2 out of 5

It’s Alive III was the reminder I needed for why watching all of Larry Cohen’s films can be rather daunting.  I’ve done this tour – or attempted to do it – before, snatching up as much his stuff as I could, to the extent that I can say I’m familiar with his oeuvre, but then something will happen and I’ll fall out of fascination.  …Only to rewatch a flick some years later on a lark (and interesting rerelease, let’s say) and wonder why I ditched all those Cohen DVDs and maybe I should give ’em another go…

And then It’s Alive III.  The reminder is that Cohen is, on the one hand, consistently shlocky, with his DIY, minimalist approach, so his films do share a like-minded looseness that’s certainly a trademark, but he’s also very inconsistently, uh, good.  Like, Takashi Miike, while he has a bunch more films under his belt, shares a ‘keep moving forward’ mentality with Cohen, but he tends to force his sensibilities – purposefully or not – into even his worse flicks, making them interesting when considered as a whole.  Cohen, though, is more about producing product, to an extent; getting to the finish line.  He’s inspired, for sure, and you’ll see flashes of that all over the place, but he’s only rarely hit upon a fully solid representation of his skills – Bone, the first It’s Alive, Stuff – with a lot of mid-range flicks that are good but can drag, and then some truly cheapies, that feel like they’re there to just be part of the club, and maybe get paid for doing so.  And It’s Alive III falls into that layer, making the IA trilogy pretty representative of Cohen’s various levels of accomplishment.

There’s a good idea here – more mutant kids are being born, and the decision to isolate them to an island allows them to grow to “maturity” – but that good idea only amounts to the creatures being large enough for people in suits.  Otherwise, it’s hardly explored: monster daddy Michael Moriarty is recruited as part of group of scientists to go and research the grown terrors as possible saviors from generally incurable diseases (something something super powered mutant blood), and this occurs all of like ten minutes screentime after the kids are island-bound.  Then, instead of having some kind of cat-and-mouse on the island, Moriarty trucks the kids back to the mainland in some kind of weird love / hate pursuit of his ex, their mother, Karen Black.  Some Cohen snarky humor concludes the thing, but it’s otherwise a lot of missed opportunity, ditching the solemnity of the former two entries for pure B-ness, but then executed in a rushed and rough fashion that sucks out most of the fun.

I still like Cohen.  But I dislike how his few great movies always set me up for disappointment for his greater catalogue of meh stuff.