Larry Cohen

Cohen is a filmmaker with many talents and birthdates. Michael Singer's "Film Directors" places him in NYC on July 15, 1941 while both "Variety's Who's Who in Show Business" and Rodek and Honig's "The Show Business Encyclopedia" state he was born in Chicago on April 20, 1947. Something called "Checklist 117" designates 1938 as his birth year in NYC. However the usually reliable "Motion Picture Almanac" (1993 edition) claims that Cohen was born on April 20, 1936 in NYC so so shall we.

Biography

After honing his craft writing and creating series for 1950s and 60s TV and having several screenplays produced in the 60s, Cohen became a major low-rent auteur of 70s cheapie genre movies. His ambitious 1972 debut, "Bone" (aka "Dial Rat for Terror" or "Beverly Hills Nightmare") featured Yaphet Kotto as a Black intruder who has a surprising showdown with an affluent white couple (Andrew Duggan, Joyce Van Patten) in their Beverly Hills home. This bizarre black comedy was an attempt to adapt the social satirical concerns of British playwright Joe Orton and Jean-Luc Godard (circa "Weekend" 1967) into an American milieu. Cohen went on to produce, write, and direct a series of somewhat schlocky but thoughtful and thoroughly entertaining films.

Cohen favors NYC locations, veteran Hollywood performers (Broderick Crawford, Dan Dailey, Celeste Holm, Jose Ferrer, June Havoc) and composers (Bernard Herrmann, Miklos Rozsa) and quirky leading men (Michael Moriarty, David Carradine). His is a morally ambiguous universe without true heroes or absolute villains. His notable 70s work includes the "blaxploitation" entry "Black Caesar" (1972) and its sequel, "Hell Up In Harlem" (1973), the cult horror film about a monstrous baby, "It's Alive" (1974)--followed by two sequels, the supernatural cop thriller, "God Told Me To/Demon" (1976) and the subversive two-bit biopic "The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover" (1977).

In the late 70s and throughout the 80s, Cohen provided stories and/or screenplays for the films of others (William Richert's "The American Success Company" 1979, "I, the Jury" 1982, "Scandalous" 1984, "Best Seller" 1987) while continuing to produce, direct, and write self-conscious, low-budget pictures. These include the NYC cop vs. winged serpent thriller, "Q" (1982), "The Stuff" (1985), an unsavory horror satire about a devilish dessert; "A Return to Salem's Lot" (1987), a horror sequel/spoof featuring the inimitable filmmaker Sam Fuller as an intrepid vampire hunter; and Bette Davis's final film, "Wicked Stepmother" (1989). Cohen also wrote and produced the popular "Maniac Cop" (1988) and its two sequels.

As a writer-director, Cohen's first film for the 90s was "The Ambulance"--a suspense thriller about a mysterious ambulance that abducts NYC residents--which opened abroad but never received an American theatrical release. In 1993, he kept busy as a screenwriter scripting the Sidney Lumet-directed legal/psychological thriller, "Guilty as Sin" and providing the story for Abel Ferrara's take on "Bodysnatchers."

Just when the industry might be tempted to write off Cohen as a progenitor of B-grade (and sometimes C- and D-grade) material--however knowing and irony-laced--he would inevitably sell a screenplay that would involve major Hollywood talent. Meanwhile, he would continue to do journeyman work regularly writing and directing (and sometimes even providing music for) a never-ending series of TV movies, cable films and direct-to-video fare. Cohen provided the ultimate case-in-point when he sold the screenplay for the hitman thriller "Phone Booth" (2003) to Twentieth Century Fox. Although Cohen's last big-screen credit had been on the ultra-schlocky horror film "Uncle Sam," the script for "Phone Booth" managed to attract the attention of potential leading men such as Brad Pitt, Jim Carrey, Will Smith and Mel Gibson before the film (with uncredited rewrites by Brian Helgeland and Stephen Gaghan) was finally lensed by director Joel Schumacher with hot newcomer Colin Farrell in the leading role (The movie also garnered notorious pre-release publicity when its 2002 release date was postponed for several months after a string of similar real-life murders occurred in the Washington D.C. area just before the film was supposed to open). The result was a re-heating of Cohen's career, landing him script purchases and development deals with virtually every major studio in Hollywood. The first result of Cohen's second coming was the similarly telephonic thriller "Cellular" (2004), for which he received story credit.

Filmography

Life Events

1958

Worked as a writer for "Kraft Mystery Theatre" on NBC-TV

1963

Wrote for "Arrest and Trial", an ABC-TV cop/lawyer drama

1965

Formed own film production company, Larco

1966

Created and wrote episodes of the ABC-TV WWII spy drama, "Blue Light", starring Robert Goulet

1966

Wrote "The Return of the Seven", a Burt Kennedy-directed sequel to "The Magnificent Seven"

1966

Feature screenwriting debut, "I Deal in Danger", a film version of "Blue Light"

1970

Wrote and directed his first play off-off-Broadway, "Nature of the Crime" starring Tony Lo Bianco

1971

TV movie writing debut, "In Broad Daylight"

1972

Feature debut as a producer and director, "Bone" (which he also wrote)

1972

Wrote the TV-pilot-turned-TV-movie "Cool Million" (AKA "Mask of Marcella") starring James Farentino

1973

Wrote and directed the feature films "Hell Up In Harlem" and "Black Caesar," both starring Fred Williamson

1974

Wrote and directed the horror film "It's Alive"; followed with sequel "It's Alive 2" in 1978

1974

Co-wrote the screenplay treatment for Martin Scorsese's documentary short "Italianamerican"

1976

Wrote, produced and directed the feature film "God Told Me To" starring Tony Lo Bianaco, Deborah Raffin and Sandy Dennis

1977

Wrote and directed the feature film "The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover" starring Broderick Crawford and Jose Ferrer

1979

Provided the original story for the feature film "The American Success Company" starring Jeff Bridges

1981

Wrote and driected the comedy-horror remake "Full Moon High"

1982

Adapted the Mickey Spillane novel "I, the Jury" for the screen, starring Armand Asante as Mike Hammer

1982

Wrote and directed the comedy-horror film "Q", about an Aztec god-beast in New York City, starring Michael Moriarity

1983

Provided the story for the NBC women-in-prison telepic "Women of San Quentin"

1983

Wrote and directed the thriller "Perfect Strangers"

1984

Co-wrote the story (with director Rob Cohen) for the comedy "Scandalous"

1985

Made first film appearance, as Ace Tomato agent in John Landis's "Spies Like Us"

1985

Wrote and directed the comedy-horror film "The Stuff" and the sci-fi thriller "Special Effects" starring Michael Moriarity

1987

Provided the screenplay for the well-regarded detective thriller "Best Seller" starring James Woods and Brian Dennehy

1987

Co-wrote the story and directed "Return to Salem's Lot," the comedic sequel to the film based on Steven King's thriller; again worked with Moriarity as the star

1988

Wrote the screenplay for the cult horror film "Maniac Cop"; returned for sequels "Maniac Cop 2" in 1990 and "Badge of Silence: Maniac Cop III" in 1993

1988

Created the syndicated reality series "Cop Talk: Behind the Shield" (1988-1989)

1989

Wrote and directed the comic witchcraft caper "Wicked Stepmother" starring Bette Davis

1990

Wrote and directed the suspense thriller "The Ambulance"

1993

Co-wrote the screen story for director Abel Ferrara' sci-fi remake "Body Snatchers"

1993

Wrote the screenplay for the courtroom potboiler "Guilty As Sin," directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Don Johnson and Rebecca DeMornay

1995

Wrote episodes of the television drama "NYPD Blue"

1995

Wrote the original screenplay for the HBO action telepic "The Expert"

1996

Wrote the straight-to-cable thrillers "Invasion of Privacy" and "The Ex" which debuted on HBO

1998

Provided the story for "The Defenders: Choice of Evils," the Showtime telepic revival of the classic TV courtroom drama

1998

Wrote the screenplay for the schloky thriller "Uncle Sam"

2002

Wrote the original screenplay for the thriller "Phone Booth," directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Colin Farrell

2004

Penned the thriller "Cellular"

2007

Wrote the thriller, "Captivity" starring Elisha Cuthbert

Photo Collections

Hell Up in Harlem - Movie Poster

Here is the American one-sheet movie poster for Hell Up in Harlem (1973). One-sheets measured 27x41 inches, and were the poster style most commonly used in theaters.