discovers that Lenore is hiding the infant in the basement of their home. Chris runs away from Charley's house in order to get back home, and Charley drives after him. Lenore pleads with Frank and promises that the baby would not hurt their family. Frank, armed with a gun, enters the basement, where he finds Chris talking to the baby and promising to protect him. Frank shoots at the baby, injuring it. The infant flees the basement and attacks Charley, biting him on the neck and killing him.
The police track the infant into the storm sewers, where Frank hunts him with a rifle. When he finds the baby, he realizes that it is frightened. He apologizes to the child and picks him up. Wrapping the baby in his coat, Frank tries to elude the police, but a mob of armed cops confronts him as he exits the sewers. He pleads for them to study the child, but to not harm him. A fertility doctor shouts at the police to kill him. The child suddenly leaps from Frank's arms and attacks the doctor as the cops open fire, killing both the infant and the doctor. As the grieving Davises are escorted away by the police, a depressed Lt. Perkins receives news that another deformed baby has been born in Seattle.
Cast
- John P. Ryan as Frank Davis
- Andrew Duggan as the Professor
- Sharon Farrell as Lenore Davis
- Guy Stockwell as Bob Clayton
- James Dixon as Lieutenant Perkins
- Michael Ansara as the Captain
- William Wellman Jr. as Charley
- Robert Emhardt as the Executive
- Shamus Locke as the Doctor
- Daniel Holzman as Chris Davis
Production
Special effects make-up artist
Baker next heard from Cohen two weeks after filming had begun.[6] Cohen had decided to rarely show the infant in the film, and asked Baker to create a "dummy baby" for the actors to react to.[6] Baker constructed the baby with an aluminum wire armature, allowing for articulated limbs and adjustable eyeballs.[6] For close-up shots, Baker created a full-head mutant infant mask, a pair of gloves, and a partial body suit, which were worn by Baker's then-girlfriend and later wife, Elaine Parkyn.[6]
Release
The film had a complicated release through Warner Bros. beginning in 1974. Upon completing the film, Cohen found the executives who had backed the production had been replaced and the new executives showed little interest in the project. The studio gave the film a one theater run in April—May 1974 in Chicago. It was then given a limited release beginning October 18, 1974. The film drew respectable business, but the company still did not fully support the project. Three years after its original release, Warner Bros. saw another change in executives and Cohen asked the new group to review the film.[citation needed]
It's Alive was reissued in March 1977 with a new advertisement campaign. The updated 1977 TV advertisement features a baby carriage, accompanied by the lullaby "Rock-a-bye Baby" and a voice-over that says, "There's only one thing wrong with the Davis baby. It's alive." The new ad drew people into theaters, ultimately earning Warner Bros. $7.1 million in U.S. domestic rentals.[7]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, It's Alive holds an approval rating of 67% based on 24 critic reviews and has an average rating of 6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Tough and unpleasant, It's Alive throttles the viewer with its bizarre mutant baby theatrics."[8] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 72 out of 100 based on six reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[9]
Home media
On May 15, 2018,
Related works
Novelization
The novelizations of the first film[25] and its sequels expound on the dangers of various prescription drugs administered to expectant mothers during the 1950s and early 1960s (e.g. thalidomide), the use of fertility drugs, and the indirect use of pesticides on people. In the story, the mother of the first mutant child had a history of taking combined oral contraceptive pills prior to planning her second pregnancy, whereupon she instead began taking an inadequately tested fertility drug to facilitate the conception of her second child.[citation needed]
Sequels and remake
It's Alive was followed by two sequels, It Lives Again (1978) and It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987).[26] A remake was released in 2009.
See also
References
- ^ "At the movies". Chicago Tribune. Section 6, p. 15. April 21, 1974. "...opening Friday at the Woods Theater."
- ^ "Movie previews". Chicago Tribune: 21. April 27, 1974.
...having its world premiere at the Woods.
- ^ "AFI|Catalog".
- ^ Coffel, Chris (May 5, 2018). "Larry Cohen On Rick Baker's 'It's Alive' Baby Design!". Bloody Disgusting. Retrieved February 8, 2020.
- ^ a b Martin 1984, p. 31.
- ^ a b c d Martin 1984, p. 32.
- ISBN 0-688-04889-7.
- ^ "It's Alive (1974)". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Retrieved June 27, 2023.
- ^ "It's Alive Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved October 5, 2018.
- ^ Canby, Vincent (April 28, 1977). "Absurd Baby Murderer". The New York Times. p. 76. Retrieved February 8, 2020.
- ^ "It's Alive". Variety. October 16, 1974. p. 16. Retrieved October 10, 2018.
- ^ Siskel, Gene (May 1, 1974). "Baby, 'Alive' is Deadly". Chicago Tribune. Section 2, p. 9.
- ^ Thomas, Kevin (October 16, 1974). "A Second Child Who Was Born to Be Bad". Los Angeles Times. Part IV, p. 14.
- ^ Milne, Tom (June 1975). "It's Alive". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 42 (497): 137.
- ISBN 978-0452289789.
- ^ "It's Alive". TV Guide. Retrieved October 5, 2018.
- ^ "It's Alive, directed by Larry Cohen". Time Out. London. Retrieved October 5, 2018.
- ^ Schwartz, Dennis (July 16, 2009). "It's Alive - A far-fetched cult thriller". Sover.net. Archived from the original on November 2, 2010. Retrieved October 5, 2018.
- ASIN 6302814715.
- Amazon.com. Retrieved February 8, 2020.
- ^ Vasquez, Josh (November 4, 2004). "DVD Review: It's Alive". Slant Magazine. Retrieved February 8, 2020.
- ^ Amazon.com. Retrieved February 8, 2020.
- ^ a b Gingold, Michael (April 3, 2018). "Oh, baby! Details revealed for "It's Alive Trilogy" Scream Factory Blu-ray set". Rue Morgue. Retrieved February 8, 2020.
- ^ a b Dillard, Clayton (May 22, 2018). "Review: Larry Cohen's It's Alive Trilogy on Shout! Factory Blu-ray". Slant Magazine. Retrieved February 8, 2020.
- ^ "Goodreads". Goodreads. Retrieved 2023-09-07.
- ^ "It's Alive Trilogy | Oddur B.T. | Review". 2019-04-21. Retrieved 2023-09-07.
Bibliography
- Martin, R. H. (August 1984). "Rick Baker: The Wonder Years Part Three". ISSN 0164-2111.
External links
- It's Alive at IMDb
- It's Alive at AllMovie
- It's Alive at the TCM Movie Database
- It's Alive at the American Film Institute Catalog
- It's Alive at Rotten Tomatoes