237. It's Alive

237. It’s Alive (1969)
Director: Larry Buchanan
From: Sci-Fi Invasion
Watch: archive.org

Three people are captured by a backwoods trapper who plans to feed them to the prehistoric creature he discovered.

Another movie where the blurb really sums it all up. A couple is driving across the country on a road trip because the wife hasn’t been outside of New York City. Her husband, Norman, is a prick. Not just to her, to everyone, so at least he’s consistent. He dies, which is not unexpected or unenjoyable. Before we get there, though, they take a wrong turn while heading for a national park. As they’re running low on gas, they get directions to a farm down the way. When they arrive, the owner says his drum is dry, but the truck will be by any time and invites them in.

And I’m not going to detail this because you know how it goes. The owner is a master trapper and has caught a prehistoric creature. He imprisons the couple and the man who gave them directions, in the cave that leads to the creature’s lair. Norman gets et which, as I noted above, is pleasant so I decided to mention it again, and the other two try to figure out how to escape.

Part of their plan involves Stella, a woman the owner has kept in a state of servile terror for the past two years. She overhears the owner tell the new woman that he might let her take Stella’s place, which is the proverbial straw. Stella tells her story in an extended flashback that only has narration and bed music, no dialogue, not even when Stella and the owner are talking. She agrees to smuggle in dynamite to help them escape, the owner realizes something’s up and doses their coffee, but Stella manage to stand up to the owner as the creature approaches, lights the dynamite, and the couple escapes as the cave collapses. Stella and the owner are dead and the fate of the creature is unknown as the words “THE END?” appear on screen.

So it’s a bad movie. That’s not impressive. What is impressive is just how bad it is. The pleasure of this movie is its incompetence. There’s the long opening sequence of people driving with narration over it. There’s the long middle section that’s a flashback with only narration and bed music. And there’s the monster. Oh my, the monster. It’s the Creature’s nerdy little brother. This monster isn’t threatening the characters, it’s looking for its inhaler.

The movie is a made-for-TV piece by Larry Buchanan who made several low-budget goofball TV horror films, among them Attack of the Eye Creatures, Zontar: The Thing From Venus, and Curse of the Swamp Creature. He’s a seminal figure in the so-bad-it’s-good canon and it feels like he’s a poor man’s Roger Corman.

And if you’re thinking, Roger Corman ain’t pricey, you’re right. Still, generally speaking, Buchanan’s pictures are small, simple affairs that are competent enough to entertain for 80 minutes. It’s Alive is really low-budget, really stripped back, and is a hairsbreadth away from being Manos: The Hands of Fate. In fact, it’s probably films like Buchanan’s that made Harold P. Warren think he could pull off Manos. However, that hairsbreadth matters and it’s the difference of being watchable or unwatchable. This movie gets pretty close to the latter, especially during that extended flashback, but remains on the side of the angels. As a bonus, it’s in the public domain. Unfortunately, my copy has a BS copyright claim stamped on it by Mill Creek claiming it as the “Retromedia Special Edition.” There’s nothing special about this edition. However, someone else found a copy without that vandalism on it and uploaded it to archive.org here. I wouldn’t recommend this for casual viewing because it does get so dull, but it’d be a hoot to riff and maybe even do some interesting editing projects with.