Genre-expert Harald Keller called him "Rainer Werner Fassbinder of the second division horror film" in the "taz" once: Larry Cohen's approximately 50-year career in Hollywood and on US television has not gone unnoticed, even if his name is the big audience maybe little says.
Getty Images
Larry Cohen (1941-2019)
Born in New York, Cohen initially worked for television after film studies, writing episodes for "The Fugitive," devising the science fiction series "The Invaders," which was released on ZDF television in 1970/71. Invasion of the Wega "ran.
ddp images
Scene from "Godfather Of Harlem - The godfather of Harlem" ("Black Caesar")
His debut as a cinema director, he gave in 1972 with "Bone", but more memorable were his Blaxploitation film "Black Ceasar" ("The Godfather of Harlem", 1973) and the horror shocker "It's Alive", "The cradle of evil" 1974) about a murdering monster baby to whom Cohen wrote and staged two sequels. On "God Told Me To" (1976) wrote the "Tagesspiegel", however, even Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby" "is nothing more than a handzahmes Stubenkätzchen".
ddp images
Scene from "The Cradle of Evil" Episode "The Cradle of Satan" ("It's Alive Again")
Just established as a horror expert, Larry Cohen shot his big political film "The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover". The biographical film about the FBI boss, however, was a flop whose value was recognized only years later, as in a major Cohen retrospective at the Viennale 2010.
So Larry Cohen focused on horror movies again, shooting works like "Full Moon High" (1981, "A Werewolf Biting Through"), "Q - The Winged Serpent" (1982, "American Monster"), "Stuff" (1985), "Salem II" (1987) or "The Ambulance" (1990).
Once again in the limelight of the film-interested public came Larry Cohen in the early nineties: Joel Schumacher staged the thriller "Phone Booth" after a script that Cohen had started writing 30 years earlier - at the suggestion of Alfred Hitchcock, who had expressed the idea of having a movie played completely in a phone booth. The film launch was postponed several times after 9/11 and a real sniper murder series in Washington, but then in 2003 with Kiefer Sutherland in the lead role for commercial success.
In 2017 Larry Cohen himself became the main character of a film: In the documentary "King Cohen" he speaks about his own career, but also about companions like Martin Scorsese, John Landis or Fred Williamson. Cohen died on Saturday in Los Angeles, as reported by the Los Angeles Times and the Hollywood Reporter. He was 77 years old.