It Lives Again (1978)

(On Cable TV, November 2022) Any Larry Cohen film is usually a trip, and It Lives Again doesn’t disappoint—especially how it arrives with built-in high expectations. As a sequel to the over-the-top killer-baby horror film It Lives, this follow-up had to match the first film’s craziness and develop it further. The clear answer was to throw in more killer babies—three of them—and to double down on the social commentary, government conspiracies and environmental anxiety. There are also some in-your-face late-1970s signifiers that work as entertainment in the first half of the film. It’s certainly not all that good (a few lulls, a scattered theme, some missed opportunities) and it doesn’t really qualify as horrifying due to its inherent silliness, but It Lives Again is weird enough, crazy enough and darkly funny enough to qualify as a passable experience—and it fits well with much of writer-director Cohen’s filmography at the time.