It's Alive!

1969 worst movie ever contender

Rating: 1/20

Plot: A vacationing couple drives off the beaten path and right into the clutches of a deranged amateur zookeeper who puts them in a cage inside of a cave to later be fed to a Massasaurus, an aquatic dinosaur he keeps as a pet.

I don't know who this Larry Buchanan fellow is, but when I can safely put him in the same category as Ed Wood or mention him in the same sentences as Manos: The Hands of Fate, you should figure that he's pretty special. The level of ineptitude in this, easily the worst movie I've seen all year, is stunning. It starts with Yucca Flats style narration before showcasing the worst acting I've seen in recent memory (perhaps ever) with the delivery of poorly-written material seeming like it's being read by people who barely know how to read. The pacing, the poor lighting, the sound (to say it sounds like it was recorded in a cave is being too nice since a lot of it was recorded in a cave; most of it sounds like it was recorded in a safe inside a cave), and this otherworldly pointlessness really do contribute to make this one of the few films you can compare to Manos. But it reaches a whole new level of suck when you finally get to see the "it" in the title--a reptilian creature, "giant" in zookeeper description only, that looks to be a small child's art project made from leftover craft supplies, a couple ping pong balls, and garbage. Another highlight is an excruciatingly dull flashback in which the zookeeper's significant other details her arrival and subsequent torture, torture which escalates from being fed mice to being awakened rudely with a whistle. At one point, she attempts to run away and says, "It was like I was on a treadmill in some horrible nightmare," a description which could also accurately describe the experience of watching this movie. I wanted to take another full point away from my final rating when the movie ended with "The End?" but rules are rules and 0's or negative ratings aren't permitted. It comes close to earning it though. There are bad movies that aren't entertaining and bad movies that are worth watching again and again and then there's It's Alive! which is bad in an entirely new way--it's bad in a way that is almost disturbing, the product of what I think must have been a deranged mind. Seriously, something ain't right with Larry Buchanan, and yes, that makes me want to watch more of the nearly thirty movies (!) the guy directed.