It Lives Again

source: It Lives Again

Trailer—It Lives Again

It Lives Again

Frank Davis (John P. Ryan) is still struggling with his child's death in the first movie. He tries to warn Jody (Kathleen Lloyd) and Eugene Scott (Frederic Forrest) against Mallory (John Marley). She's pregnant with another mutant baby. This is the sequel to It's Alive (1974). This franchise is stuck between serious horror and campy B-movie. It's both. For the serious horror, this movie needs a better-looking baby. The special effects are not good enough. It's pretty bad. The franchise remains stuck in campy B-movie territory. I can imagine it going better, but this poor sequel is not unexpected.

It Lives Again (1978) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Sequel to It's Alive has another mutant baby being born but this time the government is there to kill it on the spot. This doesn't sit too well with a certain group of people who want to keep the baby and study it. Once again director Cohen adds some political messages but the end results aren't as fun as the first film. I'm sure he must have needed the money to do this thing because it doesn't come off with any of the charm as the first one. There are some very good moments in the movie but sadly they're all wasted with the deep message, which becomes quite annoying after a while. The attack sequences are all well done though.

John Ryan returns in the sequel to It's Alive, and this time he is saving babies - the strange ones. He hooks up with Eugene and Jody (Frederic Forrest and Kathleen Lloyd), who about to have a baby, and somehow he knows it will be a special one. He manages to get them away from the evil clutches of the law and John Marley, who is probably still angry about losing his horse in The Godfather. But, of course, this is only temporary, as hippie-looking Jody's mother joins the forces of evil and soon they are killing all the babies that are being saved. It ends the same, with Eugene taking over the work of saving babies for the third film to come.

"IT LIVES AGAIN" (1978, Cohen) follows on from its predecessor in every way except it outstays its welcome. We have a good set of ideas, more very good performances, that effectively nasty tone and, again, mere glimpses of the killer babies. But in my opinion it gets to a certain point and then begins to grind slowly to the end and it's a boring grind. These films are, good quality acting and music aside, barrel-bottom cheap horror flicks. I do like them for what they are but they could have been a lot more.

Weak follow-up to the original cult classic It's Alive is virtually a remake of the first film, but with three babies this time around instead of one. Dull, boring, talky horror flick with a disappointing score and just about all the action and scares confined to the end, but by then it is too late. Rick Baker actually did the poor effects for this inept sequel. Rated R; Violence & Profanity.

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.

This is not actually a review of 'It Lives Again', just a quick comment, in case anyone is interested. I had a tiny speaking part in this film. I was part of a crowd of extras in the police/sheriff's roadblock scene (right after the tunnel shot), when the director decided to create a dialogue between the Sheriff's Department and the city police about whose jurisdiction it was. He picked two of us who were wearing sergeant stripes on our uniforms (we were off-duty cops at the time) and we made up the scene on the spot. My two lines made it into the movie: "This is the Sheriff's jurisdiction and we're stopping the truck"...then, I turned to the other deputies and said, "OK, stop the truck." ...that's it. 35 years later, my family and friends still get a huge laugh out of this. M. Pettit Tucson, AZ 2002