Do horror films without a metaphor have any value?
I’m sure that some of them do, but I would imagine only very few. I’m certain they do hold value for those viewers who will tolerate a lack of serious subject matter or thematic depth and exchange it for mindless entertainment. Of course, people often read metaphors into stories that aren’t always present or intended. That’s okay, too. At least it means they are paying attention.
Is the central metaphor of It Lives Again more latent than manifest when compared to It’s Alive?
I think it’s still there at the same level for the audience member, who wants to look a little deeper and engage with all of that stuff. It Lives Again is probably more of a continuation of the same ideas and themes found in It’s Alive, but expanded slightly to include other things: other characters, other situations, and of course other monsters. It’s Alive is a little more interior than It Lives Again, in that the focus of the original is primarily centred on the Davis family. It Lives Again still has a young family at its heart, but I wanted to explore what the wider effects and consequences the monster babies would have on society as more and more of these creatures were being born every day. Those new elements to the story probably invite other meanings, but I didn’t want to pitch the second movie too close to the first one.
You didn’t want to repeat yourself?
No, because there would have been no point in doing that. It wouldn’t be interesting for the audience and it certainly wouldn’t be creatively satisfying for me, although it would have probably been a lot easier to just regurgitate exactly what had come before. When you are doing a sequel, you have to push the story further and explore some new areas and I think It Lives Again succeeds in doing that. It’s very progressive. There must always be a strong creative incentive for making a sequel that moves beyond simply making a little more dough, although the money is always nice, of course.
The usual approach with sequels to monster movies is to either make the monsters physically bigger and more imposing, or, as in the case of James Cameron’s Aliens, to increase their numbers.
Well, the ad campaign for It Lives Again basically stated “Now there are three of them…” and we saw three cribs instead of one. For the sequel, Rick Baker created two males and a female, whereas we only had one monster baby in the first film. I liked the idea in It’s Alive that this rather small, lonesome creature was creating such havoc, death, and fear in a big city. As I said, the idea with It Lives Again was that there were now more women giving birth to these monsters and it was becoming a more widespread problem — an epidemic. Naturally, you have to raise the stakes somewhat in a sequel because you don’t want to give the audience a duplicate version of the original film. But you also don’t want to change things beyond recognition because some people won’t find those familiar aspects that they may have found appealing the first time around. That’s always the tricky part of doing a sequel. You have to play around with the characters and the story, and, of course, with the monsters. Rick’s work was so good, there was always a temptation to reveal more of it and have the monsters doing a variety of different things they didn’t do in the first film. But I still kept them mostly off-screen or shot them in a way that made them somewhat elusive.
Yes, the monsters are occasionally reflected in glass, or shot out-of-focus, or are situated in the shadows, or partially obscured behind the bars of their cage.
Yeah, and I also re-used the double-image point-of-view shots that had worked so well in It’s Alive. I thought they were particularly effective in generating suspense and tension. You’ll also notice that I reference Val Lewton’s Cat People [1] in the scene where one character takes a swim alone at night, and once again that’s my swimming pool, as something is crawling about in the darkness. In Cat People, the girl is in a darkened pool and hears something, but you don’t see the creature moving around in the shadows. You still get a strong indication of its presence and movement, and I always thought that scene was very scary. I wanted to create that same kind of fear in my sequence, and so that was my very sincere tribute to Val Lewton. I think Lewton was the greatest exponent of the rather unfashionable idea that often what you don’t see is far more unsettling and effective than what you do see.
It Lives Again begins with Frank Davis gate-crashing a baby shower as he calmly confronts the unwitting parents with the news that their unborn child is a mutant. In your mind, how has Frank’s character developed from the first film?
I see Frank as making a natural progression from the closing events of It’s Alive, where we last saw him failing to save his son from the cops. In the sequel, Frank is now intent on warning and helping other parents who are about to experience the same tragedy that befell his own family. He is an advocate of their rights and is dedicated to doing what he thinks is the right thing: shielding and nurturing the monster babies from those who would do them harm, namely the authorities. Some of the more perceptive and thoughtful critics commented that It Lives Again was one of the first horror films to reverse and subvert the standard premise of most monster movies. What I mean is in the vast majority of horror films, the authorities are always trying to find the monster and destroy it. It Lives Again features characters like Frank, who are working to save the monster and protect it from doing harm to others and to itself. I think that was a highly unusual and revolutionary approach to take with the material. You just didn’t see that concept being executed in other horror movies, and I was delighted that some of the critics recognized that.
The expectant parents are played by Frederic Forest and Kathleen Lloyd —
[Interrupting] Two very good actors. They really brought that sense of desperate tragedy, which was crucial to the story working. I needed two solid actors to play those parts because the audience had to invest in them, as they had done with John P. Ryan and Sharon Farrell in It’s Alive. Without that strong emotional center, the events of the film are not nearly as affecting and disturbing. It all plays very naturally, I think. I mean, the relationship between Frederic and Kathleen is fraught with tension and stress, as any relationship would be in that kind of situation. Their lives are changed irrevocably, just as the Davis family were forever changed by their experiences in It’s Alive.
As Forest says when Lloyd pines for the normalcy of their previous life, “We are not going to be the same people anymore.”
Exactly. There is also the generational issue between Kathleen’s character and her own mother who plants a bug on her and betrays her whereabouts to the FBI. This tension exists between them, as it so often does in relationships between mothers and daughters, sometimes with disastrous results and a terrible cost. Kathleen must then later betray her own child as she has been betrayed, which gives the story and the characters some very credible layers. It all kind of comes full circle, the sins of the parents coming down on the children. Again, that situation is very authentic and we can identify with these people’s emotional lives.
Were Forest and Lloyd two actors you admired before making It Lives Again?
Yeah, particularly Frederic Forest. I had seen him in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation and I liked that movie and his performance in it. Frederic worked with Coppola several times more after It Lives Again, in Apocalypse Now and One From the Heart. He was Coppola’s favorite actor for a time and also starred in the title role of Hammett, a film about Dashiell Hammett, the author of The Maltese Falcon and other hardboiled detective books. Frederic was also originally supposed to be in one of The Godfather movies, too. He told me that, unfortunately, he had done another gangster picture shortly before The Godfather and that had negated his chances of being in Coppola’s historic film. [2] I don’t know if it was the part that Robert De Niro ended up getting, but of course, De Niro won an Academy Award for that role. As for Kathleen Lloyd, I seem to remember that she was somewhat reluctant to do a horror film. That’s my memory of it, anyway.
Which is interesting, as Lloyd had only recently appeared in Ell
iot Silverstein’s The Car (1977), the year before It Lives Again was made.
Yeah, and maybe that’s what it was all about. I don’t know. Kathleen had just done the movie about a killer car, but at that time she had also recently appeared opposite Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando in The Missouri Breaks. [3] She more than held her own in that film, playing alongside such heavyweight talents as Nicholson and Brando, who were both basically trying to act each other off the screen in that picture. I don’t know what Kathleen’s problem with horror movies was. They are just a lot of fun, kind of an antidote to reality. I think Kathleen was maybe a little dubious about revisiting the horror genre again so swiftly, but she gave a terrific performance in It Lives Again and was committed to the picture. Frankly, I always thought that Kathleen had the potential to be a big movie star and she was being viewed by some as “the new Jane Fonda.” Unfortunately, it just didn’t happen for her. That’s an old story in Hollywood, but you never can tell what will happen in this business. That is part of the inexhaustible mystery of cinema and stardom: nobody knows anything. If they did, we’d all be able to reproduce that magic every single time.
So, who decides whether somebody becomes a star or is relegated to character actor status and supporting roles? Or is it all just random chance?
Well, that’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it? Sometimes talent isn’t enough and you really need luck. Sometimes it’s the audience that decides who becomes a star and who doesn’t. I mean, people either flock in their droves to see a picture, or they don’t and it bombs. That actor can then become poison in some studio executives’ minds. Even when a movie sometimes hits big or has a lot of visibility, it still doesn’t mean that the lead actor is going to become a big star. I think it’s also important that if an actor has a big hit they must have another big movie to follow it. I don’t think that ever happened for Kathleen. I don’t believe The Missouri Breaks was a massive hit and neither was The Car or It Lives Again. Here’s another example: many years after we did It Lives Again, I made Original Gangstas with Pam Grier. Pam went on to do Jackie Brown with Quentin Tarantino as her next film, which was probably the biggest movie she ever did. Unfortunately, I don’t think there was a follow-up to that picture for her. It wasn’t like she got a lot of big movies with starring roles afterwards. Unlike what happened to John Travolta, who became a huge star again after appearing in Pulp Fiction, nothing really happened for Pam Grier or Robert Forster for that matter. They didn’t become stars as you would define a true movie star.
Forster did get the Oscar nomination for Jackie Brown.
Yeah, but it didn’t do him any good. For years after, Bob just went back to doing B-movies again. It was the same thing with David Carradine after Kill Bill. You would have thought that after his performance, David would have gotten some A-class movies. I mean, he was the “Bill” in Kill Bill, after all, and was very good in that picture. When I spoke to David after the film came out, he said, “Aw, they are still just offering me the same kind of crap I was doing before!” Unfortunately, David always took every job that was ever offered to him, so he very quickly sank back down into the lower echelons of filmmaking again, you know, the real cheap exploitation pictures that hardly ever play in the theaters anymore and get dumped onto DVD and Blu-ray. Some of these films were never released at all, so it was kind of sad to see that opportunity just drift away for David.
Another unmistakable face in It Lives Again is that of Eddie Constantine who plays Dr. Forrest, a sympathiser to the monsters’ cause.
People are always surprised when Eddie Constantine suddenly turns up in the movie. They don’t see that coming. I was delighted to have Eddie play a part in It Lives Again as he was an accomplished B-picture actor. He was a very distinctive-looking guy and had this wonderfully rugged face. He was a big international star, particularly in France, and was famous for playing the role of a detective named Lemmy Caution [4] in a series of well-received pictures. He had worked with Jean-Luc Goddard on Alphaville which is still considered to be one of the great movies of world cinema. [5] Eddie had this interesting screen presence that I liked. By the time we were making It Lives Again, his greatest successes were well behind him. He had returned to the United States and was now looking to re-establish himself as an actor. I met Eddie at a party at the Beverly Hills Hotel, immediately liked him, and invited him to my home. I introduced him to my wife’s sister and he actually ended up marrying her and becoming my brother-in-law. I thought I could help Eddie revive his career, and so I cast him in It Lives Again. When Eddie was here in America he wasn’t getting any jobs, so I thought I’d give him a job in my movie. Eddie has one of those faces that people instantly recognize. I remember that one day I was over in France with him and we were both walking along the Champs-Élysées in Paris. All these people suddenly started shouting out Eddie’s name and swarmed around him. Everybody — everybody — mobbed him and couldn’t wait to say hello to him. I found it slightly ironic that Eddie couldn’t get a job, but everybody knew exactly who he was and enjoyed his movies. People just loved him. He and my wife’s sister later got divorced and Eddie eventually returned to France, but I was very happy to have known him.
Where did you shoot the film?
We shot It Lives Again in eighteen days in Tucson, Arizona, and also back in Los Angeles. We also shot part of the movie at my house, which doubled as the private children’s school which has been converted into a secret sanctuary for the monsters. Some of the interiors were also shot in the basement of the Harold Lloyd estate up off Benedict Canyon, which I believe was up for rent at the time. I must say that the days we spent shooting in Tucson were absolutely wonderful. The people there were incredibly warm and friendly. I loved Tucson and I think Tucson loved us back. It’s always good when a movie company arrives in a town or city, because it always boosts the local economy. Tucson had offered us the use of their town, their citizens, and their entire police force. The city was basically willing to give me anything that I required. The level of cooperation and compliance they showed us was incredible, it really was. Naturally, the temptation was to take everything they offered and more, but I do think the allure of doing that actually hurt the movie in one or two scenes.
Which scenes in particular are you referring to?
Well, there are far too many cops in some of the scenes, particularly the sequence where the parents arrive at the hospital for the birth of the baby and you have all these cops with guns storming the delivery room. Although we had established in It’s Alive how incredibly dangerous and violent the monster baby was, it still seemed a little absurd and excessive to have as many cops as we did. We had them patrolling the place with fire-arms and support vehicles with flashing lights. It was frankly ludicrous, but the authorities were willing to put the entire city at our disposal and I wasn’t going to argue with them. I’ve often found that when you arrive in a town with a crew and are making a picture, the townsfolk will pretty much give you anything you want. There’s just something about the whole moviemaking process that people find exciting, magical, and important. They suddenly feel compelled to give you anything you need or ask for, simply because a little stardust has gotten in their eyes.
You had to fire your original director of photography as you were apparently in daily conflict with each other. What exactly caused these disputes to arise?
Well, it was a very unfortunate thing that ultimately turned into a very fortunate thing. It’s true that I didn’t get along with some of the crew I was working with in Tucson. They didn’t appreciate my way of working — the loose, improvisational approach that has served me well on a lot of movies. The first cameraman I hired for It Lives Again was the kind of DP that wanted everything rigorously planned ahead of time, with no room for spontaneity and exploration. He wanted shot lists and everything, and I just couldn’t give it to him. I asked him to hang in there with me and just go along with what we were doing, but he was extremely resistant. I had my own methods and he clearly foun
d them intolerable. He started getting very irritable and uncomfortable, and was openly criticizing me in front of the whole crew. He simply couldn’t align himself with my improvisational style, and so he left the production. That put me in the calamitous situation of having nobody to shoot the film. I remember that this was on a Tuesday and I desperately needed a new cameraman or else disaster was imminent. I immediately got on the phone and called Daniel Pearl, whom I’d recently met and was impressed with. Daniel had shot The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for Tobe Hooper and was an excellent DP. I asked Daniel: “Is there any way you can get here for tomorrow morning by eight o’clock?” I said this more in hope than expectation but, incredibly, he and his crew arrived later that night in Tucson and really saved my ass. It could have been catastrophic, but it all worked out. We were then able to continue shooting and I enjoyed working with Daniel very much. It was the beginning of a very successful working relationship that continued on several of my movies.
Larry Cohen Page 27