Scarred at Birth

By J.C.

IT'S ALIVE

Directed and Written by LARRY COHEN

Schlock shock is a proliferating film subspecies: the horror flick that will do anything, show anything, to churn a stomach and raise some neck hair. The trend started several years back with Night of the Living Dead, wherein marauding zombies dined on freshly slain humans. The movie was made on lo cation around Pittsburgh -- that sounds like the first line of a joke but it's a fact -- employing local actors and a great many spare parts from nearby butcher shops. The movie won a campy-seedy reputation and turned a nice profit. Imitations have ranged from Andy War hol's Frankenstein and Dracula lampoons to The Texas Chainsaw Murders.

It's Alive is the latest example of schlock shock. The "it" that is alive is a genetic monstrosity, born to a couple of Los Angeles parents (John Ryan, Shar on Farrell), which comes into the world with fangs, claws and a strong homicidal impulse. It wreaks all kinds of havoc, and is ultimately done in just be fore the news that a similar monstrosity has been born in Seattle.

What is most troublesome about It's Alive, even beyond its shoddiness, is the cynicism with which it was concocted.

The characters act only out of the bas est of motives: Dad, for example, gets canned from his p.r. job because of the sudden family disgrace. He then spends much of the film trying to hunt down and kill his own child, as if to win back community respect. Even a score by the usually excellent Bernard Herrman is of little help. Herrman did the music for many of Hitchcock's best films (Vertigo, Psycho). His participation in It's Alive lends it a fleeting and futile air of quality, like a concert virtuoso playing piano in a cathouse.

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