It's Alive (10 Fangirls in Search of a Moral)

[louisedennis]

I got back from Toronto and headed off straight away for a Primeval weekend in Birmingham where, among other things we watched It's Alive entirely because it had James Murray in it.

I got rather distracted, early on, by lukadreaming's assertion that it had a Christian moral (said useful fact gleaned from the Internet).

Comments

[fredbassett]

LOL! but James Murray was very cute with a beard. *g*

I am most assuredly NOT shallow.

[louisedennis]

Yes but, as you pointed out, disturbingly well-clothed. I'm not sure the beard compensates for much of the rest of it.

[fredbassett]

Less clothes would have been an improvement.

[louisedennis]

Whereas even Andrew Lee-Potts without a shirt couldn't really redeem whatever that film was we only watched 20 minutes of.

[lukadreaming]

Are you sure you don't want a change of career to lecturing Film Studies? *g*

I did warn you said review was off the internet *g*.

Of course the message might have been: "Try to abort your sprog and it turns into spawn of the devil and you will burn in hell (literally)!"

Or maybe not . . .

Poor old Jim Fenner from Bad Girls was never going to see the end of the film . . .

We're going to have to find another James Murray film for you to deconstruct next time, given you've already done Phoenix Blue and It's Alive!

[louisedennis]

Well I don't know that I gave Phoenix Blue my full attention *g*

However I'm sure James Murray has been in no end of bad films... really all you need to do is ply me with wine and suggest there is some sense somewhere if I look hard enough.

[lukadreaming]

Heh! You did pick the plot to bits when the rest of us were paying not the slightest attention to said plot *g*.

Well, we could do you Under the Greenwood Tree. Sons and Lovers. And I think I may even have a copy of Nailing Vienna, where he plays some Cockney wide boy *g*.

[louisedennis]

We also watched Under the Greenwood Tree at the EXPO. In fact we watched all of that and only the pointlessly-standing-on-the-deck-in-no-shirt bits of Phoenix Blue. I recall laughing at the ham peasant acting in Greenwood Tree but the plot was OK, IIRC.

[lil_shepherd]

I haven't see this, but the babies killing people seems perilously like the Living Dead in the Manchester Morgue which I saw at a con many years ago and bits of which remain with me yet...

"Sarge, sarge, the dead people are killing me, sarge."

And that it was all something to do with a device from the Min of Ag and Fish.

[louisedennis]

The Min of Ag and Fish seem like unlikely villains. I'm having some vague memory of a horror film in which the villains turned out to be a similar unlikely government department but the brain is refusing to deliver.

[lukadreaming]

Oh, and They Weren't Married!

[louisedennis]

I felt there were Signs of Repentance which undermined the theory that it was all a Punishment for a Life of Sin.

[joereaves]

There was definitely not enough sex and nudity in It's Alive, sadly.

I believe the moral may well have been meant to abortion=damnation with the fire being a nice allegory for the fires of hell. sadly, the moral does rather fall down when you consider all the many many people the baby killed who had nothing to do with the abortion and the inevitable conclusion that had she just done a better job with the abortion none of this would have happened and as such the moral appears to be that a) birth control is a good thing and b) should you ever try to have an abortion and fail the correct response is to kill the baby at the first opportunity ... Which is a somewhat ethically challenged moral.

[louisedennis]

Assuming there was intended to be a moral, rather than just a hodge-podge of tropes thrown together then yes, it was presumably Abortion is Bad but, as you point out, given the baby wasn't actually aborted...

[lukadreaming]

I think we should possibly vote for the hodge-podge of tropes!

Wonder if the original version of the film sucked so many frogs . . .

[louisedennis]

I got the impression when I went looking that it had vaguely made it into minor cult status. From which I deduce that it is pretty bad but with redeeming features and interest that this one lacked.