The second sequel to IT’S ALIVE (following 1978’s IT LIVES AGAIN) was IT’S ALIVE III: ISLAND OF THE ALIVE, a straight to video goof from 1987. Shot back-to-back by writer-director Larry Cohen with A RETURN TO SALEM’S LOT, it’s a ridiculous movie but, as was the case with so many bad Larry Cohen films, not entirely uninteresting.
…not entirely uninteresting.
Stephen Jarvis, a former actor, is the father of a mutant baby of a type that was introduced in the first two films. Jarvis’s life and career have been destroyed by the fact that he’s the father of the mutant kid, yet as the film opens he’s literally defending his son’s life in a NYC courtroom, where the kid is caged. Inevitably the kid breaks out and threatens the court, which does little to advance Stephen’s cause. Ultimately the judge elects to have the kid banished to a secluded island, along with three other mutant infants.
ISLAND OF THE ALIVE had the healthiest budget of any of the IT’S ALIVE films yet looks the cheapest.
Trouble starts up almost immediately when a trio of hunters, employed by a corrupt drug company, turn up on the island to shoot the critters. They make fast work of the men, and also the helicopter pilot who flew them out. This doesn’t stop Jarvis and several government sanctioned adventurers—who view the critters as emissaries of a new branch of human evolution—from taking a boat trip to the island several years later.
The mutants, who’ve grown much larger since we saw them last, attack the explorers practically as soon as they step off the boat. Jarvis is the only survivor of the melee, and winds up alone on the boat with the monster kids. They devour the corpses of Jarvis’ companions and, due apparently to the fact that his son is among the critters, keep him alive. Eventually, though, Jarvis’s kid throws him overboard. Jarvis is picked up by Cubans as the kids wash up in Cape Vale, FL (actually the Santa Monica pier). It’s there that Jarvis’s ex-wife, who the kids are trying to reach, is employed. Much havoc is wreaked along the way.
The mutants, who’ve grown much larger since we saw them last, attack the explorers practically as soon as they step off the boat.
Interestingly enough, ISLAND OF THE ALIVE had the healthiest budget of any of the IT’S ALIVE films yet looks the cheapest. This is due to the looseness of the filmmaking; IT’S ALIVE and (to a lesser extent) IT LIVES AGAIN were both marked by a cunningly wrought atmosphere and some well-constructed horror-suspense sequences, things Cohen doesn’t bother with here. Rather, he relies on lurid gore of a type he tended to criticize in other peoples’ movies. Also, unlike the earlier films, Cohen never makes any effort to keep the mutant babies out of sight, and utilizes a number of different methods to depict them (stop motion, puppetry, guys in suits), none of which are very convincing.
Yet, as in most of Cohen’s films, his script contains a number of intriguing concepts. The narrative never takes an expected turn, and in true Cohen fashion layers in a number of pertinent real life issues; the final scene in particular, involving Jarvis, his wife and their grandson, offers a potent inversion of suburban domestic bliss.
The narrative never takes an expected turn, and in true Cohen fashion layers in a number of pertinent real life issues;
Also quite pleasing are Cohen’s highly quirky casting choices, which in addition to Michael Moriarty (coming off the Cohen flicks Q: THE WINGED SERPENT and THE STUFF) include the always-entertaining Karen Black, PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE’S Gerrit Graham and the film director Neal Israel (AMERICATHON, BACHELOR PARTY, etc).
Vital Statistics
IT’S ALIVE III: ISLAND OF THE ALIVE
Warner Bros./Larco Productions
Director: Larry Cohen
Producer: Paul Stader
Screenplay: Larry Cohen
Cinematography: Daniel Pearl
Editing: David Kern
Cast: Michael Moriarty, Karen Black, Laurene Landon, Gerrit Graham, James Dixon, Neal Israel, Macdonald Carey, Art Lund, Ann Dane, Patch Mackenzie, Rick Garia, William Watson, Bobby Ramsen