I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Stephen Jarvis (Michael Moriarty) argues in a courtroom for the life of his mutant son. The judge mandates for the isolation of the mutant babies on an abandoned island. Five years pass, Stephen accepts the opportunity to see his child again on the island. I guess no love is greater than that of a father for his son.Michael Moriarty's eccentric performance and Larry Cohen's direction enhance a clumsy and uninvolving script. The dark humor and social commentary on AIDS, media exploitation, abortion, and Cuba-US relations elevates the ensuing B-movie schlock and manages to make the film slightly transgressive.Be warned, this movie is nothing more than cheesy dialogue and bad special effects. The first fifteen minutes drag and only set up the mayhem. After that, I thought the film got progressively better, but depends on the viewer's temper with Moriarty's hammy performance. The narrative structure becomes clumsy and almost meaningless (I stopped paying attention and went along for the ride). While "It's Alive III: Island of the Alive" isn't anything to praise, the film knows how to have fun.

If you like the films of Ed Wood (Plan 9 from Outer Space) and Larry Blamire (The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra), you're going to love this one. I haven't seen any other films of this series and had no expectations when I started to watch it, but I thoroughly enjoyed film for its humour and the depiction of the story. This film has got on your face dead pan humour, with good acting by the entire cast, especially Michael Moriarty who is perfect in his portrayal of Jarvis. Good locations and camera work even though it's supposed to be low budget. It's got some of the best one liners you'll ever come across in a horror movie.

~Spoiler~ "It's one of them!" A pretty fine opening scene is the best part of this movie. After that, it goes downhill pretty quick. The killer babies are back, and this time they are sent to an abandoned island so they can no longer be a threat to humanity, and vice versa. It sounds like a great idea, but too much of the movie does not take place on said island. I envisioned an isolated island movie where some activists or other parties go searching for the babies, get stranded on the island, and mayhem ensues. Sadly, that is not the case. The babies aren't looking as good as they used to either. The first film succeeds by keeping the baby in the shadows, never quite revealing it. This film fails to generate any suspense because the creatures don't hold up so well fully exposed at great length. Larry Cohen even admitted this. The cast includes Cohen's go-to-guy, Michael Moriarty, and the always hammy Karen Black. So the acting is about what you expect. Moriarty has playing odd characters down to a science. They are still using the Bernard Herrmann score so that's one good thing they've got going for them.

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.