Hello and welcome back to KID NOSTALGIA, your online guide to monster, science fiction and horror movies, ranging from the oldies to more modern releases, from the classics to more obscure pictures – ones like this! Warner Bros. present a Larco Production “IT LIVES AGAIN” a Larry Cohen film starring Frederic Forrest, Kathleen Lloyd and John P. Ryan as Frank Davis. The “IT’S ALIVE” baby is back… Only now there are three of them. Directed by Larry Cohen. Following the surprise success of the first movie, director, writer and producer Larry Cohen scrambled to write a follow-up to come out the year after the first movie’s delayed release, and instead of a smart, suspenseful thriller with an occasional kill, we got… whatever this is. In short, the movie follows Frank Davis, the father of the baby in the first film, helping another couple who’ve had another mutant baby while studying it and two others. I will go more into the details, but first, I must warn you that, as always, this post will contain spoilers. Onto the movie.
Frank Davis (John P. Ryan) turns up at the celebration party of expecting parents Eugene (Frederic Forrest of Apocalypse Now 1979) and Jody Scott (Kathleen Lloyd). Frank is leading a team that compare a blood sample from Frank’s wife with expecting parents to find out who’s gonna give birth to one of the mutant children before it is born so they can be prepared and capture it for studying. They ignore his advice, but the symptoms he described begin happening, such as it coming early. The baby’s born, and surprise, surprise, it’s a mutant, and not only that, it is very much alive. It injures a couple doctors, but Frank gets the baby in a cage. It and two other babies are held at a facility where, in five or six years, “will begin to reproduce.” Isn’t that a little young? It also turns out that people who are afraid make them feel threatened, which will become important right near the end when no one remembers that line of dialogue.
The babies break out and waste a couple secondary characters. Finally, the first act is over, oh wait, we’re an hour in! Eugene is attacked by one of them in a swimming pool, but isn’t killed, as the cop from the first movie shows up and kills it. So you’re telling me, in the last movie, it took a whole firing squad to kill one, but now two shots with a pistol will do the trick. The cops realize there are two more, so the hunt continues, meanwhile Frank grabs the Scott baby and makes a run for it. A guard corners him and this makes him afraid, thus scaring the baby into killing him. Well that’s the end of the Davis arc I guess. This means that this baby is on the loose now. The next day, it scratches a cake for no reason other than for the trailer and the poster, then at some point they kill the second baby, and later, the Scott baby goes to the Scott home, only to be cornered and killed. Afterwards, Eugene turns into Davis and goes around to help other expecting parents. This one is kind of a train wreck. Despite being longer than the first film, feels a lot shorter, as the first 2 thirds of the movie feel like first act. Not a lot happens, but unlike the first one, it doesn’t make up for it in suspense, it’s just boring. The characters are mostly unlikable and I found myself rooting for the baby in this one. It’s good that the original cast reprised the rolls, and it’s not badly made, it’s just not a great script. At some point I’ll probably do the third film, but after this one, I’m not so inclined to pay £3.49 like the first two. For now though, that’s it for me. Later!
Kid Nostalgia 