Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 2. March 5 1979
Camera Work: Unexpectedly Good
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