PodBill Just what I expected

GazerRise Fantastic!

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Michael_Elliott It's Alive 3 (1987) ** (out of 4) A court orders that all mutant babies must be sent to a deserted island. Four years later a group goes there to see how the babies have grown up. I saw bits and pieces of this years ago but this was my first time going through the whole thing and man what a bitter disappointment. Larry Cohen takes this film a lot less serious and goes over the top with things but he didn't go far enough. The thought of seeing the babies grown up was a great idea but it takes an hour for us to reach the island. When the humor does come it isn't enough so most of the time the film is just a bore.

gavin6942 Stephen Jarvis is the father of the monster (where "the monster" is another bloodthirsty infant). He gets involved with a court case that ends up getting the infants sent to an isolated island. But once the judge who ordered the infants away dies, different parties want them back in the spotlight.Many people, including my horror reviewing colleague Don Normann, really dislike this film. It is considered the weakest of the three, the least popular and I would suspect that most consider it the cheesiest. I really liked it -- this one, more than the other two, seemed to really hit on a variety of social commentaries. Writer and director Larry Cohen's strength is his social commentary. Actually, that's almost his only strength -- he has no budget, is poorly organized in his shooting schedules and writes much of his scripts on the fly (which is quite obvious).Two of horror's icons appear here: Michael Moriarty (as Stephen Jarvis) and Karen Black (as Ellen Jarvis). Black is probably now best known to modern audiences from Rob Zombie's "House of 1000 Corpses". Moriarty, on the other hand, is a Cohen staple -- appearing in "Q" and "Pick Me Up", for example. And this happens to be one of Moriarty's better roles (he has a very unique way of delivering dialog which works here but is dreadfully awful in "Pick Me Up"). I found him to be a good lead, especially in the improvised segments (such as the singing scene).There is a good commentary on disease (does an infected child mean an infected parent) and a really good jab at Cuban-American relations. I think Cuba's military obsession is played up a bit, but the part about them being human was a good one (and still relevant twenty years later). And the pharmaceutical company trying to destroy the infants so their drugs couldn't be blamed... very nice (and reminiscent of the Thalidomide scandal).Lastly, once you've watched it, watch it again with audio commentary (if you get the chance). Cohen's explanations really add a new dimension to this picture, pointing out where Bob Kane's wife comes in (Kane invented Batman), how many of the parts are just Cohen's friends and how a rubber chicken ended up on a deserted island. His justification for a variety of aspects of this film really help you understand what he was trying to achieve and make you realize just how close he came to achieving it.If you've seen the first two, you need to see this third one. Not only does it wrap up the story in a nice, neat little package, but I think it's grossly under-appreciated. Judge it for what it is -- a low-budget B-movie. With that in mind, I think you'll be hard-pressed to find another film of its kind.

leawenthome I am a big fan of Larry Cohen movies. So absurdly and poorly written and executed that they are hilarious. This one contains some really funny scenes. Trivia- in the shoe store Mr. Moriarty says "plunk your magic twanger froggy." This stuck in my head a very bizarre moment (actually I re-winded and puzzled over it several times) and I later found out that it is a quote from "the frogger song" released on a "pacman fever" album in the 1980s. Both before and after I found out what the reference was to I wondered what drugs the writers were on. I bought the DVD. You don't have to see the other It's Alive movies to enjoy this one. You just have to like off the wall B-movies.

Coventry I can't possibly figure out why the movie is rated so low here on IMDb... It's a very entertaining movie and an excellent closure to Larry Cohen's wild 'monstrous infants' trilogy. It already starts out terrific with a brilliant casting job: Michael Moriarty ("The Stuff") and Karen Black ("Burnt Offerings") together as parents?? No wonder that results in murderous offspring! This quirky B-movie implements a great tempo right from the beginning, with the cliché delivery of a killer-baby in a cab, and becomes even better when the entire freakshow is replaced to a courtroom. In this particularly fantastic opening, Stephen Jarvis (Moriarty), father of a mutant-baby, defends the rights of these ugly creatures and wants to prevent that more unfortunate babies are destroyed immediately after birth. After a powerfully scripted emotional speech, he wins the case and the babies are quarantined on a secret island location, down South of Florida. Five years later, Stephen Jarvis is forced against his will to join a scientific expedition towards to island to see how the babies have developed. The expedition crew will soon find out that the former babies still have ferocious tendencies but Jarvis equally discovers that they gained telekinetic powers and that they formed a community on their own...Larry Cohen's still growing sense of black, offbeat humor is terrifically illustrated through some of the deranged plot-twists and – especially – through Moriarty's eccentric character. His sarcastic one-liners about his unsuccessful acting career or his unwanted popularity as the "father of the monster" makes this "Island of the Alive" one of Cohen's wittiest achievements to date. Also, this final chapter obviously disposed of a much larger budget as the previous installments which allows Cohen's to zoom in more on the malevolent babies and the mess they make when slaughtering. Keep your eyes open for all the ingenious little ideas Cohen adds during the trip to, and return from the island! There are too many to list, such as a side-trip to Fidel Castro's Cuba, a demented singing choir (which looks like it's spoofing "Jaws") or Jarvis' self-indulgent harassing-efforts towards a female scientist. Naturally, this movie has its flaws I can't overlook.. Maybe the finished product is a little long and some sequences should have stayed in the cutting room. Like for example a totally unrelated hunting-trip of greedy thrill-seekers to the island early in the film or a study of Karen Black's troubled love-life after giving birth to a monster. The climax is great, rewarding and makes Cohen's "It's Alive" circle complete. If you appreciate imaginative plotting and absurd horror tales, I recommend the entire It's Alive-cycle as well as every other production Larry Cohen was ever involved in.