It's Alive 3: Island of the Alive (1986)

Well, at least after this review I won’t be typing the phrase “killer mutant baby” for a while, at least till some Hollywood jackass gets the brilliant idea to “remake” Larry Cohen’s original film. “It’s Alive 3” opens up with Cohen regular Michael Moriarty portraying Steve Jarvis, actor and now more infamously known as father of one of the last monster babies alive. Seems the epidemic of mutant births has been on a steady decline since the second film, and Steve’s baby is one of only five creatures left in the States. After a trial to determine the remaining babies fate, the judge decides to set the toothy tykes loose on an uncharted island to live the rest of their lives free from persecution by man. After a period of five years Steve goes along with a research crew interested in how the mutants have come along through the years, and of course things don’t go quite as planned. After massacring the expedition, Steve is kidnapped by the now full-grown mutants to drive the ship with “monsters on board” back to the mainland for the creature’s reunion with human society.

The first half of this one nearly makes up for the entire lethargic second entry. The babies are shown in some cool stop motion f/x, and Michael Moriarty has the full compassion of the audience towards his character. There is a nifty little scene of the tykes attacking a hunting party who found the island, and the gore quotient is upped to a greater degree than the previous films. It’s in the second half of the film however, where things come to a crashing halt. Once the mutants return to the mainland it’s nothing but men in rubber monster suits and just tons of cheesy events. Usually that sounds like a good time to me, but ah, not this time. It is a better watch than the second film, and of course a must see if you’ve watched the first two however, everyone else may want to avoid it.