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1 item from 2012

19 May 2012 7:00 AM, PDT | GreenCine Daily | See recent GreenCine Daily news »

by Nick Schager

[This week's "Retro Active" pick is inspired by the star-studded babies-'a-poppin' rom-com What to Expect When You're Expecting.]

Never has a movie made having children seem less appealing than It's Alive, Larry Cohen's terrifying examination of personal and parental anxieties. Cohen's genre gem is unquestionably a horror film, but its mutant-monster terror is its least scary element, not to mention the one Cohen cares least about, a fact made plain from a prolonged introduction sequence in which Lenore (Sharon Farrell) awakens in the middle of the night to inform husband Frank (John Ryan) that the baby is ready to go. That news instigates preparations to depart to the hospital, including getting dressed, packing up clothes, and waking their 11-year-old son Chris (Daniel Holzman) and taking him to stay with friend Charley (William Wellman Jr.), arrangements that Cohen depicts with a laid-back sweetness—be it Frank sticking a cat in slumbering Chris' face, or affecting a jokey Western patois as they drive through the night »

1 item from 2012