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  Praise for Michael Doyle and Larry Cohen: The Stuff Of Gods And Monsters

  “Michael Doyle is not only one of the best writers I’ve ever known, he’s one of the best interviewers. Larry Cohen: The Stuff of Gods and Monsters is a vital look at one of genre filmmaking’s more important, and less appreciated, artists. A wonderfully-written, well-researched, and completely captivating portrait of a consistently brilliant auteur, this book is an absolute must-have for anyone who loves genre movies, filmmaking tales or in-depth character studies.”

  Dave Alexander, Editor-in-chief of Rue Morgue magazine

  “Larry Cohen is a truly independent American filmmaker whose remarkable body of work continues to entertain and astonish. Michael Doyle’s book, Larry Cohen: The Stuff of Gods and Monsters, provides new insights into this unique and always surprising filmmaker.”

  John Landis, director of The Blues Brothers and An American Werewolf in London

  “For those of us who love the works of Larry Cohen, this is the most revealing and informative material ever published about him. And if by some chance you don’t know about Larry’s remarkable career, take this opportunity to learn how one maverick writer/director/producer has been able to survive and flourish in the ever changing madhouse of show biz.”

  Joe Dante, director of The Howling, Gremlins and The ‘Burbs

  “With Larry Cohen: The Stuff of Gods and Monsters, Michael Doyle has delivered an essential and profoundly illuminating volume on one of American cinema’s most idiosyncratic and unheralded talents.”

  John Hancock, director of Bang the Drum Slowly, Weeds, and Prancer

  Larry Cohen: The Stuff of Gods and Monsters

  © 2016 Michael Doyle. All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopying or recording, except for the inclusion in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This version of the book may be slightly abridged from the print version.

  Published in the USA by:

  BearManor Media

  PO Box 71426

  Albany, Georgia 31708

  www.bearmanormedia.com

  ISBN 978-1-59393-850-5

  Cover Design by John Teehan.

  eBook construction by Brian Pearce | Red Jacket Press.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword: A Few Thoughts on Larry

  Introduction: CohenVision

  Youth (1941-1958)

  The Television Years

  Screenplays: Part I (1966-1986)

  Bone (1971)

  Black Caesar (1972)

  Hell up in Harlem (1973)

  It’s Alive (1974)

  God Told Me To (1976)

  The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977)

  It Lives Again (1978)

  Full Moon High (1981)

  See China and Die (1981)

  Intermission: I, the Jury (1982)

  Q — The Winged Serpent (1982)

  Perfect Strangers (1984)

  Special Effects (1984)

  The Stuff (1985)

  Screenplays: Part II (1987-1997)

  Intermission: Deadly Illusion (1987)

  It’s Alive III — Island of the Alive (1987)

  A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987)

  Maniac Cop Trilogy (1988-1993)

  Wicked Stepmother (1989)

  Intermission: The Heavy (1990)

  The Ambulance (1991)

  As Good As Dead (1995)

  Original Gangstas (1996)

  Screenplays: Part III (1996-2011)

  Masters of Horror: Pick Me Up (2005)

  On Writing

  Methodology, Movies & Madness

  Notes

  Credits

  Bibliogaphy

  About the Author

  This is for my two lovely little monsters,

  Poppy Mae & Milo Jack

  Acknowledgments

  A writer, whose name presently deserts me, once remarked that no book is ever written alone. The one you now hold in your hands is certainly no exception.

  Of those helpful individuals who assisted me in realizing it, my profound thanks go first and foremost to Mr. Larry Cohen for his unwavering enthusiasm and patience with this project. The myriad interviews that comprise Larry Cohen: The Stuff of Gods and Monsters were conducted from June 2011 to September 2014, and involved several additional phone calls during that period in order to corroborate facts and add further details and depth to existing answers.

  Throughout this endeavour, Larry always gave generously of his time as my innumerable questions demanded a seemingly effortless feat of memory on his part. Needless to say, this book would not have been possible without his full co-operation and support. Let me also submit for the record that ever since I first saw It’s Alive as a traumatised eight-year-old — peeping through my fingers as Frank Davis discovers his newborn baby has decimated the entire maternity staff — Larry’s movies have been a constant source of entertainment and enlightenment for me. I thank him again for the countless hours of pleasure they — and our many long conversations — have given me.

  I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to Laurene (“nobody knows Larry Cohen like I know Larry Cohen”) Landon for furnishing this volume with a deeply heartfelt foreword, and for giving me some personal insights into Larry and his work. The same goes for Mick Garris, a man who is truly deserving of his reputation as the nicest guy in Hollywood, for providing me with a wonderful introduction. Aside from being a passionate director and writer, Mick is also an eloquent voice and erstwhile advocate for all that is great about the horror genre.

  In addition, I would like to extend my appreciation to Dave Alexander and Rodrigo Gudino of Rue Morgue magazine for kindly giving me something else to do whilst toiling on this book. I also offer similar sentiments to Ben Ohmart for his quiet but consistent encouragement, and Dale Warner for his invaluable technical assistance with digitizing photographs, stills and illustrations, all of which came courtesy of Larry Cohen, Steve Neill, and Mick Garris (cheers, guys!)

  My deepest love and thanks everywhere and at all times to my wife, Siân, whose unfailing belief in me is the source of all my strength. Not only did you lend a hand in tracking down rare copies of movies, television shows, books, periodicals, and other elusive research materials, you also plied me with copious cups of soul-restoring tea. And big love to my beautiful children, Poppy and Milo, for distracting their Daddy both when it was necessary and when it wasn’t.

  I am also indebted to my parents, John and Christine Doyle, my siblings Steven and Sarah (who have both survived their childhoods reasonably intact despite having me for an older brother), and my parents-in-law, Howard and Daryl Morgan, for all their love and support over the years.

  Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to remember my beloved grandparents, Evan Idris Evans (1925-2001) and Evelyn May Evans (1923-2008), as this book owes its very existence to their contagious love and passion for cinema. Thank you both for always allowing me to watch horror movies like It’s Alive, Q — The Winged Serpent and The Stuff on any day that ended in a Y, and for letting me burn out a succession of your video recorders with barely a complaining word.

  Michael Doyle

  November 14, 2014

  Foreword: A Few Thoughts on Larry

  Most people conversant with the satirical allegories of a Larry Cohen film are well aware that in every movie he has made there is a thematic echo or accompanying social commentary. It may be subliminal
or subversive, but it is there.

  I first met Larry during the filming of Full Moon High, when my then agent, Beverly Hecht, sent me to see him for a small role. After speaking with him for maybe half an hour and witnessing his joyful sprit (not to mention how handsome he was) I became more and more intimidated. He was in the process of firing the lead actress and asked me if I wanted to star in the film. Being Polish, blonde, and a moron, out of sheer terror I lied and said I couldn’t star in his film due to an audition.

  There was no audition!

  Larry is arguably one of the most distinctive twentieth century filmmakers and one of the few who has been consistent as a writer for over fifty years. He is the most convivial and jocular man one could ever hope to encounter — which I sincerely hope people will remember — and to lose him will undoubtedly be the darkest day of my life; the absence of light in my heart. He has been my best friend and confidante for over thirty-seven years and I have always felt that we are one soul intertwined in two bodies.

  I sometimes wish Larry had authored more comedies as his humour by far eclipses his fame as a suspense/thriller/horror director and wordsmith. He has so many fans it is simply mind-boggling, but, despite that fact, Larry is still the most insecure and humble mortal on God’s earth.

  Larry Cohen is not one in a million; he is one in a lifetime. No one comes close. Everywhere I go, there’s no one who compares. It’s like climbing to the top, then falling down the stairs.

  Laurene Landon

  June 20, 2014

  Laurene Landon is an actress and model, who has worked on many Larry Cohen productions including I the Jury, It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive, The Stuff, A Return To Salem’s Lot, Maniac Cop, Maniac Cop 2, Wicked Stepmother, The Ambulance, and Masters of Horror: Pick Me Up. She has also appeared in Roller Boogie (1979), All the Marbles (1981), Airplane II: The Sequel (1982), Hundra (1983), Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold (1984), America 3000 (1986), and Day Out of Days (2014).

  Introduction: CohenVision

  I thought that the brilliant It’s Alive was my introduction to the unique filmic mind of Larry Cohen, but I was wrong.

  A child of the 1960s, I was brought up by the family Magnavox television, and Cohen’s footprint was stamped large and indelibly there. Branded, a Western starring Chuck Connors, whose theme song still remains seared into my musical memory, was created by the same man who has brought us mutant babies, hermaphrodite gods, killer desserts, and maniacal undead policemen. So was The Invaders, the classic paranoid science fiction series about insidious aliens with rigid pinkies who are secretly infiltrating American society. Cohen’s other writing credits from this period include some of the best episodes of the Emmy-festooned, high falutin’ legal drama, The Defenders, which was the Law and Order juggernaut of its day.

  These shows might have been huge successes, and maybe even drew audiences in far greater numbers than his iconoclastic feature films, but the man achieved fame and glory for his movies — all of them independently produced and each possessing a singular style and undefined sanity that could only have come from one director. Larry Cohen’s cinematic vision is truly one of a kind and often not of this earth. His sense of storytelling logic is his own and, though eccentric might be a gentle term, its brilliance and audaciousness sets him apart from all others.

  It’s Alive was made (or acquired) by Warner Bros. in 1974, the same year that studio took William Friedkin’s The Exorcist. This whacked-out ecological baby monster thriller, featuring one of a very young Rick Baker’s earliest monster creations, rolled through America — market by market, drive-in by drive-in — and was a huge, if quiet, success. Though I later caught up with earlier work by the Maestro — including Cohen’s trenchant directorial debut, the uncompromising and unforgettable racial drama Bone — it was this picture with its notable tagline (“There’s only one thing wrong with the Davis baby…it’s alive!”) that pricked up my ears.

  But it was Cohen’s next movie — known at the time that I saw it as God Told Me To — that completely blew me away. The film, with its committed and excellent cast including Tony Lo Bianco, Sandy Dennis, Richard Lynch, and Silvia Sydney, among others, was a stunningly original science fiction horror story and drama of religious doubt that was like nothing I had ever seen before. It was played completely straight and was an incredibly powerful indictment of blind faith and religious fervour — mostly through Catholicism — that was written and directed by a Jew. It’s deep, it’s perceptive, it’s brilliant, and it’s out of its fucking mind!

  I had just started writing about genre films at that time — it was 1976 — and had to interview the guy who had made this amazing movie. So, I contacted him through New World Pictures and met him where he was editing The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover in a little cutting room on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. That was my first meeting with Larry Cohen, and I was amazed to find that this auteur of remarkable lunatic cinema was a kind, normal, really funny former Borscht belt comedian who had discovered a new life in the world of horror films.

  It is rare indeed to find an original voice in film, rarer still to find it in the world of horror. Practically by definition, horror movies are self-referential and deal in the tropes and techniques of decades of scaring audiences. But Larry’s films are like no others. Aside form his wildly original themes, his characters are richly drawn. They are not just flawed but are sometimes downright off their rockers — like Michael Moriarty’s likable low-life criminal Jimmy Quinn in Q — The Winged Serpent, the tale of Quetzalcoatl, a flying dragon-lizard god that nests in the Chrysler Building in Manhattan. There is also the charmingly demented Mo Rutherford in The Stuff (Moriarty again), an industrial saboteur who pits his considerable wits against an implacable and remorselessly homicidal ice cream dessert.

  But it is not just the wild tales and brilliant performances that make Cohen’s idiosyncratic work so legendary; it’s how he makes them as well.

  This is the ultimate guerrilla filmmaker we’re talking about here. The director who, during the making of God Told Me To (also known as Demon and I have the one-sheet to prove it) brought his crew — without permits or anything — to the St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York City with dozens, maybe even hundreds, of New York cops marching and participating, and without telling anybody what he was doing then started a shoot-out between characters from the film in the midst of all of this real-life action! A very young Andy Kaufman — before he became legendary for his masterly audience-baffling stand-up comedy — played one of those cops, and I ran into him at a movie theater not long after that. I asked him about the experience and he just said, in the most angelic way, that he wasn’t sure about it as he was new to movies then.

  Similarly, there was gunfire, mayhem, and mischief aplenty on the streets of New York during the shooting of Black Caesar, Hell up in Harlem and Q – The Winged Serpent, and again, all done without the necessary permits! No one but the members of the production were informed of what was actually going on, and if you watch those movies a little more closely, you’ll notice that the terror, confusion, and concern you read on the faces of many actual bystanders is quite genuine.

  It is about time that there was a book that chronicled the remarkable life and work of one of our most unique and under-appreciated filmmakers. I was thrilled to be able to bring Larry back behind the camera for his 2005 Masters of Horror film, Pick Me Up, which showed he was still in peak visionary condition, even when the script (and this one was written by David J. Schow) was not his own. And now his work has finally been chronicled here and laid out for your inspection.

  Larry Cohen is a filmmaker whose canon has to be seen to be believed but, once seen, can never be forgotten.

  Mick Garris

  October 20, 2014

  Mick Garris is a writer, producer, and director, and is responsible for such acclaimed films and mini-series as Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990), Sleepwalkers (1992), The Stand (1994), The Shining (1997), Quicksilver Highway (19
97), Riding the Bullet (2004), Desperation (2006), and Bag of Bones (2011). He is also the creator and executive producer of Showtime’s Masters of Horror, directing a film in each of its two seasons, Chocolate (2005) and Valerie on the Stairs (2006).

  “Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.”

  Polonius, Hamlet, Act 2, scene 2

  “If I had all the freedom, time and money to do what I wanted, I’d still do things my own way because I can only be me. Only I can make the kinds of pictures that I make.”

  Larry Cohen

  “To a new world of gods and monsters!”

  Dr. Septimus Pretorius, The Bride of Frankenstein

  Youth (1941-1958)

  MICHAEL DOYLE: Conflicting sources claim that you were born on July 15, either in the year 1938 or 1941, in Kingston, New York, and that your family later moved to the Riverdale section of the Bronx. Is any of this accurate?

  LARRY COHEN: No, not entirely. I was not born in Kingston and neither did I move with my family to the Riverdale neighbourhood. That information is all wrong. I was born in 1941 and grew up in Manhattan and I’ve never even been in Kingston. My folks did move to Riverdale, but I was no longer living at home with them anymore. I had already moved out by the time they’d arrived there. Before that, we had been living in the Washington Heights section of New York City in uptown Manhattan.

  What was your neighbourhood like?