It's Alive

One of my fondest memories of being an usher (which I failed to include in this post about the other great times) was one particular night working the B-movie, It's Alive.

A mutant baby is born to a mother who was exposed to radiation during the pregnancy, where it promptly bites off its own umbilical chord, tears through all the doctors and nurses in the delivery room, leaving mom alive, then escaping through (what else?) the air ducts and is unleashed on the city.

The little beastie is disturbing, and the sounds it makes are pretty nut-clenching. It was an effective little horror film. It was one of Rick Baker's first creatures.


The poster was even tres cool. It kinda made my stomach swimmy when we first put it up. Veined, fleshy letters are just gross, dude. I don't care who you are.


One night, the Indian School came.

The Indian School, as we very politically incorrectly called it back in the day, was a special school for all the Sioux kids in the area, if not the state. Apparently, in order to preserve their culture and so on, they didn't go to the same schools as the rest of us, and were all shipped off, Harry Potter style (though it was state-run), to the Indian School. They got free tickets to a couple showings every month and would show up en masse, and generally terrorize the theatre for that one showing. We usually had to refund a few tickets for the folks who'd paid because the movie was rendered unwatchable and/or unhearable when the school descended.

Well, It's Alive scared the ever-living shit out of the whole tribe. They couldn't even stay in their seats. Every time I went to walk the aisles (something we had to do at least every 15 minutes to make sure everything was OK), I'd open the door to about 15 of them standing there, and they'd all jump and yell, causing the rest of the audience to scream.

Three of four times during the "BOO!" sequences, they'd come flying out of the door like gazelles running ahead of the lions. It was quite the sight. I could barely contain my laughter until they went back into the theatre.

I think after that, the school didn't come to another horror flick and stuck mainly to the comedies.