AboutMel Priddle Expertise Films have been my great love since the age of four when I saw my first. I am particularly knowledgeable on the films of John Wayne, Frank Sinatra (and his music) and Elvis Presley (and his music), but I will try to answer any question relating to movies from 1900 to the present day.
Experience I am an ex-cinema manager and film publicist.
Question My best friend tells me that when she was little (about 22 years ago) she saw a horror film, but the only thing she can remember about it is a newborn baby in a hospital with a forked tongue.
Any ideas?
Answer Hello Anchor,
It's a little hard to say, as mutant babies have appeared in many films over the years, but it may well have been "IT'S ALIVE" (1974) or one of its two sequels, "IT LIVES AGAIN" (1978) and "IT'S ALIVE III - ISLAND OF THE ALIVE" (1987).
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Some of the taglines for the first one were:
There's only ONE thing wrong with the Davis baby... It's Alive.
It was born three days ago. It has killed seven people. It's parents are human beings. Whatever it is, It's Alive!
The ONE film you should not see alone.
It's newborn. It's alive. And murder is what it knows best.
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Here is an outline of the story:
The Davises, Frank (John P. Ryan) and Lenore (Sharon Farrell), are eagerly anticipating the arrival of a second child. After dropping off their son Chris (Daniel Holzman) with a family friend, they head to the hospital to welcome the new addition — and so begins the horror. From the waiting room, Frank is stunned to see a bloodied orderly stumble out of the delivery room. Bursting in, Frank finds Lenore screaming from the stirrup table, all other attending doctors and nurses mutilated and dead. But where's the baby?
"What does my baby look like?!" What's wrong with my baby?!"
"It's Alive": The Davis baby is severely mutated; it's an enormous and apparently vicious newborn that has escaped the hospital and is on a murderous rampage in Santa Monica. Frank is distraught, denying any genetic connection to such a hideous creature. He teams with Lieutenant Perkins (James Dixon) to track down the monstrous infant and kill it. The baby, however, continues to elude capture and appears to be making its way, instinctively, to the Davis house. Are Frank and Lenore truly prepared to destroy their newborn child, one deformed through no fault of its own, or will they wind up the next victims of this ungodly creation?
"It Lives Again" stars Fredric Forrest (Apocalypse Now) and Kathleen Lloyd (The Car) as Eugene and Jody Scott, a young couple expecting their first baby. What they don't know is the government has been keeping tabs on them, as test results, provided by their doctor, indicate their pregnancy may result in the same sort of freakish horror experienced by the Davis couple of the first film, an experience shared by a growing number of couples. The official reaction is to put the babies down at birth, but an underground movement has developed, one intended to save these babies, as to study and learn from them. Are they truly the next step in human evolution, as some think, or are they the result of some strange, unforeseen side effect to various over the counter drugs used by millions of people everyday? Returning from the first film is John P. Ryan as Frank Davis, father of the first freaky infant, and deeply involved with the underground movement to save the babies. Also appearing is John Mallory (The Godfather) as Mr. Mallory, a man working with the government, as he has a personal interest in seeing these nasty creatures put down.
In "It's Alive III: Island of the Alive", the story continues, this time on a much larger scale, as now the case of the freaky babies goes to court, as the government tries to justify its' policy of killing these creatures at birth, while Stephen Jarvis (Michael Moriarty), father to one of the creepy crawlers tries to save his young son's life. His impassioned plea ultimately results in a stay of execution for his son and others, but on the condition that the abhorrent children are exiled to a secluded, uninhabited island where they shall live out the rest of their natural lives, a threat to no one, that is until a small group, including Jarvis, decide to travel to the island, finding that, due to an accelerated growth rate, the babies are now adults...reproductive adults.
