Les monstres sont toujours vivants

John P. Ryan returns as Frank Davis, the father of the monster baby from It's Alive, this time to warn parents of infants about to be born of a conspiracy of the government to have killing squads ready at the time of birth. It seems that his baby was just the tip of the iceberg - a whole group of these mutant babies is being born all over the country. Though certainly not as effective as the original, I found It Lives Again to be quite an engaging, well-done sequel. Larry Cohen again returns as both writer and director, and he brings back some of the same folks from the original - James Dixon in particular returns as the lieutenant. john Marley does an able job playing a policeman with special reason to seeing these babies die. The other actors give decent performances with Andrew Duggan standing out as a doctor bent on giving these babies a chance. I guess what I really liked about the film was the sense that even though these mutants are destructive, killing machines, they still have a glimmer, a spark if you will, of some kind of inherent humanity. Cohen tries to keep his viewers at least somewhat sympathetic to their plight. As with the first film, don't look for mind-boggling special effects here. We get the same camera blur treatment when we see things through the eyes of the babies. We also never get a real good look at the infants in this one either. Some scenes that I thought were particularly well-shot include the hospital awaiting the arrival of the Scott's and much of the by-play with Marley and Ryan. Bernard Herrmann's music is back as well. Rather enjoyable sequel!

After the first film It's Alive about a mutant baby that's a real killer fresh from the womb, it was decided a sequel was in order. The first must have made a few dollars, that is how these things are decided.

Returning from the first film is John P. Ryan the father who killed his own mutant and now has a mission in life, maybe to save others who are now showing up in the population. Which is why he visits Frederic Forrest and Kathleen Lloyd another expectant set of parents.

After that things get real silly as the all seeing government in the person of John Marley gets into the act. There's also an institute that wants to house and study the mutants that's headed by Andrew Duggan. All these plot elements combine for one bloody ending.

Not that the first film was a world beater, but it's Citizen Kane next to this.

I thought the first movie of this series was a pretty mediocre effort all around, so my hopes were not high when I sat down to watch this sequel. To my surprise, for quite a while I thought that this movie was shaping up to be much better than the original movie. The production values are a lot better, for one thing. Also, the first half of the movie, with the new and old characters, is surprisingly engaging. It was a new angle and not simply copying the first movie.

However, around the halfway point, the movie starts to fall apart and gets more tedious as it progresses. There's a lot less horror in this sequel than the first movie - in fact, the first real horror sequence only happens when more than half an hour of the running time has passed! The real problem is that the movie simply becomes boring and a tough slog to get through. Too bad, since writer/director Larry Cohen did have the stuff to make a better film.

One last thing: "It Lives Again" was rated "R", while the first movie got a "PG" rating. Which I don't understand, because "It Lives Again" has no nudity, no sex, no foul language, and far less blood and horror than the first film!

"The monster child returns - but now there are three!" Frank Davis (John P Ryan), father of the original "It", is back but this time he is in Tuscon, Arizona, to warn expectant couple Eugene and Jody Scott that their baby will be a murderous mutant, like his was. Led by Mallory (prolific actor John Marley), the cops want to kill their baby but Davis helps them to evade capture, their now-born creature joins two other mutants in a safe location but when they escape a fresh wave of killing begins. Unlike "It's Alive" (1974) the first half is quite uneventful, the baby isn't seen until 30 minutes in. Rick Baker once again provides the special effects and we do see more of the mutant babies, however there are fewer kills and less gore than in the original. Music once again comes from composer Bernard Herrmann, though he had died several years beforehand so it is just rehashed material. Overall this isn't a bad sequel, if you liked the original then it is worth watching, but given the good cast they do seem a little wasted. The ending hints at another sequel and sure enough it came, though not until 9 years later.

It's Alive epitomizes the realization of the perennial fears: this could really happen and the (Frankenstien-esqe) ideal of setting something in motion that cannot be controlled or committing an act that you cannot repeal or take back. The First Its alive is truly an epic, we have Davis wanting to kill his monster-baby and evolving to the point of wanting to protect it--an adroit display of humanism. It Lives Again multiplies the fears of the first film exponentially by 3 (there are three babies) and the motives of the main characters evolve as well.

Part 3 still manages to pull on my heart-strings yet its tired-feeling. I look beyond the technical deficiencies of all three films and am captivated my their magic. Somehow fans allow themselves to watch King Kong 1933, Phantom of the Opera 1925, The Lost World 1925, and Niosferatu 1922 and three of these films don't have sound and all are shot in black and white and King Kong's effects are far out-dated. We have to look beyond a lot of things to really, to be carried away . . . too often our expectations are too high and we're not humbled in our approach to these genre pictures. A lot of us don't go to church because we feel its boring because there's nothing there . . . same with the movies . . . we have to allow ourselves to feel sometimes what's really there in order to love the films.