Killing time in the waiting room with three other expectant fathers, the naturally upbeat and positive Frank finds his companions talk of pollution and pest control tedious and makes his way back up nearer the maternity ward. To his horror, a doctor staggers through the door clutching a gaping wound at his throat. Rushing into the delivery room, Frank sees all of the hospital staff dead, his wife lying delirious on the table, and his newborn child nowhere to be seen.
The thing I love about Larry Cohen's movies, and about good genre movies in general, is that they can take ideas or situation that would simply be too daft, distasteful or otherwise untouchable, and turn them into cinematic gold. Like George A. Romero, Cohen just doesn't accept that merely because he happens to be making a horror film he is unable to deal with serious themes, real human emotion and believable characters. If you look back through Cohen's body of work, at first glance all you see is some attention-grabbing titles, in the best tradition of exploitation cinema: BLACK CAESAR [1973], GOD TOLD ME TO [1976], Q - THE WINGED SERPENT [1982] and THE STUFF [1985]. But actually when you come to see these films and others by Cohen you realise there is a fierce intelligence behind them as well as real compassion for his characters who are invariably ordinary characters facing circumstances beyond endurance.
IT'S ALIVE is a case in point. Frank Davis is a moderately successful family man who adores his wife and son and can't wait for another addition to his family. What he has to face up to, however, is not only the tragedy of seeing that dream die but also of seeing it turn into any parent's worst nightmare. The life that he and his wife have created is a monstrous perversion of humanity, one that reacts to human contact with lethal violence. Although Cohen still delivers the requisite shocks and scares for the die-hard horror crowd, he seems just as interested, if not more so, in the side effects of the birth on Frank's personal life. The case of the killer baby is soon all over the media and Frank finds that the revulsion it provokes among the general public is reflected back on to himself. He's effectively fired from his job because his boss can't afford to keep such a notorious figure on the staff of a PR company. He even begins to question what it is within him that produced such a monstrosity.
The luckless Frank gets the poke from his boss who asks him to leave by the back door |
Larry Cohen's films aren't particularly adventurous visually but what they do have is a terrific immediacy. There's no wasted time in his pictures and, putting it bluntly, no bullshit. They set up the characters and situation so quickly and effectively that before you know where you are you're right in the thick of things. That sense of being personally caught up in events is central to Cohen's films and he achieves this chiefly through an almost unparalleled skill at location shooting. If you watch any of his films listed above, but particularly the first three, you'll get a truly vivid sense of location, of being there; I'd say that the only person who has photographed New York City as well as Larry Cohen is Woody Allen.
John Ryan was a terrific character actor who usually featured some way down the cast list but nevertheless created memorable supporting characters. He had a wonderfully odd face that usually wore a smile but a scornful, somehow threatening smile; a good example of what I mean can be found in his performance in Bob Rafelson's FIVE EASY PIECES [1970]. But given the chance to play a leading role, and what's more a sympathetic character, he really went for it and in so doing elevated the film into greatness.
Edited (18/06/13) to add: One glaring omission from my original review of IT'S ALIVE was mention of the wonderfully ominous score by Bernard Herrmann. In my view it's right up there with his very best work.
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