Larry Cohen

by Michael Doyle

  Island of the Alive begins with a particularly vicious pre-credit prologue: we see a young woman giving birth to a mutant baby in a taxi cab, only for the taxi driver to die in his attempts to execute it.

  I wanted to put some horror in the movie and that was probably the only truly horrific thing in Island of the Alive.

  The film is more explicit than It’s Alive and It Lives Again.

  That introductory scene certainly is. What else do we have in there that is explicit?

  One character does have his arm torn off leaving a bleeding, ragged stump.

  Yeah, but you don’t really see the arm being torn off. You just see the guy falling down and staggering into shot with his arm missing. You don’t actually see anything happen to him. It all occurs off-camera and is left to your imagination.

  In the ten years between Island of the Alive and It Lives Again, horror films had become far more explicit. Was it perhaps a commercial consideration on your part to integrate more gore and violence into the third instalment?

  Horror films were very gory at the time, but I didn’t feel any commercial pressure to do the gore in Island of the Alive. If I had felt that pressure, I would have probably made a far more violent and bloody picture. For instance, that scene with the guy getting his arm bitten off — if I had bowed to people’s thirst for gore, I would have shown that in great detail rather than taking a more restrained approach as I did.

  Do you have a problem with gore in movies?

  I much prefer to imply violence in my films rather than show it. I don’t like slasher movies like Friday the 13th and the seemingly endless sequels it has given birth to. Those pictures always had some kind of masked psychopath killing a bunch of teenagers, pinning their bodies to walls with knives or driving sharp objects through their eyeballs. There are some filmmakers who seem to get excited if they can capture a decapitation or some other sadistic action on-camera. Personally, I’ve never been moved by that approach myself. The temptation to do that can be very strong for some directors, even good directors. Just before we made Island of the Alive, John Carpenter did his big-budget remake of The Thing and that movie showed you a lot of gore, blood, and monsters. It was a strong movie — it’s still a strong movie — but Carpenter made a conscious choice to display that stuff. Of course, he could afford to spend a lot of money creating those gruesome special effects, but I prefer the original version of The Thing, which basically shows you nothing and is all the more effective for it. There have been instances on other pictures I’ve made, like God Told Me To, It Lives Again, and The Stuff, where I could have shown the gore in a very explicit way, but I chose not to. Gore will occasionally make an audience look away and I prefer it if the viewer doesn’t turn away from the screen. If they avert their eyes for a moment they may miss something important or interesting. That’s my feeling on it.

  The opening courtroom sequence of Island of the Alive plays like a takeoff on the abortion debate as Steven Jarvis [Michael Moriarty] is forced to confront his monstrous offspring by the prosecutor. Why did you decide to open the film with such a dramatic discussion of a highly controversial subject?

  That scene was really what the picture was about: whether or not society was going to permit these creatures to live or if it would destroy them. Such an important question would have to be decided by a jury’s prudence and so the idea of beginning our story with a courtroom trial made perfect sense to me. I liked the idea of commencing the film with a direct moral question. I thought it was a legitimate and challenging opening as the monsters’ very existence was at stake. The monsters are eventually removed from society and quarantined on an island where they will come of age in isolation. In that regard, Island of the Alive is different from It’s Alive and It Lives Again, as I wanted to try something that had a contrasting tone and thrust to the whole story. You’ll no doubt notice that there is much more humour in the third film than in the previous two pictures.

  Jarvis becomes a media star due to the notoriety of the court case and his being the father of one of the monsters. He then allows himself to be exploited on the talk show circuit in order to sell more books. Once again, you seem to be satirising tabloid culture and our irrepressible hunger for dirt and controversy.

  Well, that’s exactly what happens in our current society: every tragedy, no matter how desperately sad and despicable the event may be, is exploited to its utmost by every form of media whore you can possibly find. Each detail is dissected for the home audience and I don’t know why people agree to appear on these programs to air their miseries. What is the point of it? Why subject yourself to public scrutiny and opinion? It would be better if you kept these matters private within your own family. Unfortunately, people insist on parading themselves. And, yeah, the public eats it up, too. They tune into all these shows every week and buy all these periodicals. Everybody wants to know everybody else’s personal business. I think it’s rather sad and depressing, and that was what I was trying to point out.

  Jarvis bitterly acknowledges his own celebrity status by signing an autograph as “Steven Jarvis — the father of the monster.” Do you think his wacky behaviour is a means of facilitating a retreat from the grim reality of his situation?

  It could be. I mean, Jarvis does develop a manic personality as a result of all this happening to him. He is getting crazier and crazier and is mocking himself mercilessly. I think it is probably a coping mechanism for him. Making everything seem like an absurd, twisted joke protects him like a shield. His craziness allows Jarvis to detach himself. In a way, he’s confronting his predicament and he’s also ignoring it at the same time. Is that what you’re saying?

  Yes, exactly. He’s hiding in plain sight.

  Well, when you think about it, there are really only two ways for him to respond to the horrific situation he finds himself in: one of them is to descend into a total depression from which he may never return. The other is to enter a manic state and ridicule the whole situation. Jarvis chooses to embrace the latter.

  Even by his own standards, Moriarty’s brilliant performance is particularly eccentric. Did you encourage him to play Jarvis quite so demented?

  Oh, absolutely. The small-time crook he played in Q was a wacky guy, and even Mo Rutherford in The Stuff was pretty amped-up, so I thought we’d take the character of Jarvis in a similar direction. Jarvis is an entirely different person from Jimmy Quinn and Mo Rutherford, but I always like to make use of Moriarty’s bravery and his willingness to give a way-out, individualistic performance. Your average actor will just give you a straight down-the-line performance, but Moriarty takes big chances. You’ll find that when you are adventurous as an actor and take big chances, you often get good results. When I worked with Moriarty on The Stuff I got him a hairpiece, which he absolutely hated wearing! When we did Island of the Alive and A Return Salem’s Lot, he refused to wear the same toupee twice, so he would always force me to buy him a new hairpiece for each new picture. I think his reasoning was, “Well, if I have to wear this stupid thing on my head, I’m going to make you pay for it every time!” [Chuckles] Moriarty is not the kind of actor who needs to dress up to inhabit a character. He has such great instincts and abilities, it just all comes out. I thought the character of Jarvis in Island of the Alive and Moriarty’s performance was terrific. He had a controlled insanity about him, but that character is not without humanity and courage. The way Jarvis comes out and makes fun of himself, and everybody else around him, makes the entire situation seem insane. Obviously, in reality, it would be an insane situation if you and your wife had given birth to this monster child.

  Why did you decide to make Jarvis a struggling actor?

  I thought that his career would be completely destroyed by his involvement with this monster birth. No one is ever going to hire him to do commercials for their products; no one is ever going to cast him in a movie or a play or a television show because he’s got this image attached to him. Jarvis is seen exclusively and completely as the fathe
r of the monster and that’s it. That’s all he can ever be and that’s the role he must play for the rest of his life. So, he ends up being a shoe salesman in a shoe store and, of course, a lot of unemployed actors are in fact shoe salesman or waiters in restaurants.

  Karen Black [4] plays Jarvis’ estranged wife, Ellen, and gives a solid performance.

  Karen is always good. I believe she’s had a couple of Oscar nominations, and I particularly enjoyed the fact that she had starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s last movie, Family Plot. I used to get a kick out of tormenting and teasing her all the time. I once said to her, “After working with Karen Black, Hitchcock never directed another picture again!” I even used to do these Hitchcock impersonations for her. I’d say, [impersonates Hitchcock] “Oh yes, the exquisite Karen Black! After doing Family Plot with her, I never wanted to direct another actor ever again!” Karen would always laugh at that and have a good time.

  Where exactly was the island located that you used in the film?

  It was the island of Kauai in Hawaii. After we finished shooting the picture, we went back to Kauai six months later and actually ran the picture for the people who’d helped us make it. They seemed to enjoy it.

  What can you reveal about the rigours of shooting on Kauai?

  Well, we had a lot of enjoyable situations! [Chuckles] I remember one day we were shooting at the foot of a waterfall in the jungle. It was a pleasant little place, but then halfway through the day we suddenly heard this tremendous crack fill the air. It sounded like a giant tree had been knocked down. It was in fact a log-jam further up the river that had broke, releasing these huge torrents of water. The water came rushing through, transforming this little waterfall into something that resembled Niagara Falls inside of thirty seconds. Massive gushes of water were coming down and quickly flooded the entire area where we were working. I started running up the side of the hill with the camera and the tripods, trying to save everything from being destroyed. People were running for their lives, as the whole place was filling up with water. At a certain point, somebody remembered that Art Lund, who was acting in the picture, was actually trapped up a tree. We had been shooting the discovery of his character’s body hanging up there and Art had been wired into the branches. Now, in the middle of all this chaos, we couldn’t get him back down. Cascades of water and debris were coming down all around us and there was no way we could reach him. Art was just sitting there in the middle of this huge flood, which didn’t appear to be easing at all, calmly saying, “Don’t worry, guys, I’m fine. I’ve really got a great view from up here!” [Laughs] It was a very shocking experience and nobody seemed to know quite what to do. We eventually had to swim out there, climb up the tree and get Art out. It was quite an operation.

  Did anything else interesting occur on location?

  That was just one incident in that particular area. On another day, we were shooting the scene where Moriarty is yelling into the jungle for the monster to come out and show itself. Michael was shouting, “Don’t be afraid! Come on out!” As if in response, this huge wild boar suddenly charged out of the bushes. It went berserk and started running amongst the crew, zigzagging in, out and around the equipment. Nobody knew what to do, except to get out of the way of this rampaging animal. I kept yelling for the cameraman, Daniel Pearl, to get a shot of this boar that we could use, but he was too busy trying to save his own ass! [Laughs] Finally, the boar took off into the woods and that was the last we saw of it.

  You enjoy subjecting yourself and your crew to these difficult and challenging environments, don’t you?

  Oh, sure. I mean, you always have to keep things interesting. When we were shooting on Kauai, there was always something dangerous or exciting happening. At one time, the equipment truck got mired in mud and was going to turn over on its side. It was leaning three-quarters of the way over and everyone was afraid to go inside and take the equipment out. This meant we couldn’t shoot because the crew were terrified that if they ventured inside the vehicle it would capsize. Finally, I climbed into the back of the truck myself and retrieved the equipment. I didn’t want anybody else to take the chance. I managed to do it without the vehicle tumbling over, and we then started shooting. There were other trials we endured involving the boat we rented for the movie. In the story, the expedition arrives on the island in a boat. The vessel we hired looked beautiful, but it was very unstable and had what they call a concrete hull. As we were shooting, the seas were very rough and the ship was rocking violently from side-to-side. It looked great on film, but for the people onboard it was just awful. Everybody was getting seasick except for me, Moriarty and Daniel Pearl. Even the stuntmen, who were accustomed to shooting movies on water, were turning color. People were leaning over the sides, heaving and throwing up. They were begging me, “Please take us back to shore! Get us off this boat!” I just couldn’t do that because we only had the boat for a limited time. During the shoot, we had a helicopter coming out in order to get an aerial shot where it was flying over the boat. At this point, Moriarty’s character was supposed to be alone on the ship and so this meant that everybody else had to go below decks out of sight. Now, asking a bunch of seasick people to venture down into the lower decks on a rough boat like that was virtually impossible. There was simply no way they could or would agree to it. So we decided to lay everybody down on the upper decks and cover them over with tarpaulin. This meant they were hidden from view and the helicopter camera wouldn’t see them. But everybody was happy when that day was over, I can tell you! It was a long, long day.

  So, nobody threw themselves overboard in desperation?

  No, and I don’t think anybody would have preferred to take their chances in that sea. It was pretty harsh. I do remember for one shot we actually put Moriarty on a raft in the water, just off the boat. I’m telling you, within ten seconds, he was gone! The ocean had immediately carried him away in just ten seconds! It was incredible. Fortunately, we had a little motor-boat so we chased after Moriarty, caught him, and got him off the raft. I mean, he was literally heading out to the Pacific somewhere and we might never have seen him again. [Chuckles] We had a good time, actually.

  Didn’t the crew continually play a trick on you during shooting that involved a rubber chicken?

  Uh-huh. Nearly every scene we set up on every day, unbeknownst to me, they would hide a rubber chicken in the set somewhere. They would hang it here or there, and I wouldn’t see it until after we had shot the scene a couple of times. Then, I would discover that there was this rubber chicken in the shot. The crew thought it was funny. I thought it was a waste of film, frankly. As if I didn’t already have a million things on my mind, I had to search the set before we started filming each scene to make sure they hadn’t planted this rubber chicken. Eventually, on this one occasion, I missed it and the rubber chicken can actually be glimpsed in the movie.

  Island of the Alive presents the mutant offspring in their adult form, also revealing that they are now mating and can reproduce after a period of five years. Why did you decide to focus on this stage of their development?

  Because nothing ever remains the same. All living creatures develop and evolve, and obviously these monster babies were eventually going to grow up. I was wondering what they would become when that happened. I thought if I was going to make a third movie, I had to follow this story through to some kind of new and satisfying resolution. So, I asked myself some questions: what are these babies like as adults? What is the monster going to look like when it physically develops and ages? I thought those were important questions to answer and deal with. Otherwise, there was no point in making the movie if I was just going to have a load of monster babies running around again, killing people. The second film was, to a degree, different from the first because the protagonists were trying to save the monsters. In the third film, we got all of the monster birth stuff out of the way in the prologue and gave the audience their horror. The rest of the movie was more of an exploration of Jarvis’ character and the p
rogress of the monster children. I thought that differentiation from the events of the previous pictures made Island of the Alive a worthwhile project.

  The film also suggests that the mutant adults have developed human emotions; they hold hands, for example, and display affection for each other.

  Remember, these creatures are partly human. Even animals in the animal world display affection for each other. They have rituals of behaviour that are not unlike human behaviour in terms of the mating process and nurturing their young. There is a touch of humanity, or human aspects, evident in animals and there is a touch of the animal evident in human beings.