Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 2. March 5 1979

Film — A Case for Abortion

Film

A Case for Abortion

Lives Again

It seems a general rule that sequels are [ unclear: t] best only half as good as the films they [ unclear: liow]. Jaws II and Damien: Omen II for [ unclear: utance], both had their moments, but fail [ unclear: d] to recreate the intensity of mood the [ unclear: ginal] had. All that was left was a [ unclear: reorking] of characters and situation as [ unclear: mehtnical] as Bruce the shark. But for a few [ unclear: ice] technical flourishes, these films were [ unclear: ull].

So it was interesting to see a sequel [ unclear: athout] having seen its predecessor, which [ unclear: it] my position in seeing Larry Cohen's Lives Again. And what can I say? If [ unclear: 'i] Alive! is indeed better than this sequel, must be very good indeed. It Lives [ unclear: gain] is s well-paced, nicely controlled, [ unclear: irprisingly] effective piece of work.

[ unclear: Mutant] Children

The story is about babies that are born [ unclear: is] hideous mutant monsters, who from the [ unclear: loment] of their first rasping breath begin [ unclear: sughtering] everyone they can lay their [ unclear: laws] on, including their parents. In the [ unclear: riot'] first ten minutes we learn all we need [ unclear: to] know about It's Alive! from the father [ unclear: if] the baby in that film, who has come to [ unclear: arn] a new pair of prospective parents of [ unclear: th] dinger they face. In a flashback, we see [ unclear: is] child killed, but, we are told, it was only [ unclear: he] first of many that are now being born [ unclear: all] over the country. The authorities have [ unclear: een] able to locate the abnormal [ unclear: pregnanies] by means of blood tests, and have the [ unclear: nwitting] parents-to-be under constant [ unclear: irveillance], planning to destroy the [ unclear: mutnts] at birth.

A small band of doctors and scientists [ unclear: elieves] the children should not be killed, [ unclear: nd] is prepared to fight to protect the [ unclear: inints], in order to discover the reason for [ unclear: bis] totally inexplicable phenomenon. This [ unclear: arly] section of the film, necessary as it is [ unclear: is] providing the context of the action, is [ unclear: ither] slow — but it contains enough [ unclear: elments] of foreboding to build an increasing tension as we wait for the birth.

Mummy's tummy, for example, is [ unclear: ure] large, and it is remarked that the [ unclear: aby] must be going to be very big; a [ unclear: ute] pair of blue booties is displayed, and [ unclear: we] somehow suspect they're not going to [ unclear: uite] fit junior ........ Anyhow, once Mom's ontractions begin the fun really starts, [ unclear: nd] we can sit back and watch the corpses [ unclear: ale] up as the film moves confidently to its [ unclear: dictable] conclusion.

The use of a Style

Did I say predictable? It Lives Again is a horror film, and to my mind one of its strongest virtues is the way it utilizes the conventions and traditions of that genre. The film opens with a warning of some terror about to be unleashed — nothing is seen, but much is suggested. The warning is met with open disbelief, which is only dispelled in the face of undeniable physical proof. But first, before outright confrontation, we get physical attacks in which we only glimpse the terror — the film is well under way before we ever really see it.

There is a climactic confrontation in which good destroys evil. The central characters are in some way changed by the whole experierence, almost as if the threat, the terror, is some inner fear or crisis (riven physical form. There is perhaps a sufficient moral dilemma introduced as to make the final victory a qualified one. And, as the film is ending, there is the suggestion that maybe it could all happen again ............

That's a rough outline of the structure of It Lives Again, fundamentally the same as that for, say Jaws and The Omen. Which you could maybe say is a rip-off by Larry Cohen and Co. But we're dealing here with a form almost as old as movies themselves, a narrative structure made famous by James ( Frankenstein) Whale Tod ( Freaks) Browning in the 1930's and Val Lewton in the 1940's.

Val Lewton described this basic formula to the Los Angeles Times: "Our formula is simple. A love story, three scenes of suggested horror and one of actual violence. Fadeout. It's all over in less than 70 minutes." The calm, everyday sequences were to alternate suspense sequences of ascending terror, resulting in a climax which would bring the two moods of the story together.

"We tossed away the horror formula right from the beginning. No grisly stuff for us. No masklike faces hardly human, with gnashing teeth and hair standing on end. No creaking physical manifestations. No horror piled on horror. You can't keep up horror that's long sustained. It becomes something to laugh at. But take a sweet love story, or a story of sexual antagonisms, about people like the rest of us, not freaks, and cut in your horror here and there by suggestion, and you've got something. Anyhow, we think you have. That's the way we try to do it." (Val Lewton: The Reality of Terror — Joel E. Siegel)

(Incidentally, the Wellington Film Society is showing a couple of Lewton's best films this year, I walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim, which alone makes it worth becoming a member.)

This approach to film-making should not be denigrated merely because it is 'formula', and designed merely to provide maximum audience entertainment. For all its simplicity, it takes a great deal of skill to use the form successfully, and even artistry to be able to totally involve the viewer in a flight of fantasy, and genuinely affect his / her emotions, which is what the form demands. The Swarm fits the genre (as far as, I've been able to describe it) and it must surely be one of the most dismal failures (even on the molt undemanding level) in screen history.

Photo of a character from the film 'It Lives Again'

"I won't be long Mum — I'm just going baby-sitting"

But It Lives Again succeeds. Firstly, it really scares. Well, it disturbed me, and I'm pretty hardened to screen horror. Secondly, it uses its time-honoured form efficiently and at times rather elegantly. The audience is kept involved all the way along the line — we sense the inevitability of the plot, but we are teasingly kept in suspense. Efficient. And elegant? I think Cohen's handling of the moral quandaries in the film deserves the word. Throughout the film there is a tension between the various attitudes to the mutant children: between the danger they are to society, and the maxim of sanctity of life; are the children really abnormal? and what is normal anyway; between love for the children and the break-up of the marriage they came from. These conflicts and others which arrive are handled, with a real artistry.

Camera Work: Unexpectedly Good

The film's visuals area also a good deal more subtle than anything you'd expect in something with such a howler of a title. Subtle enough, in fact, to make you suspect that It Lives Again was chosen osen with tongue firmly in cheek. The film is full of allusions to its predecessors in the genre. From The Exorcist and Jaws to Rosemary's Baby and The Birds, they're all there in one form or another.

One of the traditional elements of the genre is the 'false alarm' or 'close call' (this has never been done better than in the beach sequences in Jaws), and there are a couple of false alarms in It Lives Again handled with magnificent wit. The film also contains a couple of superb subjective monster's-eye-view tracking shots that are (particularly when we 'become' the baby crawling up the stairs) real technical achievements.

Of course, no less a technical achievement are the babies themselves. It takes a while before we see them, but it's worth it. A flaw in the otherwise peerless Jaws was that in one of the climactic appearances of the shark, you could hear mutters of 'fake!' in the audience. I don't think that will happen with It Lives Again. The little horrors are too good physically, and sequences involving them too cleverly edited, for that.

So, I would recommend It Lives Again without hesitation. I went expecting to laugh, but when I did it was with the film rather than at it. Go see it by all means — it's good scary fun, with enough action and wit to make it a superior example of its type.

Paul Hagan