IT'S ALIVE

   Film (1974). Larco/Warner Bros. Prod and dir Larry COHEN, starring John Ryan, Sharon Farrell, Andrew Duggan, Guy Stockwell. Screenplay Cohen. 91 mins. Colour.

   A MUTANT baby (the mother has taken a new drug) kills all the medical staff in the delivery room and leaps through a skylight to go on a rampage, killing a woman, a milkman and several policemen. Although the plot is evidently ludicrous, as a witty, low-budget MONSTER MOVIE IA is more than satisfactory. The baby, wisely presented in a series of fast, almost subliminal shots, is disturbing because it does what all babies do - crawl around on the floor. Far more disturbing is the transition fromseeing the baby as monstrous menace to seeing it as somebody's child. The father (Ryan), who joins the hunt, tries unsuccessfully to protect his offspring in a curiously moving though absurd climax set in Los Angeles' storm drains, deliberately evoking the finale of THEM! (1954). The two sequels are IT LIVES AGAIN (1978; vt It's Alive II) and It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (1986).

   JB/PN

   See also: CINEMA.