ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

Writer-producer-director Larry Cohen went looking for something new in the way of monsters, and he found it in the form of a hideously mutated, horribly lethal baby.

The monster baby literally leaps from its mother's womb and slays the delivery room personnel before escaping to become the object of a city-wide, sewer-deep search.

Amazingly enough, the gore quotient was kept so low by Cohen that the film was given a PG rating! He also adopted two wise policies, the same two that served Howard Hawks so well in the making of "The Thing from Another World" (1951). (A) Cohen used a well-designed monster (by Rick Baker), and (B) he rarely gave the viewer a good look at the little beast.

Hence he caused audiences to strain forward for a better look at the monster, making it much easier for the monster to leap out and scare them to death.

Cohen's thriller was a hit, but the two sequels that followed didn't fair so well, despite being more-or-less comparable in quality. The sequels were entitled "It Lives Again" (1978) and "It's Alive III: Island of the Alive" (1987), the latter of which presented a sympathetic case for the monster babies.

The music in the original is by the great Bernard Herrmann, and after Herrmann died in 1974 it was re-orchestrated for the second film by Laurie Johnson ("First Men in the Moon). The cast includes Sharon Farrell and Michael Ansara.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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This is the trailer for a movie with a Rick Baker monster and Bernard Herrmann music! I ought to like this one!

Well, if I ever get around to watching it, I might like it . . . but I doubt it. Baby's are supposed to be cute, and baby monsters are supposed to look like this!




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___________________ It's Alive (1974) -Trailer


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)