It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive finishes the series’ natural allegorical evolution, finally turning the aberrant “It” tykes into a nationwide scourge that – after an opening court room scene presided over by Days of Our Lives paterfamilias Macdonald Carey regarding the “humanity” of small-time actor Stephen Jarvis’ (Michael Moriarty) offspring – is dealt with by relegating the throat-slashing buggers to an undisclosed, uninhabited island. Such a solution, however, doesn’t stop Jarvis from being shunned by his ex-wife Ellen (Karen Black), nor does it prevent him from being spurned by a potential one-night stand who, upon learning that Jarvis fathered one of the monsters, treats him (in the film’s canniest new twist) with a brand of “don’t touch me” prejudice reminiscent of early, erroneous phobias about HIV. Five years after exiling the “babies” to the middle of nowhere, Jarvis and some scientists journey to the creatures’ home to find that they’ve not only grown into full-fledged adults but have also reproduced, and Cohen’s film – more visually polished than its forerunners – is most vibrant while immersed in the lush jungle where the mutants now dwell. Yet while a hammy Moriarty brings a slouched, miserable verve to the wacko proceedings, and the happy-grandparents finale has a deviously amusing hopefulness, it’s hard to shake the gnawing feeling that the It’s Alive films exhausted their conceit’s symbolic potential with 1978's It Lives Again.
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