This review is the third in a Larry Cohen retrospective commissioned by Nate Biagiotti. Many thanks to Nate for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon. All other film reviews in this retrospective can be found here.
Director: Larry Cohen
Writer: Larry Cohen
Cast: Frederic Forrest, Kathleen Lloyd, John P. Ryan, John Marley, Andrew Duggan, Eddie Constantine
Runtime: 91 mins.
1978
When making a sequel, especially a horror sequel, the greatest hurdle is figuring out how to make it both fresh and familiar. Horror already requires a perfect storm of plot contrivance; a sequel requires contrivance to strike twice. Mystery and novelty are important currency for suspense, and their power is tremendously diminished with each new serving of the same formula. Despite all that, Larry Cohen's sequel to It's Alive played so well with its test audiences that the producers thought the crowds were full of ringers!
It Lives Again, also known as It's Alive II, also known as It's Alive 2: It Lives Again begins with another great atmospheric opening credits sequence, this one shot using Cohen's own swimming pool. We are eased into the film with a baby shower that's just wrapping up. The parents Eugene Scott (Frederic Forrest) and Jody Scott (Kathleen Lloyd) are positively glowing with good vibes, until they notice a stranger who hasn't trickled out with the rest of the crowd. The man is Frank Davis (John P. Ryan). He tells a familiar story about a mutant baby and a social system that wasn't ready to handle it. Frank's baby may have died at the hands of the police, but there are some who believe that such babies should be cared for and studied rather than exterminated at birth. Frank has reason to believe the Scotts's baby is another such mutant, and that the government is already standing by for forced infanticide.
Frank Davis joins the great pantheon of horror protagonists who survive to become a mentor figure in the sequel. It's a smart choice that expands the world and lets Ryan deliver a haunting, layered performance of obsession. Davis's baby may be long dead, but he is fixated on a quest to save as many of these potentially violent creatures as possible. His goals stand in contrast to those of attending physician Mr. Mallory (John Marley), whose lost his own mutant child. The difference is that Mallory thinks these babies are abominations not fit for our earth.
Frank Davis's presence, the police who oppose him, and the secret network of doctors and scientists who support him, all work to illustrate how the response to these mutant babies has become codified and procedural. The first film was about the system reacting to an aberration quickly enough to stitch the wound shut. This film is about a system fully equipped to eradicate the symptom without treating the disease. Three movies into this retrospective and it strikes me that the central concern of Cohen's career is social mechanisms of oppression. We see this in the culture of how Cohen's characters react to abnormalities, and we see it in the encroachment of police and government into the intimacy of family life. Cohen takes special aim at the pharmaceutical industry, the perfect example of horrific bureaucracies of power that trample human life willy-nilly just to eke out a profit.
Despite only shooting for eighteen days (!), It Lives Again manages to match its predecessor in almost every way. Only the wonky sound mixing and a few equipment goofs indicate any sloppiness. The most significant departure from the original is that this film runs out of steam. There's a late scene at a kids' birthday party that adds little, and it leads right into an awkward climax that involves government agents putting a whole-ass fumigation tent over a house without the occupants realizing.
Even these weaknesses have their worth, though. The government putting Eugene and Jody in an isolated suburban home to try to bait the escaped monster baby is a phenomenal metaphor for false domesticity. Eugene and Jody's relationship has ruptured, but they must pretend to be together for the sake of the child. Meanwhile, the State is always watching. The fumigation tent adds another layer of acidic commentary about government and police poisoning middle class Americans within the artifice of their own comfort.
If It's Alive was about trauma, It Lives Again is about PTSD. Two former monster-fathers fight over the soul of a current monster-father, who so desperately wants his baby to be Normal in order to appease the State. Cohen has a rare ear for dialogue and psychosocial character dynamics. There are no heroes and villains in It Lives Again, only desperate people trying to navigate the nexus of their desires and their social programming. It's never clear who is 'right.' The characters even seem to hold deep uncertainty about whether their own choices are right and best. It's hard to act with clarity when you are wrenched from a world of safe suburban propaganda, with full knowledge that your life will never be the same again.
3.5 / 5 BLOBS
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