You had me at killer mutant baby.
It'd be nice to stop there, but the show must go on.
Frank (John Ryan) and Lenore (Sharon Farrell) Davies seem to be a happily married couple. Frank has some Asshole Businessman-esque qualities, but overall the two are excited about the impending birth of their second child. Lenore is very pregnant and goes into labor in the opening moments of the film. They drop their son off at a friends house before they get to the hospital, and seem to be in good spirits - as good as you can be when you're in labor, I guess. But once they get to the hospital and Lenore is admitted... BAD NEWS! Lenore is in labor and the baby is crowning (something about that term makes me wince every time), and the doctor comments on how immense this kids head is... ouch!
Luckily for Frank, since it's the mid-70s, he doesn't have to witness any of this in the delivery room. If he did, he'd have probably been viciously murdered like the other dozen people in the room. Because killer mutant baby. Lenore is groggy but mostly unharmed, but just about everyone else in the room has been violently slaughtered. We don't see the attack, but the aftermath is pretty grisly, especially for a PG film. The cops pretty easily accept the killer mutant baby theory - who, by the way, has escaped from the hospital through a skylight.
Meanwhile, someone at the hospital has outed Frank and Lenore as the parents of the killer baby to the press, and the rest of the film is the two of them trying to deal with being the known parents of a freak while the cops scour the city to catch the baby. (For his part, the baby does kill a few more people as he wanders about town.) Frank in particular feels obligated to distance himself from "his child" and joins up with the cops for the big babyhunt.
Given the plot, It's Alive is not what I'd call a serious movie, but it rarely goes for any levity either. You really do end up feeling quite bad for Frank and Lenore as they struggle with not only prying reporters and postpartum depression, but also the fact that the whole city (and maybe even Frank) wants their offspring destroyed as soon as possible.
The horror scenes here are pretty well done. Again, this is a PG jam, so you never see a lot of the actual attacks. But director Larry Cohen (who has done it again - I love The Stuff and God Told Me To) is great with the aftermath. The carnage after the birth/murder scene is awesome, and the attack in the milk delivery van (with increasingly red mix of milk and blood pour out) us great. It's hard to pull of a convincing mutant killer baby, and It's Alive mostly succeeds in that respect. The baby looks really good when you just see bits and pieces of it or when it's edited as just a flash of a frame or two. It looks a little too fakey once you see it as a whole - but again, it's a nearly impossible effect to pull off realistically. Even still, the way he moves is really well done.
I've read criticism that the film is too slow, but I thought it was pretty well-paced. And after everything is established, things escalate appropriately. It's not a thrill-ride type movie by any means... the story of Frank and Lenore really gets a chance to breathe, and both Ryan and Farrell put on good performances. Really, no one in this film feels like they are trying to do anything campy - they approach it like a dramatic film. And honestly I think that's the main reason it works as well as it does.
But one potential flaw could be how it starts out so hot. The first 10-15 minutes have some pretty intense moments, what with Lenore's labor and the first (unseen) attack. So while I don't agree It's Alive is a slow film, it does peak early. But I think it *has* to - that's the only way you can really sell a concept as inherently goofy as a killer mutant baby.
Overall, I thought It's Alive was a solid film. It's well-made (but never flashy), treats itself seriously, and has a little legitimate drama and pathos to go along with it's killer mutant baby. Turns out that's a pretty good combination.
I would recommend this film.
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