Cheap It's Alive 3: Island of the Alive (Video) (Larry Cohen) Price

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Customer Reviews of It's Alive 3: Island of the Alive

Michael Moriarty Rescues This One
In 1987, Larry Cohen finally made the long-awaited third (and final) installment of his unique (and cult fave) IT'S ALIVE! series. Coming after an interminable-seeming nine-year wait following IT LIVES AGAIN (1978), Cohen decides to place his second sequel way into the future, when murderous mutant babies are a much more frequent occurrence, though still a maligned and misunderstood oddity. He also called upon his old friend Michael Moriarty---star of his Q (1982) and THE STUFF (1985)---to star as a new mutant-baby dad, Stephen Jarvis. Thankfully, Moriarty was amenable to doing this favor, as his priceless Method acting is the only thing that saves this installment from being an otherwise blah picture.

That's not to say that the awkwardly-titled IT'S ALIVE III: ISLAND OF THE ALIVE would otherwise have been total garbage; however, it's safe to say that without Michael Moriarty in the lead, this movie would have been, well, awkward. Instead of using rubber models for the babies, director Cohen decides to use claymation to achieve a more "realistic" effect. It's interesting for a moment, but it doesn't really work. After an impassioned courtroom plea by Mr. Jarvis (one of Moriarty's best scenes in his career, actually), it is decided that murderous little Baby Jarvis be sent to live with his "own kind"---banished to this island, to where mutant tykes have apparently been sent for quite some time now. Of course, since "out of sight, out of mind" would have been precisely the wrong tack for this movie to take (given that the whole point is to see these babies, and to see them kill), we are given a fairly implusible excuse for the main characters to journey to this island, where...well, you can pretty much figure the rest out from there!

Although at the end, this movie *does* answer a burning "what if?" question in our minds (namely, what would these mutants look like if allowed to grow into mutant-adulthood?), the result looks suspiciously like Larry Cohen had run out of whatever little bit of money he had! If for nothing else, watch IT'S ALIVE III for the Michael Moriarty performance alone. His scene with a hooker is also priceless, and is also one of his career-best. Other than that, this film is

SO-SO
MODERATELY RECOMMENDED FOR FANS OF THIS SERIES ONLY

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Larry Cohen suceeds again!
Larry Cohen has turned to stop-motion to show the babies without any strings. He does this quite amusingly. Now where is the Trilogy DVD Box set!!

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No Gerber mush for these babies
IT'S ALIVE 3 opens with a woman giving birth to another deformed mutant baby in the back of a taxi on a rainy night. When the cabbie tries to blast the little nipper into oblivion, the quick little sprout drags him inside the cab and makes a meal of him. Thus begins director Larry Cohen's belated return to his much adored B-horror series.
The mutant is captured, caged and bought before a court which will decide its fate. The judge sides with the creatures dad, Steve Jarvis (Michael Moriarty) and decides it to be in the child's best interests that it is protected, so the monster is sent to a remote island inhabited by other mutants.
The FX in ISLAND OF THE ALIVE are none too convincing, the top-motion models (which are okay)add to the B grade fun, and there are some amusingly cheesy gore scenes. The movie does tend to be a bit sluggish in places, and Moriarty gives a decidedly erratic performance. My final quibble is that the finale is very similar to the first two movies, but generally speaking, it's still a pretty good movie.