It's Alive! / It Lives Again / Island of the Alive

by Aaron W. Graham

Aaron W. Graham, 21, is a writer who divides his time between Manitoba and Nova Scotia, Canada. He also spends his time working on screenplays and planning his first film.

Larry Cohen's It's Alive trilogy (1974, 1978, 1987) carries a potent mix of both social critique and pure suspense. Invoking such taboo subjects as abortion as early as 1974, Cohen was able to impart an intelligent nature to his otherwise pulpy horror films. The second film in the series takes this abortion concern even further, while the third entry finds itself invoking the AIDS epidemic, which was just becoming a major concern in the media at the time of the film's making in the late 1980's.

In the hands of another filmmaker, such concerns would fall casualty to the restrictions of the genre but due to Cohen's creativity, he has never felt these constraints. Cohen has always been able to put in his films a sense of social awareness that few horror filmmakers possess (George A. Romero comes to mind as another). He has never tackled such topics head-on, feeling that this is far less entertaining, but nonetheless has been able to let his thoughts and feelings on such matters shine through.

It's Alive begins calmly and serenely. A married couple (John P. Ryan, Sharon Farrell), with one healthy young boy (Daniel Holzman) and one child on the way, race to the hospital in order for their baby to be born. Immediately upon birth, this baby - with such major deformities as claws, fangs and the instinctual need to attack - escapes from the emergency room. At first, the audience is unaware of what is exactly wrong, as Cohen shows us the situation from the father's perspective out in the waiting room. As it dawns on the father (and on us) that his baby is deformed and that it has already murdered several doctors and nurses, Cohen takes a quiet moment to offer up several explanations for this freakish birth: the mother was exposed to radiation, the child was born as the next step on the evolutionary chart and simply able to withstand the toxins of the world. It is also brought to light that the Davis family considered an abortion at the start of the pregnancy. But Cohen doesn't give us the benefit of a definite answer. The finale invokes the closing moments of The Third Man's labyrinthine chase, as the father finally accepts his baby and attempts to protect it from police officials. This is also a critique at the way law enforcement is quick to deal with such matters violently without an interest of trying to discover the root of the problem. At the end of all three films, police officers will spring into action just as the leading characters discover and recognize their odd children for who they are. After all, these deformities are still their offspring and the need to protect them is of utmost importance.

It Lives Again finds the father of the previous film part of a secret organization that seeks to protect and study the deformed babies, who are now being born more frequently. There is also another organization whose sole objective is to destroy all such creatures immediately after their birth. The father now travels around the country, after regretting not being able to save his own child, helping expecting families who show similar signs of potential abnormal births. This second film doesn't simply retrace the points made by the original, but seeks to establish a sense of immediacy and panic that these childbirths aren't merely isolated occurrences but the beginning of a new super race.

Island of the Alive, the second sequel, doesn't take itself as seriously as the first two films do. The government has now come to terms with the situation and has banished all such children to an island. The father of one such child, played by Cohen regular Michael Moriarty, becomes somewhat insane after his baby is sent away. Shortly after this ordeal, he finds himself being scrutinized and prejudiced against for helping to conceive such a monstrosity. The AIDS epidemic is apparent in a scene in which Moriarty goes home with a prostitute. This prostitute recognizes Moriarty from the sleazy courtroom news broadcasts and becomes hysterical as if he is the carrier of a horrible disease.

The media is another subject that Cohen examines within the course of the trilogy. In all three films, the media is portrayed as corrupt and only interested in exploiting the families. In the original It's Alive, there's a scene in which a reporter poses as a nurse in order to record the mother's feelings toward her kin (the father thwarts her attempt). In the final film, news broadcasts are shown from time to time and appear as sordid attempts to sensationalize the deformed babies, misrepresenting fiction as fact.

Cohen, a great admirer of Hitchcock, is often criticized for a lack of craft but praised for being such an innovative storyteller. The series works well because, as most successful monster movies go, you begin to empathize with the creature. Despite their murderous rampage, Cohen reminds us that the babies still need parental affection and only attack because they sense hostility from everyone directly out of the womb. As Cohen mentions on the DVD commentary, the series was an attempt to show that true horror doesn't have to be an unknown psychopath stalking you in the night nor an undead zombie creeping from the graveyard. Horror can come directly from the home and, as Cohen reminds us, there's not a great deal we can do about it.

In the light of such medical advancements as being able to find out certain statistics of your child before it is born, Cohen has expressed interest in remaking this first film for the new millennium (a script is already written). One can only wonder what newly wrought insights Cohen has come up with for the twenty-first century.