It's Alive (1969)

[Flack]

It's difficult to believe that there was a time movies like It's Alive qualified as entertainment.

Husband and wife Norman and Leilla are driving across America on vacation. After getting lost the couple asks a random stranger, Wayne, for directions. Wayne points them down the road, where they arrive at the home of a farmer named Greely. Greely doesn't own a phone and offers to let the two stay for the night, which turns out to be in a cave that's been converted into a prison cell.

Farmer Greely has been driven mad after the construction of an interstate that drove traffic away from his roadside attraction, a small reptile farm. In the caves underneath his farm, Greely discovered a series of caves which turned out to be the home of a prehistoric reptilian monster that LOVES TO EAT FLESH! The farmer, who is both crazy mad and angry mad, plans to kidnap tourists and feed them to his new pet monster. Unfortunately for audiences, this doesn't happen too often because there are only five actors in the entire film.

Norman and Leilla aren't the only people Greely has kidnapped. When Wayne the stranger comes sniffing around to check on the wayward couple, he earns a conk on the head and a trip to cave prison, too. Keeping the prisoners fed and comfortable is Bella, another one of Greely's captives. Bella lives in Greely's house and enters and exits the cave prison through a tunnel. There's no door on the tunnel and no one ever tries to follow her and leave the cave prison and this movie is 80 minutes long which means you'll spend 80 minutes wondering why they don't just follow Bella when she leaves.

The film was directed by Larry Buchanan, a man who specialized in shooting shitty movies on location with no budget. His previous film, Creature of Destruction, was filmed in two weeks at the Tanglewood Lodge at Lake Texoma. The "creature" costume was a "slightly modified green rubber wetsuit" and a mask with stupid fangs and ping-ping balls for eyes. According to Wikipedia, DVD Talk critic David Cornelius called Buchanan "incompetent" and described the monster as a "two dollar fish man costume with ping ping ball eyes." Buchanan loved the costume so much that he reused it as the cave-dwelling reptilian monster in It's Alive, filmed in just six days in an Arkansas cave. The creature, whose face doesn't move and kind of brays like a mule, is one of the film's better actors.

After the first 30 minutes, which focuses on the story of Norman and Leilla, the film shifts to Bella's point of view, which goes into a 40-minute flashback that tells her story, how she got there, which leads us back to the present time at which point Wayne remembers "he has some dynamite" that might help them escape and deal the Greely and the monster, too. Will their plan work? Who cares.

It seems unbelievable that audiences would have been entertained or willing to accept entertainment of this level. With long periods of no dialogue, a barely-there plot and a killer ping-ping fish man, it's hard to believe audiences weren't rioting at theaters demanding their money back.

[AArdvark]

I think I have this one. Now I must watch it!

[pinback]

I have a minor correction. "It's Alive" is a 1974 film about a KILLER BABY. This one is called "It's Alive!".

This is the most TDR post I've ever written.