User reviews

John P. Ryan returns as Frank Davis, the father of the monster baby from It's Alive, this time to warn parents of infants about to be born of a conspiracy of the government to have killing squads ready at the time of birth. It seems that his baby was just the tip of the iceberg - a whole group of these mutant babies is being born all over the country. Though certainly not as effective as the original, I found It Lives Again to be quite an engaging, well-done sequel. Larry Cohen again returns as both writer and director, and he brings back some of the same folks from the original - James Dixon in particular returns as the lieutenant. john Marley does an able job playing a policeman with special reason to seeing these babies die. The other actors give decent performances with Andrew Duggan standing out as a doctor bent on giving these babies a chance. I guess what I really liked about the film was the sense that even though these mutants are destructive, killing machines, they still have a glimmer, a spark if you will, of some kind of inherent humanity. Cohen tries to keep his viewers at least somewhat sympathetic to their plight. As with the first film, don't look for mind-boggling special effects here. We get the same camera blur treatment when we see things through the eyes of the babies. We also never get a real good look at the infants in this one either. Some scenes that I thought were particularly well-shot include the hospital awaiting the arrival of the Scott's and much of the by-play with Marley and Ryan. Bernard Herrmann's music is back as well. Rather enjoyable sequel!

After the Davis baby is destroyed, others begin to appear around the country. The second film follows a renegade group of people (including Frank Davis from the first film) who are trying to prevent the government from killing the mutant babies. But at what price? Along with Frank, we now have the Scott family: Eugene Scott (played by Frederic Forrest, best known to me as the Nazi Surplus Store Owner from "Falling Down") and Jody Scott (played by the lovely and undercast Kathleen Lloyd). And the Scott family doesn't like it when you try to kill their baby! Oh, and the makeup effects of Oscar-winning Rick Baker again.

This film picks up pretty much where the other left off, give or take a few months. Where the first one pushed the message of chemicals affecting unborn babies, this is more of a family message: parents should love their children regardless of who or what they are. If your child is a criminal or autistic, they're still your child and you should defend and love them, not let the government exterminate them.

There's also a really subtle subplot about child molestation. Although never explicitly shown, there is good reason to believe molestation is occurring between an adult and a child family member. (I won't say who, but you should notice it as hints are dropped multiple times.)

This film is paced better than the first one, and the attacks are a bit more often and slightly more gruesome (though by no means graphic). Going from a PG rating to an R was a good move, though they didn't push the rating as much as I probably would have liked. And a really strange thing happens: Frank Davis becomes known as "Frank Davis". Not "Frank", not "Mr. Davis"... but "Frank Davis" every time he is mentioned. It seems unnatural, as if somehow he is a celebrity that needs to be highlighted, like TV's Patrick Duffy or something.

Although I liked this movie better than the first one, it relies heavily on the first one to understand it, so you're really stuck having to watch both if you want to "get it". The recurring characters and source of the mutants won't make sense unless you see the original. But by all means if you liked the first one, watch the second... and if you liked this one, watch the third.

This is not actually a review of 'It Lives Again', just a quick comment, in case anyone is interested. I had a tiny speaking part in this film. I was part of a crowd of extras in the police/sheriff's roadblock scene (right after the tunnel shot), when the director decided to create a dialogue between the Sheriff's Department and the city police about whose jurisdiction it was.

He picked two of us who were wearing sergeant stripes on our uniforms (we were off-duty cops at the time) and we made up the scene on the spot. My two lines made it into the movie: "This is the Sheriff's jurisdiction and we're stopping the truck"...then, I turned to the other deputies and said, "OK, stop the truck." ...that's it. 35 years later, my family and friends still get a huge laugh out of this.

M. Pettit Tucson, AZ 2002

After the first film It's Alive about a mutant baby that's a real killer fresh from the womb, it was decided a sequel was in order. The first must have made a few dollars, that is how these things are decided.

Returning from the first film is John P. Ryan the father who killed his own mutant and now has a mission in life, maybe to save others who are now showing up in the population. Which is why he visits Frederic Forrest and Kathleen Lloyd another expectant set of parents.

After that things get real silly as the all seeing government in the person of John Marley gets into the act. There's also an institute that wants to house and study the mutants that's headed by Andrew Duggan. All these plot elements combine for one bloody ending.

Not that the first film was a world beater, but it's Citizen Kane next to this.

Anyone remember that 80s sci-fi series V ? It`s best remembered for a scene where a teenage girl gives birth to an alien mutant baby , but what a lot of people can`t remember about the series is that every single scene has a studio microphone popping into view . Guess what ? IT LIVES AGAIN also features mutant babies and microphone goofs . Look at the scene where the party has just broken up and Jody and Frank sit on the sofa . You can clearly see a microphone sticking up from the coffee table . I`m surprised the scene wasn`t reshot because the microphone is so obvious it`s impossible not to notice it . Director Larry Cohen has noticed it but instead of reshooting the scene he seems to have dispensed with microphones for the rest of the movie ! Seriously I`m certain he has because the sound mix after this scene is all over the place , when someone speaks the volume of their voice increases/decreases from shot to shot and there`s also plenty of scenes with obvious overdubbing , and not to mention bizarre background noises .

As for the rest of the film it`s a disappointment . You`d think a movie with mutant babies on the rampage would have been so bad it`s brilliant , but the screenplay takes itself far too seriously and most of the actors seem to have other things on their minds especially Frederic Forrest who seems to be thinking " I just hope Francis Ford Coppola releases that Vietnam war movie as soon as possible "

The movie "It's Alive" is a most enjoyable film. Is it intellectual or a work of genius? Nah...but it's cheesy fun. I never realized until now that there were a couple sequels...and when I found "It Lives Again" I decided to try it.

The story begins at a baby shower. As it ends, the couple notice that one of the guests wasn't invited and it turns out to be Frank David (John P. Ryan)...the father of the abomination from the first film. It seems that he and his new friends suspect that the couple's baby might also be a demon spawn and he tells them he and his volunteers are ready...just in case. Well, not surprisingly, the child does end up being an ungodly killing machine...but this time the authorities are there to capture and imprison it as it's born. Amazingly, two other killing machines were born around the same time...and now they're being held in a government lab where they can be studied. Unfortunately, the folks keeping the demon babies prisoner turn out of be idiots and the babies escape! Is there any hope for mankind or possibility they could get the brood on "The Jerry Springer Show"?

The reviews for this film are mostly negative. This surprised me, as the movie was pretty entertaining. Now I am NOT saying it's great art or about to be released by the fancy Criterion Collection...but it does the trick with scaring you and keeping your attention!

On the positive side, director Larry Cohen seems to be at his best. Also, the film manages to make cheesy puppets look and sound menacing. On the negative, the writing for some characters was poor. The mother's character simply made no sense whatsoever. She changed moods and her mind so often that it just looked like bad writing. While not as bad, the governmental authorities seemed dim...I mean...how could they anticipate the births of these murder machines and not have better security?! Still, overall the good far outweighs the bad.

"IT LIVES AGAIN" (1978, Cohen) follows on from its predecessor in every way except it outstays its welcome.

We have a good set of ideas, more very good performances, that effectively nasty tone and, again, mere glimpses of the killer babies. But in my opinion it gets to a certain point and then begins to grind slowly to the end and it's a boring grind.

These films are, good quality acting and music aside, barrel-bottom cheap horror flicks. I do like them for what they are but they could have been a lot more.

It's Alive wasn't even all that good so how was the sequel going to be good?

In this sequel, a new couple is having a baby. This time though the authorities are already aware that the baby could be another "it." You know who is also aware of this? Frank Davis (John Ryan). As in the father of the original it. The same father that pretty much committed murder by throwing his predator baby at a police officer. Frank is on a mission to protect all of these monster babies being born throughout the country. It's a sick and disturbing mission and makes no sense.

This awful movie involved multiple demon babies being raised in captivity by some benign and stupid group. Of course, the babies get loose or else how would we have a movie?

The story was atrocious and the only thing worse than the story was the actions of virtually everyone. Not a thing that anyone did in this movie made sense on any level. I know scary movies are always short in the common sense department, that's their primary method of advancing the plot. That doesn't mean I have to like it. When watching a scary movie I will grant them one, maybe two morons/moronic actions because I know they're going to be in there somewhere. After two my eyes begin to roll and I get a spate of Tourrettes. It Lives Again went way over their quota of two dumb people/actions. There was no way I could rate this above a one.

Weak follow-up to the original cult classic It's Alive is virtually a remake of the first film, but with three babies this time around instead of one. Dull, boring, talky horror flick with a disappointing score and just about all the action and scares confined to the end, but by then it is too late. Rick Baker actually did the poor effects for this inept sequel.

Rated R; Violence & Profanity.

John Ryan returns in the sequel to It's Alive, and this time he is saving babies - the strange ones. He hooks up with Eugene and Jody (Frederic Forrest and Kathleen Lloyd), who about to have a baby, and somehow he knows it will be a special one.

He manages to get them away from the evil clutches of the law and John Marley, who is probably still angry about losing his horse in The Godfather. But, of course, this is only temporary, as hippie-looking Jody's mother joins the forces of evil and soon they are killing all the babies that are being saved.

It ends the same, with Eugene taking over the work of saving babies for the third film to come.

When you watch a movie like this, you pretty much know what you're in for. This felt like a hastily put-together cash grab on the back of the first movie, which I'm sure it was. It's also why the script isn't exactly coherent and probably why there aren't as many monster scenes as we'd like and too much drama to pad out the movie's hour and a half run time, but when the monster scenes come, they were entertaining enough for me.

Like in the first movie, they keep the little monsters in shadow and mostly obscured or have scenes shot from their point of view, but I think that actually works to the benefit of this. You see enough of them not to feel completely cheated, but it would have been nice to have even more of them in this. Sure, a lot of it is laughably bad, but I wasn't expecting Oscar-winning effects here anyway and it's still done better than the schlocky movies of the 50s and 60s.

I gotta say, Frederic Forrest turns in one of the worst performances I've ever seen and he's one of the leads. He overacts to the point of hysteria, except it made me groan and roll my eyes more than laugh. And I thought. John P. Ryan was bad! Wow. Thankfully, Kathleen Lloyd does a great job and helps make this feel slightly more believable. I swear it looked like she had to fight from cracking up trying to act opposite Forrest's over the top antics, though. Andrew Duggan did a good job of treating his role seriously, too. John Marley is a recognizable face and not a bad actor, but in this, he is. He phoned it in. I can't say I blame him.

I'd say that overall this is about as good as the first one which isn't saying much, but not bad for the obvious cash grab sequel that it is.

Recommended for B-movie fans who don't take things too seriously. For others, I would steer clear of these kinds of movies in general.

"It Lives Again" is a very consistent sequel to the 1974 original "It's Alive". Of course it is, since both films are written, directed and produced by Larry Cohen. He picks things up after the events of the first film, by having Frank Davis (John P. Ryan) - father of the Davis monster baby which was killed at the end of the first film - visit soon-to-be parents Eugene & Jody Scott (Frederic Forest & Kathleen Lloyd). Davis suspects that their baby will be of the same mutant kind of offspring and offers his help (together with a team of doctors, operating outside the authorities' knowledge). For what they want to do, is to save the baby in order for it to live, while the authorities want to exterminate this sudden rash of mutant newborns. That in itself is an original spin on things, and one way for this sequel to differentiate itself from the original. Another thing being that there are not one but three monster babies this time. Also, this time the script expands a little further on the human drama, which wasn't a bad choice of Cohen. The concept of mutant killer babies remains as (un)convincing as it was in the first film. So does the movie's ecological/pharmaceutical message. It's just something you'll have to fly with, as both films play things with a straight face. "It Lives Again" has a slightly higher pace to the events than the original had and about the same production values, making it a worthwhile sequel that's pretty much on par with the original. At the time young SFX artist Rick Baker returned to create the killer babies (don't expect his best work here; he was only getting started). So does composer Bernard Herrmann, who delivers a tense musical score just as decent as he did on the first film. So, the outcome is simple: if you've enjoyed the first film, go ahead and enjoy this sequel. If, however, the concept of killer mutant babies doesn't appeal to you, then you shouldn't bother watching any of these three Larry Cohen films (the third one being "Island of the Alive" from 1987).

for what is certainly a great premise, it's unfortunate this film is such a failure. i've never watched anything so loaded with filler. it felt like half the 90-minute run time was probably dedicated just to watching characters entering driveways and getting out of their cars. this time there's three killer babies. who cares. none of them do anything. why does Larry Cohen even bother making a movie that are this diluted. i would credit Frederic Forrest's performance as the tormented father with holding the film together .. that's if there was anything to hold together. a total waste of my time. you know what would have made the movie better? if the story took place on the titanic in an alternate universe and the babies were faster, amphibious, had spider legs, and could reproduce within seconds of being born. imagine all those stuffy aristocrats in life jackets bobbing up and down between the glaciers with spider babies attached to their necks.

"It Lives Again" is the sequel to Larry Cohen's cult classic "It's Alive".The mutant baby is back joined by two more homicidal sucklings.There are some moments of comedy in this film,unfortunately "It Lives Again" is too talky and rather dull.There is a little bit of suspense and the mutant babies look creepy.The acting is pretty good.The scene where a monstrous baby attacks his own father in a swimming pool is the highlight of the film.So if you're a fan of Larry Cohen's horror movies or you love the original you can give it a look.However if you want really trashy Z-grade horror flick about monstrous embryo check out also "The Suckling".5 out of 10.

I thought the first movie of this series was a pretty mediocre effort all around, so my hopes were not high when I sat down to watch this sequel. To my surprise, for quite a while I thought that this movie was shaping up to be much better than the original movie. The production values are a lot better, for one thing. Also, the first half of the movie, with the new and old characters, is surprisingly engaging. It was a new angle and not simply copying the first movie.

However, around the halfway point, the movie starts to fall apart and gets more tedious as it progresses. There's a lot less horror in this sequel than the first movie - in fact, the first real horror sequence only happens when more than half an hour of the running time has passed! The real problem is that the movie simply becomes boring and a tough slog to get through. Too bad, since writer/director Larry Cohen did have the stuff to make a better film.

One last thing: "It Lives Again" was rated "R", while the first movie got a "PG" rating. Which I don't understand, because "It Lives Again" has no nudity, no sex, no foul language, and far less blood and horror than the first film!

After the monstrous killer baby of "It's Alive" terrorizes the delivery room, now, in It Lives again, it seems that there is an epidemic of these things. While the government wants nothing more than to exterminate them all, a group of scientists with compassion are trying to save, and educate the monsters, but they prove to be a bit hard to handle.

This movie could have been a great monster flick. The parallel to the abortion debate and the fact that the baby-monsters are not clearly all good or bad could have made this a significant movie. Even the stupid idea of killer babies makes for a great movie because provides an opportunity to explore the moral dilemma of what to do when children doing bad things. Unfortunately, the director failed to pull it off, and gave us a mediocre sequel. The special effects were weak, with the babies rarely shown clearly, and the characters managed to act stupidly, annoying me throughout the film. The original movie "It's Alive" is the better movie (although that also is sub-standard - but at least its funnier and unique). Still, I think that this film is worth watching for fans of off-beat horror movies.

Frank Davis (John P. Ryan) is still struggling with his child's death in the first movie. He tries to warn Jody (Kathleen Lloyd) and Eugene Scott (Frederic Forrest) against Mallory (John Marley). She's pregnant with another mutant baby.

This is the sequel to It's Alive (1974). This franchise is stuck between serious horror and campy B-movie. It's both. For the serious horror, this movie needs a better-looking baby. The special effects are not good enough. It's pretty bad. The franchise remains stuck in campy B-movie territory. I can imagine it going better, but this poor sequel is not unexpected.

Determined to prevent another incident, the group who battled the creatures previously spring into action when reports surface of another potential killer baby being born and bring it to an isolated study center only for one to escape which makes them try to track it down and kill it.

This was quite a dull and unnecessary sequel. One of the few things that works here is the fact that the creatures are made a focal point of the for a much longer period of time than what had happened previously. Given more of an emphasis for being there in the area this time around, with the majority of the first half consisting of them getting the information out of the group and what their intentions are which carries into the need for the security at the hospital for the birth of the creature and the resulting chaos afterward. Consisting of the abduction and eventual hostage part in the truck where it really gets even bigger with the incidents in the back part of the truck, this here is a fine start to things which is later played off nicely in the later half where the creatures are loose in suburbia and have plenty of enjoyable encounters between the creatures and the swarm hunting them down. As this provides the action with some decent gore effects, these are what hold this one down over its rather large flaws. A lot of the film's problems stem from the same issue that befell the original in that there's just not a whole of interesting things going on here. Taking the guise of a loose remake where this starts off with the creatures' birth and the eventual escape from the hospital only this time it takes far longer to get to the point of the story which here makes no sense at all. The point of keeping mutant, bloodthirsty deformed freaks alive and healthy in the manner attempted here is not only colossally irresponsible but also moronic by keeping known threats to humanity alive. The fact that we don't really get much of anything about their point to be conducting the experiments on the creatures or what they hope to learn from them at the facility which makes their mission even more problematic overall. As these here are all in disservice to the pacing here, this one is just so dull and barely interesting that it feels a lot longer than the others which makes it incredibly hard to get into this one. Added together with the unimpressive action scenes that don't really mean much of anything that happens here is interesting, this one is quite the bland and unappealing effort.

Rated PG: Violence and Language.