Ask yourself did Tommy Kirk need the money ? Watch for the "kept" female prisoner continually going into the cage to feed the prisoners,while they ask her if she'll open the cage for them. Meanwhile she exits the cage via a door to the house as they watch her leave each time. Bonkers !! She never leaves through the cage door they want her to open. Was this written for and by complete idiots or as a comedy ?

Despite its promising title, "IT'S ALIVE!" is dead on arrival. This late sixties TV creature feature opens with five full minutes of driving footage. Inside the car, outside of the car, just a bunch of driving. It tries to salvage the viewers' interest with an ominous voice-over narration that rambles about rain and sunshine. In the middle of this meaningless driving montage, we're treated to the opening credits where I discovered the one interesting thing about this movie. There's a paleontology credit, and it's attributed to Skip Frazee. A quick glimpse at Mr. Frazee's background and we see he was a sound engineer in the production world with no other paleontological credits before or after "IT'S ALIVE!". This makes sense because the movie's paleontology is limited to the revelation that the creature is a dinosaur and it should've gone extinct 65 million years ago. Good job. When the movie finally kicks into gear, we're introduced to the world's most irritating married couple, Norman (Corveth Ousterhouse) and Leilla (Shirley Boone) Sterns. The two are travelling across the country by car because Leilla loves to see America up close, and Norman never refrains from an opportunity to tell her how much he hates it. With night closing in and the gas tank nearly empty, Norman and Leilla are forced to pull into isolated reptile house tourist attraction in the middle of the woods. Here we're introduced to Greely (Bill Thurman) and his downtrodden housekeeper Bella (Annabelle Weenick), who harbor a deadly secret.It doesn't take long for things to get weird around the Greely home. He acts shady from the moment he meets the miserable couple and, despite their bad feelings about their situation, they agree to a tour of Greely's "serpetorium". Greely runs a crappy little zoo that might've charmed mid-twentieth century America but has fallen out of favor since a new highway derailed his business. He's proud of his little operation, explaining that he caught all of the animals himself (where'd he catch a monkey in middle America?). His pride and joy rests deep underground in a cavern and he invites the couple down to view it, but surprise! It's a trap. Norman and Leilla find themselves imprisoned in the cavern with helpful paleontologist Wayne (Tommy Kirk), who had been taken captive when he stopped by Greely's to check in on the Sterns' auto troubles. Wayne plots their escape while Norman continues to prattle about how stupid he believes his wife to be, and the trio explore deeper into the cavern where they encounter Greely's favorite pet: a "dinosaur" monster. This monster costume is priceless. Wayne tries to identify the dinosaur species but it was nothing I'm familiar with and I'm sure it was bogus. The creature is your typical rubber suit, but it's got bulbous ping-pong ball eyes and rubber teeth that wobble and bounce in all directions. It shambles toward its victims and, since its face can't articulate, it kills them off screen and we're spared the action.When that monster appeared, my views on this movie pulled a total about-face. I was willing to forgive the driving montage and unlikeable characters if this monster was going to go on a murder spree. But it never does. It takes its victim and then disappears back into its mud puddle until the final moments of the film. The remaining forty minutes are filler and garbage with yet another driving montage (not as long as the first) and then more than twenty minutes of flashing back to when Bella was taken captive. We spend a sizeable chunk of this crappy movie learning how Bella was a teacher who had the bad fortune to stop at Greely's and became his tormented house slave. None of it has anything to do with the dinosaur monster. Excuse me, "IT'S ALIVE" and director Larry Buchanan, but we came for the dinosaur monster. Give us the dinosaur monster and stop wasting our time. Maybe instead of unnecessary backstory, we could've used that time to show an escape attempt or something to up the tension. There are at least two occasions when Wayne, Leilla, and Norman could've jumped Bella (if she was uncooperative) and escaped through the access hatch she uses in the house's cellar. No, their plans are way more stupid. "IT'S ALIVE!" is seventy-five minutes of mindless filler with maybe (if I'm being generous) five minutes of worthwhile content. The dinosaur is severely underused, the characters are morons, and we didn't get nearly enough of Greely's fantastic maniacal laughter. That laugh and the dinosaur costume are the only reasons anyone should try and watch this movie, and there's barely enough of either in there to justify it.

This movie in some weird, fever dream way does manage to build a kind of weird compulsive atmosphere - once the obnoxious Norman Sterns (Corveth Ousterhouse) has been disposed of by the monster, I have never been happier to see a bad actor being eaten alive off screen. He was dreadful.Probably the worst bit of direction in the whole movie and what really lets the whole thing down for me (ignoring the bad acting, dodgy continuity, unexplained double actions, crappy Day for Night shots, sudden lurches into slow motion in very static 'chase' sequences, and all the long tedious slow zooms in on the bubbling puddle etc. etc.) is the phenomenal decision of the director to have the housekeeper character visit the captives via a route that let her be IN THE CELL with them - while our villain gloats from the other side of an impressive steel door. A steel door which the heroes plot to blow up with dynamite it's so strong. (They just happened to have some in the Jeep. Palaeontologists carry always carry a few sticks with them.) There is no reason for the housekeeper to be in there with them. Nothing in the scripted dialogue or plot says she has to be in there and neither of the captives think that it might just possibly be a good idea to follow her out when she leaves, or bash her on the noggin and take her keys, or anything practical like that.Nope, they just sit there. Stupid people.Stupid Stupid Movie.Legally downloadable from The Internet Archive. http://www.archive.org/details/ItsAlive

its alive!not to be confused with Larry Cohen's;its alive about the mutant baby.is a bizarre low budget movie about a reptile loving farmer (bill Thurman)who has a tourist trap in the south with snakes and lizards.and something he keeps in a cave,a bizarre monster that looks like one of the creatures from horror of party beach minus the sausages. well some travelers happen along(tommy kirk,Shirley bonne)and stumble on the demented farmers secret.i saw this on TV very late at night as a teen and found it kind of creepy and unsettling,now i watch it and find it very funny and silly.it was made by Larry Buchanan who did many remakes of roger corman and American international pictures.this was one of the better ones.bill Thurman starred in all of Buchanan's monster films.i have to say this movie is so bad its good.the monster is hilarious.i believe this was done on a ultra low budget.5 out of 10.