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Famous Like Me > Writer > C > Larry Cohen

Profile of Larry Cohen on Famous Like Me

 
Name: Larry Cohen  
   
Also Know As:
   
Date of Birth: 15th July 1938
   
Place of Birth: New York, New York, USA
   
Profession: Writer
 
 
From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia

Larry Cohen (born 15 July 1938, New York City) is an American film producer, director and screenwriter. Although he writes and produces for others, he is best known for directing his own low-budget but inventive horror films and thrillers.

After an apprenticeship as a writer and producer for television, Cohen wrote, produced and directed his first feature film, Dial Rat for Terror in 1972. He came to prominence with It's Alive (1974), a horror film about an epidemic of fanged, predatory babies. Though cheap, it is notable for its satirical black humour (the hero's son slaughters the medical staff at birth) and for its exploration of the parents' dilemma: the hero, who has fathered one of the creatures, at first disowns it but later tries to protect it despite its obvious anti-social tendencies. It's Alive is also noted for being scored by Bernard Herrmann. Cohen made two sequels, It Lives Again (1978) and It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987). They are among the select number of film sequels which equal or improve on the original.

Cohen's films are full of quotable dialogue. In Full Moon High (1981), a teenage werewolf puts off his girlfriend's advances with the excuse that it's his "time of the month". The Stuff (1985) concerns a parasitic goo from beneath the Earth's crust which manages to get itself marketed as a dessert; the film's hero announces proudly at the beginning: "Nobody could be as dumb as I appear," and later delivers the maxim: "Everybody has to eat shaving cream now and then."

In Q (aka The Winged Serpent, 1982), the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl is resurrected and flies about New York City snatching human sacrifices off the skyscrapers. Cohen was able to employ the talents of Michael Moriarty, David Carradine and Candy Clark, and the film is one of his most sophisticated, but it still manages to include such lines as "Maybe his head got loose and fell off".

Perhaps Cohen's most complex film, as well as his darkest, is God Told Me To (aka Demon, 1976), in which a troubled Catholic detective is faced with an epidemic of murders carried out by apparently normal people who claim, with quiet satisfaction, that God told them to do it. The film mixes science fiction and horror with religious satire.

In 1987, Cohen made an unofficial sequel to Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot. With typical chutzpah, Cohen threw out all of King's characters and kept only the basic premise of a small American town inhabited by vampires. A Return to 'Salem's Lot starred Michael Moriarty (a Cohen regular) and Samuel Fuller, and satirises small-town snobbery and hypocrisy: a little old lady vampire refers coyly to her "drinking problem", while the evil king-vampire is shown to be, at bottom, little more than a rather nasty conservative politician.

Besides monster movies, Cohen has also made thrillers such as The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977), which portrays the FBI chief as a sexually repressed, paranoid megalomaniac; Special Effects (1984) the twisted tale of a policeman, a murderous film director, and the woman whom he turns into the double of his leading lady; and The Ambulance (1990), a Hitchcock-style entertainment in which Eric Roberts investigates the sudden disappearance of a young woman.

Because of their frequently hurried production and their bargain-basement budgets, Cohen's films are sometimes murkily shot or messily edited; but Cohen's freewheeling approach (and independence from studio interference) enables him to attack a number of satirical targets which often get off lightly in the mainstream: Christianity in God Told Me To, nice little towns in A Return to 'Salem's Lot, family values in the Alive trilogy, greedy and ruthless food companies in The Stuff. In the third film of the trilogy, Cohen even manages to work in some telling swipes against American demonisation of Cuba.

Filmography

His directorial credits include:

  • Air Force One: The Final Mission (2004)
  • Original Gangstas (1996)
  • The Ambulance (1990)
  • Wicked Stepmother (1989)
  • Deadly Illusion (1987)
  • It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987)
  • A Return to Salem's Lot (1987)
  • The Stuff (1985)
  • Special Effects (1984)
  • Perfect Strangers (1984)
  • Q (aka The Winged Serpent) (1982)
  • Full Moon High (1981)
  • It Lives Again (1978)
  • The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977)
  • God Told Me To (aka Demon) (1976)
  • It's Alive (1974)
  • Black Caesar (1973)
  • Hell Up in Harlem (1973)
  • Bone (aka Dial Rat for Terror) (1972)

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Larry Cohen