It's Alive! (1969)
Trapped in a cave of terror!
Year of Release: 1969
Genre: Horror
Rated: Not Rated
Running Time: 80 minutes (1:20)
Director: Larry Buchanan
Cast:
Tommy Kirk ... Wayne Thomas
Shirley Bonne ... Leilla Sterns
Bill Thurman ... Greely/Monster
Annabelle Weenick ... Bella
Corveth Ousterhouse ... Norman Sterns
Larry Buchanan ... Narrator (voice) (uncredited)
Summary:
A backwoods farmer discovers a reptilian creature living in a cave on his property and decides to make him his pet. In order to feed his new-found friend, the farmer decides to take captive a bickering couple who have lost their way and mistakenly stopped to ask for directions. Will the couple be saved by a paleontologist who happens to be doing research in the area?
Review:
It's Alive!, remindin' us that you can unlock this door with the key of imagination, but dynamite'll work in a pinch.
And speakin' of questionable charges, at a moment in time where it seems like each week is somehow more depressing than the one before, I thought it might be novel to announce a little good news for once, as we recently scored an upset victory against the Chickawalka oligarchy.
I'm sure mosta you've been to the Grime Time sometime in the last six months and endured Skunky Hernandez' barnacle-brained ramblings about sellin' V.I.P. parkin' spots for $100 each and shrugged it off as bullstuff on the basis that no man could possibly be stupid enough to try somethin' like that in a county where the average household net worth is measured by the number of disabled cars on a person's lawn, right? Well, you'll never guess what.
I admit it - I was impressed. I never thought for a moment that he'd manage to piss people off worse than the time he started usin' reduced fat vegetable oil in the deep fryers, but obviously the man's depravity knows no bounds, and two weeks ago he sold his first four spots to Aesop Marlin (H1, nearest the shores of fabulous Lake Skunky), Edgar Mastrude (A4, 'cause some people never seem to outgrow sittin' front row center and gettin' permanent spinal cord damage so they can inspect the inside of celebrity nasal cavities), Buzz McCullouch (H4, dead center in the back row for an ideal viewing experience and the shortest jaunt to the concession stand's beer tap), and Marla Ostman (H8, in the back right corner to ensure the most privacy for those whose interests lay not on the screen, but in the backseat).
And far be it from me to question where a person chooses to park at the drive-in or what their individual motivations for doin' so may be, but I was raised to believe that if you want somethin' you're supposed to earn it, and if that means missin' a day of work to be first in line at the ticket booth on Friday night then that's what needs to happen. Believe me when I tell ya, "dibs" never holds up in court.
'Course, there're those among us who were raised outside the city limits where the lead pipes still haven't been replaced, and some of those folks ended up becomin' drive-in theater proprietors who believe deodorant is a crutch for people lacking in personability and charm - I present to you, Exhibit A.
"I ees only geeveen back to patrons who geev me so much - why you hate Capitaleesm, eenyway? You want to show us where eet touched you?!" Skunky growled after a volley of corn dog sticks flew toward the top of the concession stand where he'd just laid out his vision for the first drive-in timeshare initiative.
"Right here!" Dale Whelchel hollered, holdin' his wallet aloft and launchin' an onion ring at Skunky's head.
"Nobody forceen you! Ees just option - notheen wheel change! Tell them!" Skunky shouted, rubbin' his eye where a well-placed ice cube'd just nailed 'im and gesturing toward the deck of the projection booth where Billy Hilliard and I were playin' five card draw between flicks.
"I'm with them, Skunky. For cripes' sake man, they're not anti-Capitalism, they're pro-freedom. The drive-in's one of the few American institutions left where a man's financial station can't stop 'im from livin' life the way he sees fit," I shrugged, sending a barrage of "Yeah!s" and "Damn right!s" piercing the night air.
"Well, if that's the consensus then there should be no problem," Tetnis concluded, having climbed up to stand beside Skunky and quell any further salt and buttery from popcorn kernels fired through drinking straws.
I like Tetnis alright, but he's never been much for actin' on behalf of the public interest unless he's turnin' a profit, and I could tell by that diplomatic facade he was puttin' on that he was rakin' a percentage off the top of every transaction and'd already spotted a few marks. Which, hey - fair enough.
I guess the easy thing to do woulda been to just sit back and watch it happen, and to tell ya the truth I'm gettin' to an age where it's becomin' harder'n harder to slug it out with tyranny, but this's the Grime Time we're talkin' about, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna watch it get subdivided and auctioned off like national forest land, so I did what any American patriot with too much time on their hands woulda done in this situation.
Fortunately, Skunky's need to gloat led to an official proclamation during the intermission wherein the first four "tenants" and their respective slots were announced, and that, coupled with the strong overlap between the Grime Time and Videodome patronage, provided the opening I needed to crush this hierarchical horse hockey before it gained traction and folks started panic buyin' parkin' spots like 2-ply toilet paper.
Now, I just wanna make clear that this's still America, and that in America everyone has the right to spend their money on any moronic grift they want to and then declare bankruptcy to avoid the consequences of their actions, and having said that, it'd be a dereliction of my duty as an employee of the Grime Time to refuse the sale of any plots to potentially interested buyers. Matter of fact, I took it upon myself to spend the next week offering one-night trials to interested parties during my shifts at the Videodome, and hey - if said parties just happened to exhibit personality traits that were incompatible with those individuals who'd already "gotten in on the ground floor," who's to say that wasn't just an unfortunate coincidence?
In hindsight, assigning Rusty Dockweiler the spot next door to Marla was probably a little over the line given that Marla's only crime was tryna get 'er magic bean weenied someplace far away from the ears of 'er elderly mother, although I still contend that Rusty's enthusiastic cheerleading from the bed of Marla's El Camino was done with the utmost sincerity and respect.
Aesop Marlin, on the other hand, I've got zero sympathy for. And what's more, Duke Tankersley (Aesop's new drive-in neighbor) didn't bring that egomaniac down nearly as many pegs as he needed.
See, Aesop thinks he's the biggest thing to hit fishin' since worm bedding, and so Billy Hilliard and me went and fed the catfish in the pond about three times their normal dog food ration an hour before show time so nothin'd bite unless ya had somethin' they *really* wanted, and the one thing those sludge puppies can't resist is a nice greasy chunka deep fried drive-in dog, which we supplied to Duke on the sly. Duke sat next to 'im half the night reelin' in monsters and haranguin' Aesop's fishin' prowess until he finally threw his pole in the water and went back to his rig to sulk, at which time Duke followed and proceeded to offer tips that'd insult anyone who'd graduated beyond their Snoopy Catch 'Em Kit.
I leased the spot beside Edgar to Tucker Washburn, and Tucker's about the nicest (but also the most impoverished) guy you'll ever meet, and so to fill the bellies of his young'uns without goin' broke at the concession stand, Tucker sends his passel of kids out into the sagebrush to snare ground squirrels and barbecues 'em in this old charcoal grill he made out of an oil drum. For my money, the volume of ketchup necessary to make 'em edible ain't worth the hassle, but Edgar couldn't stand that heavenly aroma for long, and when Tucker refused to share his vittles (as per our agreement), Edgar ended up passin' out on his trek from Row A to the concession stand after dang near blowin' a heart valve.
The only thing I truly regret, though, was puttin' Bev and Carlos Spatz next to Buzz McCulloch, 'cause Buzz genuinely enjoys the flicks and looks forward to the Friday Night double feature every week.
The make-up sex must send 'em into outer space or somethin', 'cause I can't understand how anyone who fights the way Bev and Carlos do've managed to stay together all this time, but long story short, *somehow* Bev got the idea that Carlos was flirtin' with Astrid Skinner when he went to grab a coupla buckets of nachos, and Buzz ended up twistin' the FM dial on his radio plumb off tryna drown out the war of 4-letter words goin' on in the Chevelle across the way.
"I suppose you had a hand in this," Tetnis gestured toward the paramedics attempting to squeeze Edgar and Rusty into the ambulance, Aesop Marlin weeping in the bed of his pickup, and an ever-increasing crowd of patrons demanding the return of the money they'd laid out for the plots they'd purchased, or simply their admission fees after the domestic friction between Bev and Carlos had escalated into a battle of the sexes that encompassed around half of Rows F - H.
"It really did seem like the most humane solution. Billy wanted to stick Merle Wilcox in a yuppie getup and have 'im offer to buy all 56 spaces in front of everybody, and with all due respect, I don't think even you coulda fended off a full lot when Skunky accepted, and you know he would have," I chuckled.
"Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, I really oughta beat the crap outta ya for this," Tetnis remarked impartially, watchin' Skunky try to calm the storm and protect his back pocket at the same time.
"Yeah, prolly should," I snorted as Bambi Mastrude put Skunky in a headlock while Buzz lifted his wallet.
"Wanna grab a burger?" Tetnis asked, losing interest in the dispute once it'd become clear that the only harm to befall Skunky would be financial.
"And a coupla beers. This sabotage business is thirsty work," I agreed, wavin' to Skunky and headin' for the concession stand.
It required an extended intermission, but order was eventually restored when Bev and Carlos abruptly called a truce and ended up plowin' through a patch of sagebrush on their way out after it was determined they couldn't wait to get home to bury the hatchet, and also that it's purt'near impossible to stay on the road when you've got a pair of cantaloupes in your face.
Tetnis joined Billy and me on the deck for the second feature and I guess the old axiom must be true, 'cause God does indeed protect fools and babies, and consequently, Skunky's walkin' around with a pair of aces up his sleeve. I realize you could say this for a quarter of the flicks we show, but Skunky just happened to select one of the most comatizing movies in the library on a night when everyone in attendance had thoroughly lost their mellow, and within ten minutes I was forced to turn up the volume on our speaker just to hear the dialogue over the chorus of snores radiatin' up at us.
I tell ya, these Larry Buchanan nights really take it out of ya, and to be honest, it's a little jarring screenin' flicks that were originally made for TV at the drive-in; kinda makes ya feel like you're blaspheming against the spirit of venue. Regardless, Larry was a drive-in kinda guy, and anybody who can spray paint a coupla dozen inner tubes green and record their friends lumberin' around in 'em to sell to network cable is alright by me. So let's take a quick peek at some of that unique Buchanan insight we've come to know and love before gettin' down to business.
First, just because you're plannin' to serve your guests to the Latex Gex lurkin' in your underground grotto, there's no call for bein' a bad host. Second, any facade of professionalism you may project while drivin' through Arkansas in a 3-piece suit will invariably come back to haunt you in the form of bayou backside. And third, whether on the drive-in screen or in the backseat - using the same rubber twice is morally and hygienically reprehensible.
The movie begins with a yuppie couple (Norman and Leilla) takin' a road trip through the shartland of America where they find themselves low on gas, obscenely overdressed, and forced to endure conversations with people of social strata they'd ordinarily tolerate only when the jug of liquid plumber proved inadequate. They eventually make their way to an old roadside attraction that's been mugged and left for dead by the interstate highway initiative where they're attended by the human embodiment of swamp ass (Greely) and a housekeeper (Bella) whose work is beginning to suffer due to a debilitating fear of iced tea preparation. Things are not as they seem, however, and when a fair samaritan (it's Tommy Kirk, so you can't rightly call 'im a *good* samaritan) shows up at the 'Cest Western to lend the couple a hand, the Count of Monte Crisco goes and whacks Tommy with a tire iron and drags 'im away like he's workin' damage control for the Disney corporation. Then Rotten Hill takes the couple on a tour of his bumpkin patch and shows 'em the collection of clinically depressed critters he used to exhibit to the families of stressed-out loan officers who'd stop to refresh their supply of Chesterfields and Ding Dongs while insisting they knew *exactly* where they were.
His greatest attraction, though, is hidden in a cavern beneath his kudzu farm. But when they reach the end of the cave the only thing waitin' is a holding cell where Norman and Leilla get locked up like foreign exchange students alongside Tommy and left to stew until E.D. Barnum can contact the golf-ball-headed Star Trek aliens from The Cage to broker a deal. Next thing, Bela hasta go dish up some muskratatouille for the prisoners who demand to know what right she's got to corpus their habeas and ask to speak to the local bail bondsman, but she can't risk gettin' a bad job reference while she's tryna get hired on at the alligator farm, and so they all just kinda accept their situation 'cause Bela's got the look of a house matron that's raised a passel of wild Cajun orphans and nobody wants to be made to go cut 'er a switch. Then "Make 'em Squealy" Greely stops in to see how everyone's enjoyin' the accommodations and ends up grazin' Tommy with a bullet for suggestin' his side show's got the lamest blowoff since the old glory hole in the cattle chute scam, only when Norman's able to recover the gun after Tommy frees it from Greely's grasp, the Creature from the Crack Lagoon emerges from its ruptured hemorrhoidal hot spring and conquests Norman. 'Course now that they've gotten a glimpse of his featured creature, Touchy-feely Greely hasta take the opportunity to gloat and offer Leilla a shot at fame, fortune, and a lifetime of bayou romance on the ole Greely Posturepedic, only she ends up declinin' the offer 'cause she can't handle the idea a wedding ceremony where the couple exchanges ringworms.
Unfortunately, Bela's been down in the Sleestak Shack this whole time, and after overhearin' the aforementioned exchange she tells Leilla and Tommy about how she too was once young, idealistic, and too stupid to read a gas gauge, and that she was also taken captive and tortured in a manner that only a teenage girl with an 11-year-old little brother can truly understand until she finally got a clean shot and threw a bottle of peroxide in her tormentor's beady little eyes. She took off through the woods in 'er high-heeled hikers, but the Gourd of the Manor eventually tracked 'er down, whipped 'er with his belt like she'd just totaled his Corvette, and forced 'er to into a life of cornbread production and skidmark scrubbin' from which escape seemed impossible. As you can imagine, Bela's sick of havin' 'er light stolen by Hillbilly Dim, and so she agrees to fetch Tommy's overnight bag that's chock fulla dynamite for emergency fishin' trips, only Killy Ray Cyrus goes and dopes the coffee she's supposed to deliver for meal time, and when Tommy and Leilla go limp Greely scoops Leilla up and carries 'er down to the Craggle Rock to work out the prenuptial agreement. I refuse to put any more thought into the plot than Buchanan did and so I'm gonna stop here, but you've gotta believe headin' down to the grotto to try sealin' the deal is puttin' some folks in serious danger of becomin' Hick-fil-a for Mr. Rubbermade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFCbRDZQYG8
Alrighty, and that concludes the final entry in Larry Buchanan's mutant-in-a-diving-suit trilogy, and if you've seen more'n about five minutes of any of 'em it's easy to understand why Richard Nixon got the ball rollin' on the Environmental Protection Agency. We see a lot of Larry's work at the Grime Time on account of the majority of it having fallen into the public domain, but for those that haven't had the pleasure, Larry's fascination with amphibious bondage gear began in '68 with Curse of the Swamp Creature and from there he went on to produce a remake of Edward Cahn's The She-Creature that he called Creature of Destruction, before rounding out the trilogy with It's Alive! in '69. To this day, drive-in scholars debate the merits of the three and have yet to come to a consensus for top honors, though I personally find It's Alive! to be the worst of the series on the basis that Larry forgot to tell a story while he was drawin' up a shooting schedule. The film's script was originally adapted from a short story by science fiction stalwart and Twilight Zone contributor, Richard Matheson, and was intended as a vehicle for Peter Lorre and Elsa Lanchester before Lorre's death - though Matheson's story centered around a rural gas station owner in the thrall of a blob from outer space that compelled him to capture unsuspecting motorists for sustenance. Despite a near-perfect "how to" presentation having been released 11 years prior, Buchanan did not attempt to create the blob from Matheson's story and instead opted to make his monster terrestrial in origin, which in turn allowed him to reuse the existing costume from Creature of Destruction and, in all likelihood, avoid being sued back to the stone age by Paramount.
Ultimately, the flick owes its existence to American International Television's need to beef up its syndication package, and it was this need that kept Buchanan working throughout the late '60s as he would produce Attack of the Eye Creatures, Zontar: The Thing from Venus, Curse of the Swamp Creature, Mars Needs Women, Creature of Destruction, In the Year 2889, and It's Alive!, which would prove to be his swan song for the late-night television faithful. It truly is novel to think back on this period in television history where there was so much airtime and so little content with which to fill it that schlock movie-makers were able to gain fairly consistent employment in a bid to stave off the test pattern, and, as abominably bad as many of the films birthed solely for this purpose are, it's strangely heartwarming to reflect on an era where folks would gather 'round the TV and watch it due to a lack of alternatives. It's fair to say that we've gained a great deal in terms of quantity and quality in the half-century since flicks like these were able to make a television schedule, but one can't help feel that maybe we've lost something as well.
Anyway, let's go ahead and burn a little rubber off this retread and see how long she'll hold before 'er whitewalls blow.
The plot and pacing are arduous even at 80 minutes, with multiple marital spat sequences included for the express purpose of building resentment toward the husband when that goal had already been accomplished simply by putting the man in a 3-piece suit as he motors across the highways of America to take in the sights. The man's unmitigated pretentiousness is more than enough to get us invested in seeing him munched to death by the semi-aquatic inner tube skulkin' around in the grotto - we really don't need all this. Still, you really can't help but marvel at how a flick that functions without a story of any kind can also butt-fumble a detail so simple that it nullifies the film's entire premise (such as it is), but if you read that synopsis and wondered why the three captives didn't simply overpower the lone middle-aged woman who enters their prison to bring them food, you've exhibited a higher level of critical thinking skill than Buchanan did when he wrote the script because these people are essentially choosing to remain captive. Not only that, but when Bela finally decides to help them escape she can just always just leave the goddamned cell door open at any time, but instead, we're muckin' around with dynamite to blow open a gate that Bela has a key to - seriously, what the fuck, Larry?
Truthfully, there aren't that many other plot foibles simply because the movie is just a series of lengthy stretches of inactivity, and while I'm not gonna put a spotlight on some of the more absurd (Bela enthusiastically fleeing through the woods after three days of no food or water) or downright silly (the motion of curtains drawing Bela to them only to find there's a shut, barred window behind them) happenings, it's hard to ignore the lack of recorded sound over the flashback sequence detailing Bela's imprisonment. The amount of time allotted certainly gives the impression that it was intended as a means to build suspense and produce an exciting payoff while helping the audience understand and sympathize with Bela's situation, but the infrequent narration is no substitute, and the entire ordeal comes off as unfinished and tedious. Dunno whether it was an artistic choice, whether they lost the audio track, or whether somebody forgot to turn the recorder on and by the time it was discovered the shoot was over, but it's positively pitiful and sums up the finished film nicely.
The acting frequently elicits vicarious embarrassment, with Bill Thurman's hammy cackling positioning him as one of only two cast members capable of sparking an emotional response of any kind, though said response consists primarily of shame bordering on guilt for intruding on what feels like something that was never meant to be seen by the outside world. Tommy Kirk's lack of conviction shines an unfortunate light on what his career had been reduced to following his days in the Mickey Mouse Club, while Shirley Bonne delivers a lot of her lines slowly and seems to be attempting to gum the scenery. The only decent performance comes from Annabelle Weenick (who would go on to play Dr. Masters in the criminally underrated Don't Look in the Basement) who manages to generate a little positive sympathy as the indentured Bela, but generally, there's a whole lotta meh to be found, and I'd also like to give a shoutout to Larry Buchanan for failing to mute the sound behind the opening credit sequence and giving us the opportunity to enjoy the sound of squeaking windshield wipers over his narration. Bang up job, my man.
Here's who matters and why: Tommy Kirk (The Education of a Vampire, Club Dead, Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfolds, Streets of Death, Mars Needs Women, Blood of Ghastly Horror, Village of the Giants), Bill Thurman (Mountaintop Motel Massacre, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Keep My Grave Open, Creature from Black Lake, Encounter with the Unknown, Curse of the Swamp Creature, In the Year 2889, Mars Needs Women, Night Fright, Zontar: The Thing from Venus, The Black Cat 1966, Attack of the Eye Creatures, The Yesterday Machine), Annabelle Weenick (Don't Look in the Basement, Keep My Grave Open, It's Alive! 1969, Deadly Blessing, Don't Hang Up, Encounter with the Unknown, Creature of Destruction, The Black Cat 1966), Larry Buchanan (Mars Needs Women).
And here's the resume of Tommy Kirk from before the ugliness (or during it, depending upon your point of view): Ernst Robinson in Swiss Family Robinson, Travis Coates in Old Yeller, and Biff Hawk in The Absent Minded Professor.
The special effect is a strong contender for the worst rubber monster suit of all time - worse than Buchanan's previous effort in Curse of the Swamp Creature, and better-known favorites such as the walking catfish gas mask man from Zaat, the schlock lobster from Bog, Lizard Suit Larry from Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake, the Octaman, and the horrors from Party Beach. This isn't even on the level of the costume clearance bin at Montgomery Ward's - we're talkin' the dumpster behind Woolworth's. And while only the keen-eyed would have realized it at the time - knowing that the monster was recycled from an equally abysmal flick released the year prior shows a level of contempt for the audience seldom seen outside an Army hygiene film. An absolutely dire situation made worse by the fact that the monster is only on screen for around 15 seconds, depriving the audience of even the smallest bit of entertainment.
The shooting locations are unique and feature the Onyx Cave in Eureka Springs, Arkansas as the central setting where nothing of note happens. There's little doubt that the cave would be a cool place to tour despite the lack of justice done to it by the cinematography, though the idea that our glazed ham of a villain has taken the time to construct the walkways and handrails leading down into a cavern that he'll never be able to utilize as a public attraction given its occupant's tendency to devour those entering its domain is a hard sell. The exterior driving sequences in the lead-up to the characters' imprisonment are nice as well and show off an appealing collection of forested areas and swamps as well as a passing glimpse of the now-defunct Dinosaur World theme park in Beaver Lake, Arkansas. Hard to say whether the management refused to permit Buchanan to film there and he simply stole a few shots with a concealed camera or whether he just refused to pay the fifty cents to get in, but it's an interesting inclusion that plays into the idea that the couple is touring the country. The home's interiors are minimally decorated and furnished and suggest that the home was unoccupied at the time of filming, though that does kinda fit the theme of a man obsessed with his discovery who probably wouldn't be spending a lotta time on interior decorating. You'd have to say that the shooting locations are the high point between the cavern and the exteriors that successfully create an atmosphere of isolation, but all the same, they're part of a flick whose plot and special effects yield absolutely nothing towards its final score, so don't read too much into that.
The soundtrack is better than you might expect from observing the film's other aspects, and because the flick lacks a composer credit, I'm going to assume that all the tracks are stock music that Buchanan was able to utilize without purchasing a licensing fee, recycled from his earlier movies, or both. That said, the somber string composition that plays over the opening credits is decent and portends a certain degree of doom, the unsettling oboe tune is generic but fitting, the boisterous brass arrangement piped in for the monster attack almost makes ya blind enough to prevent you from fully taking in the ineptitude of the suit, and the organ piece has an effective little otherworldly feeling that, in conjunction with a harp, completes the prerequisite sound every old film relies upon to make clear that we're entering a flashback. Don't get me wrong - there's nothing special here, but at the same time, simply by not tripping over its own dick, an air of semi-professionalism emerges within a movie that lacks it in nearly every other respect, so I'll take what I can get.
Overall, It's Alive! is an excruciating experience whose score is derived from a unique (if incredulous) filming location, brief flashes of competence from Annabelle Weenick, and what I presume to be a stock soundtrack that meets the minimum requirement for inclusion in a film. There is zero entertainment value to be found here even for those who thrive on these kinds of flicks, as the monster is frequently concealed and the story progresses at a snail's pace on a road to nowhere. For cinematic masochists only.
Rating: 10%