On Larry Cohen

Such an interesting career!

I still haven't seen Bone or Black Caesar! I look forward to both.

And he looks really cool! He is my new Jewish icon!

I forgot that I've also seen It's Alive!

That Edgar Hoover thing looks...wow, I must see it now. Maybe I'll go and look for it in Rasputins at lunch.

I saw The Stuff on opening night, in a theatre in Albany, with about eight other people. Almost everyone good friends by the end of the night.

I remember seeing him interviewed in a documentary on the classic age of blaxploitation, re-enacting Eddie Murphy's comedy routine about the Black Caesar trailer... "BLACK CAESAR! The TRUE STORY of the GHETTO! The BLACKEST film you've ever seen! BLACK CAESAR! A Larry COHEN Film!"

Rasputin had Q and God Told Me To but they were a little pricey. I came THIS close to buying both right there on the spot, though.

"GOD TOLD ME TO! It will give you nightmares... FOREVER!"

Bone (1972) (producer)
... aka Beverly Hills Nightmare (USA)
... aka Dial Rat (UK)
... aka Dial Rat for Terror
... aka Housewife

Dial Rat For Terror???

I LOVE the mad shoplifting woman's monologues in Bone. Also Yaphet Kotto is...amazing!

The Albany Twin? This means that you are...much older than I thought you were. ;)

Well worth buying.

adam, you've met me. how could I be so old?

God Told Me To is wicked.

yet

Sarah was also kind of freaked out by all the vaginas.

Just got back from a Cinefamily showing of God Told Me To (hosted by Patton Oswalt!) What an eerie messed up movie... It seems like Cohen was starting off with a straight-up evil bible movie a la The Exorcist and The Omen until he realized "Hey, that Chariots Of The Gods book is pretty popular!"

Things I noticed:
- Spaceship clipped from Space: 1999
- Eyeball clipped from 2001: A Space Odyssey (was this the reason for the "Filmed at Pinewood Studios, England" credit?
- Andy Kaufman as a policeman who goes on a murderous rampage.
- Weird Al was in the audience with us!

Also, there was free beer and hot dogs too! Hooray!

don't forget the alien messiah with vagina belly!

man i regret selling my vhs copy of this

don't forget the alien messiah with vagina belly!

There is no way I'll be able to un-see that.

Private Files of J Edgar Hoover showing next month (8/30?) at Lincoln Center; Cohen attending for Q&A.

cohen is gd value on his commentaries, you shld go

he's a big pal of stan lee - who appears in cohen's the ambulance, along with the recently deceased gene colan - and iirc he tried to sue alan moore/dc etc over the league of extraordinary gentleman

what are the five larry cohen films errone can see (and which can be downloaded)?

private files of j. edgar hoover is a blast, with a motherfucker of a performance by broderick crawford

Anyone really interested in Cohen should try to find a copy of Robin Wood's The American Nightmare. Wood treated Cohen like a first-tier pantheon director.

private files of JEH is cohen's masterpiece IMO

well, I'm going tomorrow. What about this Special Effects w/ Eric Bogosian & Zoe Lund? I can't stay for that, cuz there's this thing I like called dinner.

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/series/film-comment-selects-the-private-files-of-j.-edgar-hoover-special-effects

dunno abt dloads, but the following have all had region 2 dvd releases and shld be p easy to source

it's alive
god told me to
q the winged serpent
bone
black caesar

haven't seen Q yet, that's on my list. watched Uncle Sam (Wants You Dead) last night, that was pretty funny. not really very good tho.

Black Caesar and God Told Me To are both absolutely essential viewing for anyone imo

Cellular and Captivity however are AWFUL

God Told Me To is next-level awesome

He wrote plenty of TV, including 3 Columbo eps.

http://classic-horror.com/files/images/q_the_winged_serpent_poster.preview.jpg

from the NYT in March:

A Critique of Clint Eastwood’s ‘J. Edgar’ Movie
By MICHAEL CIEPLY

LOS ANGELES — Larry Cohen has issues — 17 pages’ worth — with “J. Edgar,” the movie now being shot here by Clint Eastwood for Imagine Entertainment and Warner Brothers with Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role as J. Edgar Hoover.

J. Edgar Hoover, left, the director of the F.B.I., and Clyde Tolson, in 1950.Mr. Cohen is a writer and director who was in the news when his sister, the publicist Ronni Chasen, was murdered last year, and whose film “The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover” was released in 1977 with Broderick Crawford in the lead. He has now compiled a lengthy critique of the new Hoover film, based on his reading of a screenplay by Dustin Lance Black, who won an Oscar for “Milk.”

Mr. Cohen’s biggest gripe is what he describes as the film’s portrayal of Hoover, the longtime director of the F.B.I., “as a closeted gay man.”

In his critique, which Mr. Cohen said he planned to post online if he could find a proper forum, he acknowledges that Hoover had long been the subject of reports and rumors of cross-dressing and of a hidden sexual relationship with his aide Clyde Tolson (who died in 1975, three years after Hoover).

But Mr. Cohen insists that the stories, which made a splash in Anthony Summers’s 1993 biography “Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover,” are not backed up by credible evidence that Hoover was “anything but asexual.”

Based on its script, Mr. Eastwood’s movie will dwell heavily on the Lindbergh kidnapping case, in which, by Mr. Cohen’s assessment, Hoover “had only the most peripheral involvement.” And he contends the film makes much of Hoover’s reluctance to pursue the Mafia, but underestimates the positive effect of what he calls a “gentleman’s agreement,” under which Hoover supposedly let crime bosses operate prostitution and gambling rings, as long as they helped to block the narcotics trade.

“Hoover did a lot of bad things to a lot of people, I just don’t think he deserves to have this perpetuated,” said Mr. Cohen, who spoke by phone last week of the new movie, on which he was briefly invited to do some work that never materialized.

Warner is unfazed. In a statement, the studio said: “Mr. Cohen read an early draft of the script that had yet to be properly vetted. His critique, however well researched, is not based on the actual shooting script.”

Mr. Cohen, in his memo, suggests a remedy. He recommends that anyone who sees Mr. Eastwood’s film also take a look at his, which, he writes, will be available on a DVD from MGM.

Hoover is not exactly a good movie. Quite a lot of shitty acting, which hardly affects horror films.

God Told Me To really is something else. Almost foolishly ambitious in its melding of tones, genres and in the sheer number of plot threads it tries to introduce and then haphazardly tie up (did we really need the stuff about the dirty cop and the drug dealers?). I was going to say that Deborah Raffin and Sandy Dennis, in their scene together, and especially Sylvia Sidney in her one scene, are working beyond the call of duty here, but Cohen so clearly and earnestly believes in this material that for any decent actor to come in and half-ass it would probably have felt cruel. It doesn't make a lick of sense, of course, but Cohen's audacity makes it a much more preferable "good bad movie" than something like Miami Connection--the difference, I suppose, being that where that film basically has the goal of being a competent kung-fu actioner, and fails due to a lack of slickness or competence, Cohen's feels something that played like a Kubrick-level masterpiece in his head before he got down to the business of cobbling it together out of whatever pieces he could (the flashback sequences have a charmingly absurd cut-and-paste quality to them). I can't say I'm anywhere near Robin Wood's level of enthusiasm, but I kinda want to check out more Cohen now.

Incredible film, deserves every ounce of praise

NYC retro w/ appearances by LC

https://quadcinema.com/program/larry-cohens-new-york/

Hell of a run, but sadly he's passed away:

https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3552314/r-p-stuff-alive-filmmaker-larry-cohen-died/

But this tweet from a couple of weeks ago shows he lives on (because this is a totally accurate call):

I saw Jordan Peele compared to Hitchcock but, after US, it's clear Larry Cohen (with a budget) is a better comparison.

— Miriam Bale (@mimbale) March 10, 2019

RIP. GOD TOLD ME TO and Q are my faves.

Sorry to hear. I had a somewhat baffled semi-positive reaction to God Told Me To a few years back that I posted about just upthread, but I've come to think that I may have underestimated it. Was less impressed by The Stuff when I watched it last Halloween, but I definitely need to see more of this guy's work. RIP.

I wanted to post his 2018 appearance on the Gilbert Gottfried podcast, but it looks like its gone behind a paywall. If you're interested and you know how to find ways around that--or hell, if you wanna just pay for it--its worth a listen.

Oh man when will this guy get his due

RIP

I wouldn't be surprised if the Larry Cohen GGACP ep gets taken out from behind the paywall this week anyway. They tend to do that when their guests pass, which happens more often with this podcast than most.

Boooo, RIP. Really need to watch the rest of his films, love what I've seen. Island of the Alive is so ridiculous. I always associate his work with Henenlotter's.

Anyone seen Uncle Sam? I've heard good things.

Awwww

Maniac Cop is hugely prescient Art

The Stuff as well, in its way. I cannot believe nobody has remade that one.

Uncle Sam is the Citizen Kane if direct-to-video horror, as I remember it anyway.

I just realized he is credited with the story for one of my very favourite Columbo episodes: "Any Old Port in a Storm," with Donald Pleasance as a murderous wine connoisseur. This was from 1973, the same year he wrote and directed both Black Caesar and Hell Up in Harlem. This man was a machine!

I've only seen Q and The Private Files of J Edgar Hoover...

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/larry-cohen-dead-alive-hell-up-harlem-writer-director-was-77-1185759

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCzX3_IyynM

roundup

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6261-the-fiercely-independent-larry-cohen

Finally got around to watching this: not particularly insightful and occasionally repetitive but worth a watch if you're into it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPblr7nKaYw

on shudder only i believe

Finally watched The Stuff tonight. What the fuck did Cohen (or anyone else) ever see in Michael Moriarty? I can't think of any other actor who ever sucked more life out of every frame of film he occupied. Was he somebody's coke dealer or something? Christ, but he bothers the shit out of me.

wow... he makes that movie for me! his character is so enthusiastically low-key ridiculous. have you seen Q?

yeah, I think Moriarty is great in both Q and The Stuff (and Law & Order!)

The Stuff would have been better if Moriarty and Garrett Morris had switched roles/screen time.

Currently watching In Search of Darkness which is a kinda fun 4 hour doc on Shudder about 80s horror. Larry Cohen pops up as a talking head from time to time and he’s hilarious.

God Told Me To is a favorite of mine. Such an odd, engaging flick

oh yeah, it took me forever to find God Told Me To and i was expecting a much more generic 70s gritty flick instead of the oddball genius it contains.

Caught Deadly Illusion last night, and it's a lot of fun imo. It felt like the action scenes were planned by a 12-year-old making stuff up with action figures, while the dialogue was convincing Bogart-level private-eye stuff, given this totally different vibe by Billy Dee Williams's radiant warm charisma. I gather Cohen was kicked off the picture, and a lot of the direction/editing is kinda stilted, so it doesn't exactly flow from line to line... but there are a ton of applause-worthy moments and it played great watching it with an audience.

Christopher Nolan has watched God told me to, right? He pretty much copied the irish parade scene!

i love that movie