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.
- Also Credited As:
Larry Cohen, Lawrence G. Cohen
- Born:
April 30, 1936 in New York City, New York, USA
-
Job Titles:
Director, Screenwriter, Producer, TV series creator, Actor, Musician, Playwright
Family
-
Mother: Carolyn Cohen. died of emphysema at age 88 on January 17, 2000
-
Sister: Ronni Chasen. older
Education
-
City College of New York, New York, New York, film
Milestones
-
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 Feature screenwriting debut, I Deal in Danger , a film version of Blue Light
-
1966 Wrote The Return of the Seven , a Burt Kennedy-directed sequel to The Magnificent Seven
-
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 Co-wrote the screenplay treatment for Martin Scorsese s documentary short Italianamerican
-
1974 Wrote and directed the horror film It s Alive ; followed with sequel It s Alive 2 in 1978
-
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 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
-
1987 Provided the screenplay for the well-regarded detective thriller Best Seller starring James Woods and Brian Dennehy
-
1988 Created the syndicated reality series Cop Talk: Behind the Shield (1988-1989)
-
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
-
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
-
Created and wrote episodes of Branded , an NBC-TV Western starring Chuck Connors
-
Created and wrote episodes of the ABC-TV sci-fi thriller, The Invaders
-
Served as murder consultant for Columbo on NBC-TV
-
Wrote for the popular CBS-TV courtroom drama, The Defenders in the early 1960s