Monday, November 2, 2009

It's Alive! Redux :(


I normally don't talk about recent horror films here. I just don't, okay! I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's my blog and I do what I want. And what I want mainly concerns the oh-so- fabulous seventies, the excesses of the eighties, and whatever other obscure weirdness I can dig up. That's not to say I don't watch recent horror films, in fact, I watch most every recent horror film that comes this way, with the sole exception of the SAW franchise, which I think is utterly shitty and to be hated at all costs (but that my dears, is an entirely different rant and one I won't likely be making soon). I'll be the first to buy a ticket to whatever horror flick debuts at the local multi-plex and those direct to video new horrors get equal treatment, lined up in the netflix queue months before they come out, even the remakes. Hey, we gotta support our genre, people! For every three hundred bad horror movies that comes out, aren't there like at least two good ones?

Soooo, all that blah blah is intro blah for the IT'S ALIVE remake (2008). So now for some more intro blah. I'm a huge fan of the original Larry Cohen movie - it was one of the first 'thinking woman's' horror movies I think I ever got into back in the day. Sure, I cut my baby fangs on stuff like FRIDAY the 13th and NIGHTMARE on ELM STREET growing up in eighties. Horror movies had always been (and always will be) my modus operandi but it wasn't until seeing Cohen's 1974 environmental forces run amok on birth movie that I was like, hell mutherfuckin' yeah, horror movies can be smart and gory and fun all at the same time! I think I was probably like 14, but this was it as far as I was concerned! And it still is! The horrors of birth, of the human body! The attack on the environment! The sheer inventiveness of it, yet still maintaining the tropes of a B-movie with a Bernard Hermann score (I believe it was his last)! Oh hell yeah! It's a great body horror movie with a shit ton of other subtext and should be watched over and over again. (I really don't know what happened to Larry Cohen - he used to be soooo fuckin' good - GOD TOLD ME TO? Q, THE WINGED SERPENT? THE STUFF? The man used to be able to write a movie. How the mighty have fallen.)

Of course, and are you even surprised, I cannot say the same for the the IT'S ALIVE remake. A tepid, practically gore-less, look at what lengths a mommy will go to to protect her child maneuver, the remake lacks pretty much everything that made the original great. No LA setting, instead we get a boring old house in New Mexico, so definitely no monster baby hiding out in sewers. No large craniumed baby puppet, you might see a little CG claw here and again. And the body horror element? Well, I can't say I ever want to birth anything out of my vagina, so some of it bothered me a little bit, but still, it was tame at best. I felt myself checking the timer on the DVD player to see how much time this boring clunker had left. Maybe I'm not reading enough into it to deconstruct it enough - gasp! - but maybe I just didn't care.

Another pointless remake in a cycle of pointless remakes. Now if somebody remakes BASKET CASE, I will fight them. Hands down. I will win. Don't fuck with my BASKET CASE. Frank Henenlotter, can you hear me?! Do NOT ever let anyone remake one of the greatest movies of all time! You owe it to me for no particular reason!

13 comments:

  1. This was all sorts of teh terrible, it was like a really really shitty version of GRACE. Sorry you had to sit through this one, but with enough alcohol, one might be so inclined as to sleep through it

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  2. I agree with you, Jenn. The IT'S ALIVE remake sucked rather badly.

    I'll join your fight against any BASKET CASE remake, too. Those remake fucks coold only underestimate the army they'd be fighting.

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  3. Carl, I didn't even have to take Ambien last night - I was so tired from watching this shittiness. I just don't get it - and Cohen helped write the script. But then again, Cohen wrote PHONE BOOTH and was responsible for PICK ME UP (how ridiculous was that!). Somebody should give him a call and make sure he's okay.

    Phantom, I will leave this earth if someone tries to remake BASKET CASE; I am that serious about that movie. Although, I hear Henenlotter's new one, BAD BIOLOGY, is pretty god-awful. I saw the trailer a few months back on the these here interwebs and wasn't impressed. Ah well.

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  4. I haven't seen this one yet, nor do I plan to. I've heard absolutely nothing but bad things about it. And who cares about the original IT'S ALIVE anyway? That movie was a rip-off of GRACE and it didn't even realize it! GRACE is a modern-day horror masterpiece and Paul Solet is the second coming of Jesus Christ! And don't even get me started on Adam Green! Clive Barker who? Adam Green is the true master of the macabre and I would happily drink his pube-infested bathwater to show my loyalty to Sir Adam of Greensmith.

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  5. I know when I am being baited :P

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  6. Somebody should do a whole blog SERIES about Aaron's pube-infested bathwater drinking.

    IT'S ALIVE and the first sequel succeed mostly on the strength of John P Ryan's dad role... and Frederic Forrest's also, in IT LIVES AGAIN. ISLAND OF THE ALIVE, however, is so fucking retarded and off-track that I never felt the need to watch another version of the IT'S ALIVE mythos again, remake or otherwise. This is why I've -also- stayed away from GRACE; that, and I'm not a chick, so all the motherly instinct stuff and "female body issues" and postpartum depression imagery falls on deaf ears with me. Same with A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5: THE DREAM CHILD. Pass.

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  7. oh - and I LIKED 'Pick Me Up'. So there. *raspberry*

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  8. Really, Astro? PICK ME UP? Wow, I felt like Cohen regular Michael Moriarty was just plain lame in it and I know since we are horror fans we're supposed to be able to suspend disbelief better than most, but two serial killers fighting over turf? I couldn't get behind it.

    So the whole 'as a woman' thing don't apply to all you dudes out there in horror fandom, but what about THE BROOD? If anybody can do body horror, even female body birth crap, it's Cronenberg. Even DEAD RINGERS? Gynecology = scary and I know this.

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  9. Wait, what? They remade IT'S ALIVE? Glad I missed that bit of news... Thanks for taking a bullet and watching it so the rest of us don't have to!

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  10. I'm sure gynecology is scary for EVERYONE involved!

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  11. Jenn, as I said, I'm with you on 'Basked Case'. Death to any Shitter who tries to remake it.

    Aaron, I was no fan of the 'It's Alive' remake, but I am a fan of 'Grace' also. But, in fairness, I'd like to direct you to a little Korean film made in '72 titled 'The Insect Woman'. The film features a blood drinking infant.

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  12. PoP, I was actually being sarcastic with my whole GRACE comment (inside joke). I honestly didn't care for that movie at all. I didn't think it was BAD by any means, but it was unfortunately a victim of hype that it never lived up to, IMO. And THE INSECT WOMAN sounds interesting. I'll definitely seek it out. BABY BLOOD is also a good one, but it's more about pregnancy than it is about the birth or raising the baby.

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  13. I used to really enjoy watching films like Q-The Winged Serpent, The Gate, and Robocop 2 but when i watch them now they just seem to come across as unofficial tributes to god...er sorry...i mean Ray Harryhausen. By the way, the only reason i watch The Brood is because Cindy Hinds has always driven me wild with lust and desire, she was so gorgeous.

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