It's Alive

It's Alive was the story of a killer baby that goes on a murderous rampage in the delivery room, terrorises Los Angeles, and ends up - like the ants in Them! - cornered by the military in the city's storm drains. The film no doubt spoke to the same anxieties of parenthood that Polanski had drawn upon for Rosemary's Baby and which were to inform the cycle of demon-child movies that began with The Exorcist and The Omen. Exploitation director Larry Cohen's movie had none of the style or sophistication of those big-budget studio pictures. Yet for all its schlock-horror schtick, it has one thing going for it that lifts it above its Z-movie origins: the scorching performance of John P. Ryan as the bewildered father of the monstrous baby.

Unfortunately, Herrmann's score is a mess: overcooked, over-the-top and all over the place. What a tragedy it would have been if this had been the score that had closed his career. And who could have guessed, based on the evidence of It's Alive, that he would go on to produce two of his greatest works within a year? For completists, a version of  It's Alive is available on It's Alive 2 on the Silva Screen label (B000003QQ8). The music for the sequel is basically a rehash of the original themes, cobbled together by the composer's friend Laurie Johnson.