R.I.P., Larry Cohen

This is a tough one. Larry Cohen––consummate old-New Yawwk indie-auteur, master of exploitation and horror, father of the IT'S ALIVE trilogy, progenitor of the only Yaphet Kotto chamber drama, facilitator of Michael Moriarty method performances in movies with stop-motion monsters, inventor of THE STUFF (a movie so good, I reviewed it twice), creator of MANIAC COP, the force behind the exquisitely unnecessary (in all the best ways) sequel to SALEM'S LOT (co-starring Sam Fuller!), the person ballsy enough to star Adam and Alan Arkin in the same movie and not have them play father and son, and the final director to match wits with Bette Davis––has died at 77.

I was lucky enough to almost work with Larry as a production assistant on an indie thriller he was going to make in 2006 called SURVEILLANCE. Though I was interviewed, hired, and ready to go, the film was stopped short before principal photography began. [A major network was able to kibosh it due to surface similarities with a pilot they were pushing (based on an Alfred Hitchcock movie) that never came to pass either. Ah, show biz.] Regardless, Larry and his partners were delightfully old-school in a very "New York moxie" kind of way that I somehow can only compare to the spunky, screwball newspaper comedies from the '30s and '40s. Fitting for a guy who grew up on Bogart and Cagney, made the journey from NBC page to show creator in less than a decade, and managed to make some of the most whacked-out, socially important horror films of the '70s and '80s with little more than shoestrings and elbow grease. I don't think we'll ever see his like again.