User Reviews

This film was included on a DVD along with another wretched American-International release, YEAR 2889. Both were made by a company called Azalea Pictures--who produced only about a dozen films and several of them were even worse than these two!! MARS NEED WOMEN and ZONTAR: THE THING FROM VENUS actually manage to be even worse!! Of the two film on the disk, IT'S ALIVE is definitely the better film--but this is like comparing the Black Plague to Ebola--they're both rather nasty!

A couple from New York gets lost in the Ozarks (that probably happens all the time) and wander down the wrong road. When they meet up with a guy who offers to help, he turns out to be a maniac who wants to feed him to his "pet"--a primordial creature who is seemingly indestructible. Most of the film they are kept locked in a cave and it does manage to have some genuinely scary moments--until you see the creature! Instead of causing panic or screams, most who see it would probably laugh out loud as it looks as if they spent about $30 assembling a costume out of stuff they found lying around the house or in a junk shop! It's too bad, as apart from the 'monster', the film has a scary atmosphere and a certain low-budget charm. In particular, the first victim of the monster is someone who is such a jerk that the audience will no doubt enjoy this scene much more than if it had just been the stereotypical victim. Still, this isn't enough to salvage the film. It still has the look of a 4th-rate drive-in film--the type movie that makes Roger Corman's old horror films look like classics!

Worth a peek if you are a fan of bad films--otherwise see it at your own risk.

This movie was extremely disturbing to me when I first saw it as a kid. Early 70's, late night "Creature Features"! The stock music that Larry Buchanan always used in his movies contributed a lot. But what really disturbed me the most was Billy Thurman's loony character. He physically resembled an uncle of mine! That was really creepy! Considering my uncle is a nice guy. The monster was hokey as hell, but still creeped me out.(Hey! I was 10 years old!) The real monster though, was Bill Thurman's character. He played it with his usual "intensity", and it was scary! No, it will never go down in history as a "classic", but I would like to have it on DVD, to bring back that 10 year old. Just so he can laugh at it now!

In yet another Larry Buchanan Z-grade train-wreck of a movie, "It's Alive" is about three people who get lost and wind up as captives of a deranged farmer. The whacko farmer locks them up in his cave exhibition, along with his lizard-man monster, to be served up as dinner for the farmer's green man-beast critter.

How is it that Larry Buchanan funded these rabidly bad movies? As with other films he directed, "It's Alive" suffers from bad dialog, bad acting, bad editing, bad lighting, bad stock music... you name it, it's bad. So bad that it's strangely fun to watch, though. It has a lot of the same themes as Manos: The Hands of Fate but it isn't nearly as mind-numbingly painful as Manos. If you're into bad sci-fi / horror flicks like me, then by all means waste an hour and a half of your life and watch "It's Alive". It's too bad they didn't have the Razzy Awards back in 1969 - Larry Buchanan would have certainly been a contender for worst director.

I give this movie 1 star, but I mean it in a good way. ;-) How do you rate a hideously awful movie you have so much fun watching? It makes "Plan 9" look good. It makes "Manos" -- okay, never mind, not Manos. "Eegah" maybe, but not "Manos." This is one for the MST3K crowd. My brother and I had stumbled across it on TV many years ago. It was by far the worst movie we had seen up to that point, and we cracked up all the way through it.

Years passed, and we had completely forgotten its title. I was on a slow quest to try to find the title again. Finally, finally, I described it in an online forum (before IMDb) and someone told me the title. The next quest was to find a copy. Time passed, and my lovely bride got me the DVD as a gift. We had to share it with our horrible-movie-watching gang.

its alive!not to be confused with Larry Cohen's;its alive about the mutant baby.is a bizarre low budget movie about a reptile loving farmer (bill Thurman)who has a tourist trap in the south with snakes and lizards.and something he keeps in a cave,a bizarre monster that looks like one of the creatures from horror of party beach minus the sausages. well some travelers happen along(tommy kirk,Shirley bonne)and stumble on the demented farmers secret.i saw this on TV very late at night as a teen and found it kind of creepy and unsettling,now i watch it and find it very funny and silly.it was made by Larry Buchanan who did many remakes of roger corman and American international pictures.this was one of the better ones.bill Thurman starred in all of Buchanan's monster films.i have to say this movie is so bad its good.the monster is hilarious.i believe this was done on a ultra low budget.5 out of 10.

Once again Larry Buchannan proves he is king of the completely incompetent.He can't direct even a descent scene,can't write one coherent line of dialogue,can't even get a decent actor to give a believable performance.It still amazes me that he was able to direct twenty nine features.Was he independently wealthy?He must have been,for who would have continuously funded this lunatic moron.

This feature has as its lead,Tommy Kirk,who starred in many early sixties Disney flicks,including Swiss Family Robinson.He is supposedly some sort of paleontologist,who is out in the field,doing who knows what,and is interrupted by a couple who is lost.he directs them to the home of this complete lunatic,who locks them up in this cave/exhibit.They apparently are to be food for some prehistoric lizard/man.Kirk,we later find out,knew of these creatures(he's a paleontologist stupid).It might possibly been an OK b movie had it not been incompetently written,badly acted,and terribly directed.

My favorite scene,is where the housekeeper tells of how he(the crazy owner)tortured her(its told in flashback),by locking her in a heated room ,with a comfortable bed,three meals a day,and where he awakens her daily by blowing a whistle in her ear(can you imagine,I cringe just thinking about it).

This movie was supposed to be a horror film.But instead,it was just a horrible film.Tommy Kirk,I believe you really tried,but I don't think that Tom Hanks,Hillary Swank,and even Nicholson could have saved this film.The only positive thing I can say about it,is that at least its better than Eye Creatures.rp

Larry Buchannan makes Ed Wood look like Preston Sturges but to his credit he conned his way into making more films and having them bought and seen on late night than Wood ever dreamt of.

If you've seen Zontar The Thing From Venus or Curse Of THe Swamp Creature you've basically seen the monster in one form or another since they're all culled from the same suit. One has a top fin,one doesn't,one is just a mask and hands and another is a full suit. Although the creature here is supposed to be a dinosaur man you don't get the feeling that it's supposed to be twenty feet tall until the mad farmer tells you it's twenty feet tall.

As others have stated this is solely a flick for those that are into cinematic badness and seeing every monster movie possible no matter what.The flashback scenes of torture with the chasing and the whistle wake ups are indeed a hilarious highlight.

The nominal star of the picture,Tommy Kirk is devoid of his child star perkiness which coasted him through the mousketeer and beach party days and plays his part with aa annoying monotone that clearly shows the depression and alcoholism setting in for good.

There are about ten minutes of good chuckles in the film but it's really not worth watching without the bots or drunken pals to riff on it unless you're really bored.

Be warned,that if you absolutely have to see the monster in action,it doesn't show up until the final three minutes and then it's kaput!

If you gotta see one Larry Buchannan picture go with The Eye Creatures or Goodbye Norma Jean. He died just recently at the beginning of 2007

When I saw that "It's Alive" was scheduled for a late night broadcast, I set the DVR, expecting to enjoy the 1974 "monster baby" B-movie of the same name. Initially I was annoyed to see that what I had recorded was a different flick, but if you like bad sci-fi, it turns out that this one has its own low-budget charms.

From the super-cheap look of the opening minutes, I fully expected to be amused by the appearance of creature, and was not disappointed. They really outdid themselves on this one; I've seen scarier (although similar) piñatas. Although it was clearly just a guy in a really bad monster suit --we're talking "Creature From the Haunted Sea" caliber here-- one split screen shot and a single line of dialogue reveal that the monster was apparently some 40 to 50 feet tall. Must be pretty cramped down in that cave. (Bad as it was though, to his penny-pinching credit, director Larry Buchanan was actually re-using the costume from his earlier movie "Creature of Destruction." The effects budgets of TWO movies to work with, and it still looks like an ill-tempered oriental goldfish... THAT's cheap!)

Buchanan (who I read has made several movies of the same dubious quality) also made the most of his meager casting budget. Has-been Tommy Kirk, several years after his role as the middle brother of the "Swiss Family Robinson," must have been getting pretty desperate by the time his agent dropped this steaming pile on his desk eight years later. He plugs along bravely as Wayne the paleontologist, and displays what could almost be called acting, although a gunshot wound he suffers is eventually either forgotten or ignored by the writer.

If Corveth Ousterhouse's very name doesn't make you want to slap him, his performance as monster snack #1 sure will. His character, Norman Sterns, is an unrelenting jackass from the first scene to his last, and no one (even his wife) seems too upset when he gets gobbled up by the "masasaurus." Wisely, Ousterouse decided to give up acting after this, his only film.

Speaking of the wife, Shirley Bonne stars as Mrs. Stern, who is so torn up by his getting eaten that one day after his death she is already laughing and making jokes about becoming a paleontologist's wife. "How terrible that Norman was killed by the creature. So tell me, Wayne, are you single?" Sharp-eyed Star Trek fans will recognize Bonne as Captain Kirk's past girlfriend "Ruth" from the 1966 Star Trek episode "Shore Leave." It's nice she got some lines this time; better if she learned to say them.

Annabelle Weenick (understandably, she changed her name to MacAdams for this film) a veteran of Buchanan's "In the Year 2889," plays Bella, a backwoods sufferer of Stockholm Syndrome. The most accidentally-hilarious scenes of the whole movie involve her brainwashing. As long as they were stretching for time, it would have been nice if they could have worked in at least one more example of the mind games her captor played; one mouse on a plate and a whistle in the face, and she's ready to be an accomplice to occasional kidnapping and murder.

This brings us to the real star of the show, another veteran of Buchanan schlock: Bill Thurman in a dual role (there's that pesky budget again!) as both Greely, and Greely's reptilian monster. Perpetually perspiring, he gleefully hams his way through almost every scene, whether locking up unwary tourists for the creature's rare dinner, discussing his thoughts on the food chain and the circle of life, or devising new tortures for poor Bella before skipping away giggling.

This movie was made for TV, and the minimum running time mandated by that constraint really shows. Although clocking in at only 85 minutes, probably a quarter of the time is comprised of interminable scenes of winding roads, winding caverns, or winding exposition. Still, if you like B-movies (maybe a C-minus would be more accurate) and have the fast-forward button ready, "It's Alive" can be a fun way to kill an hour or so.

Despite its promising title, "IT'S ALIVE!" is dead on arrival. This late sixties TV creature feature opens with five full minutes of driving footage. Inside the car, outside of the car, just a bunch of driving. It tries to salvage the viewers' interest with an ominous voice-over narration that rambles about rain and sunshine. In the middle of this meaningless driving montage, we're treated to the opening credits where I discovered the one interesting thing about this movie. There's a paleontology credit, and it's attributed to Skip Frazee. A quick glimpse at Mr. Frazee's background and we see he was a sound engineer in the production world with no other paleontological credits before or after "IT'S ALIVE!". This makes sense because the movie's paleontology is limited to the revelation that the creature is a dinosaur and it should've gone extinct 65 million years ago. Good job. When the movie finally kicks into gear, we're introduced to the world's most irritating married couple, Norman (Corveth Ousterhouse) and Leilla (Shirley Boone) Sterns. The two are travelling across the country by car because Leilla loves to see America up close, and Norman never refrains from an opportunity to tell her how much he hates it. With night closing in and the gas tank nearly empty, Norman and Leilla are forced to pull into isolated reptile house tourist attraction in the middle of the woods. Here we're introduced to Greely (Bill Thurman) and his downtrodden housekeeper Bella (Annabelle Weenick), who harbor a deadly secret.

It doesn't take long for things to get weird around the Greely home. He acts shady from the moment he meets the miserable couple and, despite their bad feelings about their situation, they agree to a tour of Greely's "serpetorium". Greely runs a crappy little zoo that might've charmed mid-twentieth century America but has fallen out of favor since a new highway derailed his business. He's proud of his little operation, explaining that he caught all of the animals himself (where'd he catch a monkey in middle America?). His pride and joy rests deep underground in a cavern and he invites the couple down to view it, but surprise! It's a trap. Norman and Leilla find themselves imprisoned in the cavern with helpful paleontologist Wayne (Tommy Kirk), who had been taken captive when he stopped by Greely's to check in on the Sterns' auto troubles. Wayne plots their escape while Norman continues to prattle about how stupid he believes his wife to be, and the trio explore deeper into the cavern where they encounter Greely's favorite pet: a "dinosaur" monster. This monster costume is priceless. Wayne tries to identify the dinosaur species but it was nothing I'm familiar with and I'm sure it was bogus. The creature is your typical rubber suit, but it's got bulbous ping-pong ball eyes and rubber teeth that wobble and bounce in all directions. It shambles toward its victims and, since its face can't articulate, it kills them off screen and we're spared the action.

When that monster appeared, my views on this movie pulled a total about-face. I was willing to forgive the driving montage and unlikeable characters if this monster was going to go on a murder spree. But it never does. It takes its victim and then disappears back into its mud puddle until the final moments of the film. The remaining forty minutes are filler and garbage with yet another driving montage (not as long as the first) and then more than twenty minutes of flashing back to when Bella was taken captive. We spend a sizeable chunk of this crappy movie learning how Bella was a teacher who had the bad fortune to stop at Greely's and became his tormented house slave. None of it has anything to do with the dinosaur monster. Excuse me, "IT'S ALIVE" and director Larry Buchanan, but we came for the dinosaur monster. Give us the dinosaur monster and stop wasting our time. Maybe instead of unnecessary backstory, we could've used that time to show an escape attempt or something to up the tension. There are at least two occasions when Wayne, Leilla, and Norman could've jumped Bella (if she was uncooperative) and escaped through the access hatch she uses in the house's cellar. No, their plans are way more stupid. "IT'S ALIVE!" is seventy-five minutes of mindless filler with maybe (if I'm being generous) five minutes of worthwhile content. The dinosaur is severely underused, the characters are morons, and we didn't get nearly enough of Greely's fantastic maniacal laughter. That laugh and the dinosaur costume are the only reasons anyone should try and watch this movie, and there's barely enough of either in there to justify it.

It's Alive is sitting with a horrifically low IMDB rating and when you see the goofy ping pong eyed monster you can entirely understand why.

However, I kind of enjoyed it. And here is where my clear weird taste in movies comes in.

It tells the story of a couple who while driving through the country become lost and seek assistance from a man who runs an obscure show full of various animals on display. When he offers them a tour things turn bad and the man shows his true colours.

The creature though ridiculous looking is barely on screen and that is certainly in the movies favour. Instead we're treated to more of a psychological game between the captor and captives and I found myself fairly engrossed.

Flawed? Absolutely, but I enjoyed it regardless.

The Good:

Overall well constructed

The Bad:

That monster, really?

Some of the music was a tad overwhelming

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Unless told men do not know that lack of food results in death

Texas-based schlockmeister Larry Buchanan strikes again with another no-budget monsterpiece, this time about a bunch of unwary travelers imprisoned by a madman in a cave with a monster in it. All the Buchanan trademarks are there-no plot, inane dialogue that is dubbed into films that were shot silent to save money, the same monster suit he used in several other movies, but what makes this film stand out for me are two things: first that it must be the absolute low point of Tommy Kirk's eclectic career-even though his character does manage to survive a gunshot wound to the chest simply by putting a handkerchief on it and bravely soldiering on-and secondly the fact that I watched this maybe 5 times on the Saturday night creature feature (It was the 70's in Southern Illinois, what can I say?) before I realized that the monster was supposed to be 50 feet tall! The same shot shown about 4 times of it walking through a tunnel and one really horrible forced-perspective shot offer no clue as to its actual size! Worth seeing one time for bad-movie completists only.

Absolutely cheap,bizarre tale of a madman who owns a roadside attraction and likes to feed tourists to his pet monster in a cave.Tommy Kirk plays a forest ranger who helps the young wife of a cranky older man escape.One of the madman's servants is a school teacher who was kept prisoner and forced to work for him.In flashbacks,she recalls how she was trapped.There's even a rehash of the old rat on the dinner plate gag from "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane."When the monster finally makes it's appearance,it's a guy in a cheap monster suit,complete with ping pong eyes.There's no real special effects.The monster just stands closer to the camera to make it look bigger.The suit also was reused from"Creatures of Destruction," a Larry Buchanan remake of "The She Creature."This film is good for a few laughs but no thrills.Watch at your own risk.

"Plan Nine From Outer Space" has gotten a lot of press for being the all-time worst film ever made.

That, of course, was before "It's Alive" was foisted off on the public. Kirk can't save it -- no one can. It's one of those that is so bad, it's actually fun to watch. Just when you think it has reached the depths of incompetence, it surprises you with a new low.

It is tempting to compare "the couple" in "It's Alive" with Rocky Horror Picture Show's lovebirds -- at least the two movies START the same way. But the couple in this monster(ous) movie seem to have nothing in common with each other. Their relationship rings false from Frame One, so when one or the other of them gets into trouble later, no one cares, least of all the audience.

Terrible direction, acting, script, creature suit and glaringly bad lighting! This one loses in all categories.

I don't think I'm too far off in my guess that the creators of this movie had seen 'MANOS' THE HANDS OF FATE and thought to themselves, "Hey, I could do better than that!" The very basic plot is similar (tourists take a wrong turn and are trapped in an isolated house where very strange things are happening), and other elements are almost lifted directly from 'MANOS' (the opening drive through meandering back roads and the quizzical "THE END?" at the film's conclusion immediately come to mind). However instead of Torgo (who watches the house while The Master is away), we have Mr. Greely, proprietor of a small roadside reptile zoo and caverns. His pride and joy is a prehistoric monster he apparently discovered (and befriended) in the caverns. He apparently becomes unhinged when a brand new main highway diverts tourists away from his roadside attraction. From there he kidnaps unsuspecting tourists and traps them in his cave, with the goal of ultimately feeding them to his prehistoric creature. Also on hand is a meek, subservient woman named Bella, a vacationing schoolteacher who fell into Greely's trap two years earlier (although in a flashback we see her driving the current year's model Chevy Impala... continuity alert!!!!!). She then succumbs to Greely by helping him lure tourists into his trap. The "prehistoric monster" is a sight to behold (green rubbery skin and ping-pong ball eyes), and mercifully its screen time is relatively brief. Although said monster is quite laughable, the movie does have its genuinely creepy moments, mainly coming from Greely terrorizing Bella shortly after her arrival; the extremely low budget feel of the movie actually provides a pretty good chill effect to Greely's deranged actions towards Bella. Aside from that though, this is one of those cheesy, corny and hokey flicks that is perfect for a late-night bad movie festival.

I'm a sucker for a crappy monster movie, but even I have my limits; 'It's Alive!', a made for TV effort from schlockmeister Larry Buchanan, goes beyond those limits and then some...

Bill Thurman plays Greely, owner of a back-road menagerie whose most unusual attraction is a prehistoric monster (also played by Thurman) that is kept hidden in a cave and fed on unsuspecting passers-by. When married couple Leilla and Norman Sterns (Shirley Bonne and Corveth Ousterhouse) take a wrong turn and wind up at Greely's place, they soon find themselves added to the monster's menu, along with unfortunate paleontologist Wayne (Tommy Kirk). Greely's petrified housekeeper Bella (Annabelle Weenick) is their only hope of escape, but can they convince the woman to risk her life to help?

With a really bad rubber monster and an amazingly OTT performance from Thurman (a master of the maniacal laugh), this could have been an unintentionally funny piece of Z-grade trash, but the dreary script, wooden acting from everyone else, and utterly lifeless direction from Buchanan ensures that no-one is laughing. Technically shoddy from start to finish, this is a real test of patience, the worst parts being a prolonged flashback filmed with no sound, but given a dreadful voice-over by Weenick, and a slow-motion chase scene through the woods. 80 minutes have rarely seemed so long.

What can I say??? The WORST (and I mean WORST) film ever made!!! (At least of the ones I've seen). Slow, boring, the monster looks what it is; a rubber model!!!

Did this film actually get into the cinemas???

How can ANYBODY watch such JUNK!!!

Do me a favour, destroy every copy of this film in the world, folks...

This movie is typical among Larry Buchanan's Azalea films, which means it is dull and interminable and saddled with a startlingly low budget...most viewers will find it almost unwatchable. However, those who enjoy these same attributes will find it rewarding. Two things stand out in my memory:

1. The monster suit is outstandingly cheap and silly... you'll think it's a parody of cheap monster movie monsters!

2. There's a scene where the villain chases and beats up his wife... apparently planned in slow motion, but the camera wouldn't work, so they just do the scene v-e-e-e-r-r-r-y s-l-o-o-o-w-w-l-y!

my mom loved this movie, and would watch it all time when i was growing up. to me it was just another goofy horror film. recently i went to visit my mom and she had me watch it again, as we were planning to visit onyx cave in Arkansas where the movie was filmed. i must say i had a great time watching it again, and visiting the cave we asked about the movie, the man behind the counter pulled out an old photo album with pictures from when they made the movie. i just had a blast. what a fun movie! i must say if you don't like old goofy horror, then this is not the movie for you. going to see where it was filmed gave me a new respect for it.

Strange film. It's main focus is about the sadistic madman farmer & the people he has held captive and not so much the rarely seen creature. Most all of the talk in the film was about, you guessed it, the crazy farmer. Honestly this film would have been so much better if the creature part was left out of it. The farmer could have easily tricked them into the cave/cell without the rare bits of the monster part of the show. And because the creature is so rare in this film, it's hard to call this movie a creature feature - it's mainly a madman feature.

The movie a bit slow but it's not the type that seems to drag and drag - only in a small handful of places does it drag forever but it'll pick back up to the even slower pace instead of the dragging pace.

I actually liked this film better than I expected and it's not what I was expecting either - this one is sorta a surprise.

6/10

This film is so boring I had actually forgotten I'd watched it. Don't get me wrong, I love a crappy movie, but some of these older crappy movies are so sluggish and uneventful they send me off to sleep. Manos did exactly the same thing.

This one has an annoying couple being held captive by Bill Thurman (from the better Keep my Grave Open and Creature of Black Lake and the exactly the same crappy Night Fright), who is looking after some terrible looking monster in his cave basement. That's the story for the most part, but you'll clawing your eyes out waiting for something interesting to happen.

Yeah, it's one of those 'bad' movies...but it's also a bad movie.

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