{"id":17980,"date":"2025-10-10T22:00:56","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T02:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=17980"},"modified":"2025-10-10T21:51:20","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T01:51:20","slug":"its-alive-iii-island-of-the-alive-1987-larry-cohen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/17980","title":{"rendered":"It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987, Larry Cohen)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Very first character is an asshole cab driver, the second is a cop who mutters to the camera how many weeks he’s been on the force (six), movie seems off to a bad start then they’re both immediately killed by a newborn mutant baby, yay.<\/p>\n

Where did my friend go?<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

The plot is: the dad of a mutant baby has a viral moment in a courtroom, the gov’t decides to exile the dangerous babies to an island instead of exterminating them, a few years later the dad with nothing left to lose joins a scientific(?) expedition to the island (“surely they’ve developed a language of their own”) where everyone else is killed and he helps the mutants escape to the mainland then he and his ex run off with the only surviving baby.<\/p>\n

Karen burns her ex’s tell-all book:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

But the movie is less about plot than it is about letting dad Michael Moriarty go hogwild. Between his early courtroom antics, his late no-fucks-given mode, and his ability to psychically communicate with mutant babies, it’s his show. She’s not in it much but it’s funny to watch a Karen Black movie the day after not seeing her in The Devil’s Rejects<\/a><\/em>. Cohen throws in new ridiculous plot points (sympathetic Cubans smuggle Moriarty to Florida, the last adult mutant lives just long enough to hurl ten cops off a rooftop). Easily the best of the Alive<\/em> trilogy, all those times I wanted to rent this video in the late 80s, I was right.<\/p>\n

Moriarty freaks out Maniac Cop star Laurene Landon:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Very first character is an asshole cab driver, the second is a cop who mutters to the camera how many weeks he’s been on the force (six), movie seems off to a bad start then they’re both immediately killed by a newborn mutant baby, yay. Where did my friend go? The plot is: the dad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[357,3296,61,2347,181],"class_list":["post-17980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1980s","tag-karen-black","tag-larry-cohen","tag-mutation","tag-sequel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18027,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17980\/revisions\/18027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}