It's Alive III: Island of the Alive

1987 **

Ugh. This one wore me out, and there's two things to sum up why: one is Michael Moriarty, the other is 1987.

Artistically, very few good things happened in the late 80's. The music we like from that decade, the fashions we recall fondly, the good movies, etc. -- if you stop to check you'll find most of those things happened between '80 and '84. The latter half of the decade was a pitiful copyfest, piling on More of the Same and doing it worse. There are exceptions, of course. The Lion and the Cobra, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, these are respectable artistic endeavors. But for every one of those there were twenty of these. (1988, in case you were wondering.)

So it's not surprising that whatever strange appeal I've been able to wring out of the It's Alive movies was all tapped out by the time they made this one. I think my favorite example is the degraded inheritence of that wonderful 70's vintage: Paranoia. Here's what I said when I reviewed It's Alive: "The generalized paranoia of the era is raised to clownish levels, but it's all delivered with the seriousness of a hangover headache."

Well, here's the man with the biggest ears in the world to show me what clownish really is. The five It's Alives have been sequestered on a remote island, and Ears here takes a helicopter and some guys to the island for a throwaway subplot and some needless exposition. Because we finally have a reason for the monster babies, and it's this guy. His drug company was putting the lousy drugs on the market, and when they took them off the market the mutant births stopped.

So he's on his mission to wipe out the little critters so nobody can ever come study them, thereby removing the only obstacle to putting the drugs on the market again, under a different name. This is where Uncle Octopunk stands up and starts yanking on his hair. Because they got away with it! The coverup worked! There's no reason to worry! So why oh why oh WHY would you get away with horrible crimes that would destroy your commercial empire just so you can do them AGAIN??? Why not spend some money making different drugs that, I don't know, don't make mutant babies?

And yes, I get the part of the conspiracy where we all shake our heads at not just the greed but the recklessness, but that's not even what's going on here. In late 80's horror everything is this big joke, and without the "hangover headache" seriousness this conspiracy just goes off the rails.

Sigh. I know I'm ranting here, but like JPX's problems with ___ New Bohemians, stupid conspiracies get under my skin. In the movie C.H.U.D. there's a shadow agenda to dump toxic waste under Manhattan, i.e. one of the world's largest population centers -- instead of any of the numerous New Jersey locations that nobody cares about. That's just stupid. Things like this can be fixed at the script level with the teeniest application of thought.

Not Stunt Ass -- Puppet Ass!

I'll make this sort of a rant sandwich, a positive filling served between two thick slabs of rant. A rantwich.

Thanks to their decision to spent a teeny bit more money and do some stop motion, you get the best look at the monster that the series has to offer (above).

I liked the opening. Having mined a few baby delivery scenarios, they went for the "cop delivers baby in taxi" shtick. I hated the Buster Poindexteresque NYC cabbie and his "awwww, my cab!" bit, but I had a brief moment of thrill when the cop suddenly yelled "Oh my God, it's one of THEM!!! and was pulled bodily into the car.

I must admit there's a very X-men-ish vibe to these movies that appeals to me. The "They can kill!" vs. "They're Children!" themes are quite similar; Larry Cohen's vision is more horrifying because instead of good-looking, malajusted teenagers you're dealing with really fugly, really murderous babies. And upon hearing the premise, I imagined a cool comic book about a few of these monstrosities as adults: super-strong, super-fast, with talons and fangs and huge eyes and big heads that might house psychic powers. I imagined a drawing of one of these characters, horrifying to see but broodingly intelligent, perhaps dressed in some stylish, futuristic combat fatigues or something.

Of course what I got was more crappy puppets lurking in shadows, but this time around I barely noticed that bit of disappointment. It's hardly the worst thing this movie does to its audience.

That would be this guy, Michael Moriarty. I can't stand this dude. Apparently he was on Law & Order forever and won an Emmy for it, but I've only ever seen him in Larry Cohen movies, which has fostered a deep, abiding hatred.

You know how directors will just loooove certain actors and put them in everything? And you know how sometimes it goes beyond that, they won't just cast these people but they'll allow (even urge) them to run wild with the performance? That's what's going on here, in more than one movie. In Larry Cohen's Q, about a giant snake bird eating New Yorkers, Moriarty chews up crazy stupid amounts of screen time as a small time hood who discovers the snake bird's nest. When he's blackmailing the city for money, he's also revelling in the attention he's getting, and saying so. This is one of those ideas that grips performers sometimes: "he's just this shmoe, and suddenly everyone has to pay attention to him! Genuis!" No, not genius. Because the irritation the characters are feeling mirrors my own, I didn't tune in for this moron, I came for the snake bird.

Island of the Alive balloons the Michael Moriarty experience way beyond Q. He plays Stephen Jarvis, father of one of the It's Alives, and after an admittedly tender courtroom scene in which he convinces his monster baby not to kill anyone, his character description turns into Biggest Dick in the World. I think this was Cohen's notion of anti-hero, but all we get is lots of screen time with needless unpleasantness. When the babies are given their own island, Jarvis's lawyers throw him a victory party, at which they mention that a book will be published about all of this to cover his legal costs. When he objects and is told it's too late since he already signed the releases, he reacts by going from party guest to party guest telling "Jarvis baby" jokes in the tone of patronizing sarcasm that will inform his entire performance from that point forward. When we meet up with him later, he's selling children's shoes but being so obnoxious about it that all his customers leave in a huff. When Lt. Perkins (veteran of the other two It's Alive flicks) shows up with important news, he asks Jarvis if he read the paper. "You know I never read the papers!" WTF? I think a "no" would have been fine here.

Perkins and Jarvis join an expedition of well-meaning scientists to go to the island five years later and see how the monsta babies have grown up, and on the way cement Jarvis's title of BDitW. Julie described the boat trip as "some kind of experimental improv fest performed while high and on acid," and that pretty much sums it up. Jarvis hits on the one female in the group with the finesse of a drunk sixteen-year-old, there's a repeating shtick of the scientist who's seasick, and a scene where the hapless woman tries to get the gang to look at a map while Jarvis sings a drinking song louder and louder, eventually getting all the men to join him in it while the woman walks off disgusted. As they land on the island, Jarvis gets in one more leering "I fathered a mutant baby, does that turn you on?" pass, prompting Perkins to say admiringly: "Jahvis, you're always bustin' bawls!" UGH.

The title of this movie is somewhat misleading, as neither visit to the island lasts very long. Big Ears and his cronies get a hot dose of poetic justice and most of the second group are taken out so the It's Alives can steal their boat, leaving only Jarvis alive (gee, thanks). He gets to improv some more and then some other stuff happens and I groan and Karen Black is in it looking more than ever like an alien in a human mask and The End.

If, like me, you fall under an annual compulsion to watch a series of questionable sequels to the end of the run, you'll find Island of the Alive one of the tougher credits to attain. I'd advise watching the first two and pretending this one didn't exist. That's what I'm gonna do.