Yaphet Kotto Top Ten

 A great actor

1) Midnight Run (1988)

2) Alien (1979)

3) Blue Collar (1978)

4) Truck Turner (1974)

5) Live and Let Die (1973)

6) Across 110th Street (1972)

7) The Running Man (1988)

8) Raid on Entebbe (1976)

9) Fighting Back (1982)

10) Bone (1971) 

Movie review - "God Told Me To" (1976) ***1/2 (rewatching)

 I saw this only a few years ago but couldn't remember it - just flashes of Andy Kaufman at the St Patrick's Day Parade. I saw it on the big screen. Enjoyed the New York locations, the 70s actors, the ambience. Tony Lo Bianco was solid. Loved Deborah Raffin. Her part could't been bigger - she could've been used to explain things. I got confused in the second half. It was wild.

The scene of the actor explaining how he killed his family was powerful. Some plots cried out for more treatment - such as the cabal of rich people helping the demon. More Richard Lynch.

Full of ideas.

Movie review - "El Condor" (1970) ***

 Larry Cohen was called in to rewrite this - he whinged about what was done to his script, as he often did, but although his script may have been better it's an enjoyable movie with Jim Brown and Lee Van Cleef as a left-field double act trying to get gold in Mexico with the help of Apaches.

Rousing music, impressive set, a surprising amount of nudity (there's a raid at night to kill soldiers in bed with prostitutes - most of them are naked), Marianna Hill is beautiful, Patrick O'Neal a worthy adversary, the Apache roles are underdone.

The rushed rewriting of the script is notable, and I got confused here and there.

But generally a decent late period Western.

Movie review - "King Cohen" (2017) ***1/2

Loving look at the life and films of Larry Cohen, a very interesting filmmaker. The great things about this are the interviews, and old photos and clips of Larry growing up and behind the scenes of his films - that house which keeps appearing in his films is his!

We hear from some film loving colleagues - Joe Dante, Martin Scorsese, JJ Abrams, John Landis - as well as Cohen's wife, his ex wife and ex girlfriend - so he obviously can stay on good terms! There's also people who made films with him, including Michael Moriarty and Fred Williamson.

Most of the stories concern Cohen's audacity in stealing shots - there's a lot of these. It does touch on his sacking on a few films (notably I the Jury) but is generally extremely positive. There's no mention of his sister, who was murdered.

It's fun and peppy even if inevitably not of great depth/analysis - for that you really need to read that huge book on Cohen.

Movie review - "Return to Salem's Lot" (1987) **

Larry Cohen made this back to back with It's Alive 3 for the straight-to-video market and I feel it was a mistake. This feels too lazy, too sloppily made. I actually got angry at it - Cohen pretty much disregards Steven King's excellent source material entirely and comes up with his own story. That would be okay if his own story was interesting but it's not really. There are, as always in Cohen films, some bright ideas - Michael Moriarty is an anthropologist who the vampires want to write their story, Sam Fuller as a Nazi hunters - but they aren't really developed. I kept getting confused why Moriarty was acting the way he did and the kid who plays his son was annoying.

Scenes seem rushed and done in a grab-bag fashion.There's no atmosphere or sense of horror, mystery or dread. It is fun to see a cast including Evelyn Keyes, June Havoc and Fuller, as well as a young Tara Reid, an Katja Crosby is very pretty, but I would have preferred some suspense or decent comedy/satire. Michael Moriarty really got on my nerves.

I'm really bagging this one, aren't I? I can't help it. I just think Cohen had a fantastic vampire film in him somewhere but this isn't it.

Movie review - "Original Gangstas" (1996) ***

This blaxploitation throwback has a fine premise - a bunch of old blaxploitation stars (Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Pam Grier) reunite to take on a gang that they helped set up which is causing grief in the town of Gary, Indiana.

The structure is solid - a kid is killed for hustling a gang at basketball (I loved the low stakes-ness of this) and an old man is wounded for helping the police, prompting the old man's son (Williamson) to return and team up with the parents of the dead kid (Grier, Brown) to get revenge.

There's some satisfactory scenes of middle aged men kicking young arse - this film is kind of aimed at the black Clint Eastwood crowd. The quality of the cast is high - it includes Ron O'Neal, Richard Roundtree, Robert Forster, Charles Napier and Wings Hauser.

The script deals with some important issues, there's complexity to the characters. I don't feel it's as good as the premise - you could get a sequel or two out of it - but I liked this a lot more than I thought it would.

Movie review - "It's Alive III: Island of the Alive" (1987) **1/2 (warning: spoilers)

I sometimes feel that Larry Cohen the director doesn't always give the best treatment to Larry Cohen the writer. His script tells a good story and is full of imaginative touches and issues. I don't think as director he gets all the juice out of it.

Maybe I'm being unfair but with this third It's Alive movie (I haven't seen number two yet) I felt he put in horror and suspense because he felt he had to in order to get it made but he was more interested in comedic/social issues and seeing how way out Michael Moriarty could get in his performance. The creature attacks feel perfunctory - almost semi comic. The script deals with life and death situations and some big emotive issues (fear of children, broken marriages, being killed) but the treatment is almost flippant. It's closer to The Stuff in that way - more social commentary and Michael Moriarty than actual horror/drama/suspense.

Moriarty plays a father of one of the mutated babies who argues that his child should live. It gets shunted off to an island where all mutants then years later Moriarty takes part in an expedition to see how the creatures are faring.

It loved the idea of an island full of mutants and wish there had been more of it - a sort of Escape from New York situation. What do the scientists do? What is the ecology like? What do tourists do? How do the babies interact? But after act two on the island, act three involves Moriarty on a boat and going back to the mainland where the baby tries to track down its mother (Karen Black). This was less interesting, although there's some good emotion when Moriarty and Black reconnect with their child... and it's child.

Moriarty is given free range and his admirers will love this movie - his character is an actor and dad, unable to get work, full of shame, prone to acting crazy. Cohen gets points for making the films in the series so different from each other.

Movie review - "The Ambulance" (1990) ***

Larry Cohen often talks about his love for old movies of classic Hollywood and their influence on his work is frequently apparent. This one is heavily inspired by Hitchcock, in particular The Lady Vanishes. Eric Roberts is a comic book artist who is hot for a young Janine Turner. She collapses and is spirited off in an ambulance but when he tries tracking her down no one has any record of her admission. Then when they do start believing about her existence, they start to think he’s responsible – also Hitchcockian.

It’s all quite cleverly worked out and it very watchable – I intended only to see ten minutes or so of this before going to bed but ended up seeing the whole thing in one hit. A strong cast helps – James Earl Jones is the detective on the case (his death provides a strong second act twist), Janine Turner is very pretty, Megan Gallagher extremely likeable as a cop who also gets involved. Cohen could write some very good support parts and Gallagher’s has all these extra dimensions – she should’ve been a bigger film name. Stan Lee plays himself and Eric Bauer from The Young and the Restless pops up as a baddy.

Eric Roberts is okay in the lead, with his late 80s mullet. At least he’s a star – I just wish his character wasn’t such a sexual harasser of Turner in the early part of the film. I also felt the film would’ve worked better if the character had been more anti social and shyer – that asking Turner out was a bigger deal. That would’ve suited someone who was a comic book artist and is someone that the cops would’ve found even more likely to be a killer. But maybe Cohen felt that wouldn’t work for a good looker like Roberts. Still there is always something a bit off putting about Roberts that makes him seem better suited to villainy. Cohen wanted to cast John Travolta but wasn’t allowed to – he would’ve been better.

Movie review - "The Stuff" (1985) ***

Lively Larry Cohen horror-satire which has a strong central idea - a yoghurt/ice cream-style dessert becomes a national craze, and destroys the people who eat it. Cohen plays this for comedy and satire more than horror - there's some groovy effects and exploding heads but a lack of genuine tension and spookiness, which is a shame because I think you could've had both but anyway...

It is a very Larry Cohen movie. You've got Michael Moriarty in the lead as an industrial saboteur (a different type of hero but I loved the fresh take on the investigator), playing up with a Southern accent and doing bits of business. Paul Sorvino steals the film in the third act as a rich militaristic colonel with his own private army who helps Moriarty - I love the bit where his troops all need to take cabs.

Andrea Marcovicci is a lively heroine, and Garrett Morris is fun as a cookie tycoon. Scott Bloom isn't much as the kid who gets involved - kind of like the kid in Salem's Lot. All sorts of interesting people pop up in the cast like Danny Aiello.

It's an uneven movie - bits feel cut out of it (eg Mortiarty and Marcovicci's romance), scenes don't quite build the way they should, I found myself constantly going "hang on, what about X?". But it's a very likeable movie which has something to say.

Movie review - "God Told Me To" (1976) ***1/2 (warning: spoilers)

Larry Cohen likes to say this movie influenced The X Files - I'm inclined to think that show came more from All the President's Men and The Parallax View. But he could argue it influenced Law and Order. It's very New York police procedural, with Tony Lo Bianco as a detective investigating why a sniper went beserk from a tower. He says it's because "God To Me To" which is a reason used by various other killers - including one man who, in a very effective sequence, describes how he killed his wife and children.

I was really looking forward to seeing this and did enjoy it but it didn't quite work for me. Maybe because I knew what the reveal was... Maybe this is a better film "discovered" than anticipated.

Maybe also because I found Tony Lo Bianco was a little cold. I would've preferred Robert Forster, who started off in the role but left the film a few days into shooting.

Also I think story wise a problem for me was so much of the film is spent tracking down the mystery that a lot of the time it felt like a TV show, with Lo Bianco interviewing people. The stuff about him being the spawn of an alien is amazing... I guess I wanted to see that play out more (the relationship to Richard Lynch, etc) instead of it all being wrapped up.

Still, it's a bold, unconventional movie and Cohen uses New York wonderfully.

Book review - "Larry Cohen: The Stuff of Gods and Monsters" by Michael Digby (2015)

Larry Cohen has done a lot of interviews in his time - one of them, for The Incredibly Strange Film Book, is one of my favourite, his no-nonsense approach to filmmaking helped encourage me to be a writer. When I heard about this book I wondered if there was a point to reading it, because there are so many other Cohen interviews out there. But there is, because it's so exhaustive.

Absolutely, some of it will be familiar, especially his writings on his more cult-y favourites like God Told Me To, It's Alive and Black Caesar, as well as the recent blockbuster Phone Booth and famous-for-being-Bette-Davis'-last-film The Wicked Stepmother and The Private Files of J Edgar Hoover which Cohen likes to talk about a lot. I did know of his TV work, which is well covered in Backstory 4.

But because Cohen is so incredibly prolific there was heaps I didn't know - his childhood, plays, lesser known directorial efforts (The Ambulance, Special Effects, Perfect Strangers), recent concentration on being a screenwriter, the extent of his success in 60s TV. He was often unhappy with the work directors who weren't him did on his films - even Sidney Lumet on Guilty as Sin and Joel Schumacher on Phone Booth (he basically likes the job the latter did but wished it had a bigger star than Colin Farrell and thought Schumacher could have shown him more respect). He really gives it to William Lustig, director of the Maniac Cop series.

A very clear picture of Cohen emerges - as you'd hope from 700 plus pages of interviews! Talented, smart, a ferocious work ethic, independent, grumpy, always a little touchy about lack of industry respect and mistreatment. He talks about his encounters with Alfred Hitchcock, troubles with Bette Davis, a friendship with Sam Fuller (who he used as an actor), his good experiences with some difficult actors (eg Eric Roberts), his fights with friend David Carradine, his unhappy experiences in network television (even on NYPD Blue), Billy Dee Williams' drinking problem, working for AIP in the 70s, getting fired off several movies, and lots more.

His key creative impulses seem to be social commentary, a lively imagination, and old movies of the 30s and 40s, particularly Warner Bros and Universal. It's a very comprehensive, impressive book that made me want to go revisit Cohen's work.

Movie review - "It's Alive" (1974) ***1/2

A massive leap for Larry Cohen as a director - it's so much more confident visually than some of his other movies. His handling is assured and confident. It's well written but that's less surprising. This is a simple idea extremely well executed.

I normally associated John P Ryan as the psycho warden in Runaway Train so it was weird to see him as a nice guy family man. His wife is about to have her second wife and Cohen brilliantly exploits one of the all time great fears - that your baby will be born deformed - and gives it a twist: that the baby becomes a killer. It's a primal, strong concept.

Ryan's performance anchors the film well. He's given good support by Sharon Farrell as the wife. Part of me was thinking maybe Cohen should have focused more on the mother - who after all carried the damn thing for nine months and is the mother. But I guess making Ryan the central figure means we can move around more. Farrell secretly hiding the son makes for good conflict with Ryan. Also Ryan's character goes on more of a journey... Farrell's love for the baby is strong and more unconditional, whereas Ryan gets to cover disgust, embarrassment, anger, etc before coming to love and regret. Ryan's final scene with his "son" is very powerful.

Bernard Herrmann did a superb score which helps create a wonderful atmosphere. I felt the lower budget helped - Ryan is walking around alone and isolated in many shots, but it adds to the feeling of desolation and loneliness. The budget does stretch for a decent amount of gun wielding policemen.

Cohen fans will enjoy the Cohen touches, like Ryan impersonating Walter Brennan, and discussing watching Frankenstein films and reading the novel when discussing his son. They'll also like it of course because it's one of his best movies.

Movie review - "The Private Files of J Edgar Hoover" (1977) ***1/2

Terrific fun, so much more entertaining than Clint Eastwood's film on the same subject. This is clearly Larry Cohen's tribute to old Warner Bros biopics, with a ripped from the headlines feel. Because it's the late 70s he can take a lot darker look at it's subject matter.

He certainly shoves in everything but the kitchen sink - this is very much a greatest hits version of Hoover's life, starting when he was involved in deporting immigrants (where the role is played by James Wainwright), then going into him heading the FBI, his early successes against gangsters, then domestic enemies during the war (where he starts being played by Broderick Crawford), obsession against the communists, clashing with the Kennedys, then Nixon.

There's an awful lot going on - but then Hoover did lead an interesting life. The best section for me was his clashes with Robert Kennedy, well played by Michael Parks - this is when the conflict felt real and personal and the film kicked up a gear.

Everything else is broad brush strokes - his mother (June Havoc) to whom Hoover is devoted, his good friend Clyde (Dan Dailey), a mentor (Lloyd Nolan in a blink and you'll miss him appearance), a rival (Jose Ferrer), a socialitie who tries to seduce him (Celeste Holm). There's a subplot with Rip Torn as an FBI agent fired for having a fling with a married woman.

Cohen wrote an article on Clint Eastwood's Hoover film which made me think this movie would be really pro Hoover but it's not. Hoover is shown having some good points - he's against Nixon's men making secret recordings, he insists on due process, he tries to increase the professionalism of the Bureau - but it's not exactly a valentine: he's also shown to be obsessed with illegal recordings, he blackmails Kennedy and Martin Luther King with his recordings, he tries to have sex with women (Ronnee Blakely and then later Celeste Holm) but can't go through with it, faces rumours of his love for Clyde (which the characters say is crap and it's clear that nothing sexual happened but the film depicts them as spending a lot of time together and you could read a love story into it), he's ruthless and clings to power.

I really loved the depiction of Hoover. Cohen doesn't moralise or train to explain too much - once or twice he does and the scenes clunk. But basically he just shows him as this contradictory enigma - occasionally principled, ruthless, sexually hung up.

It's great fun to see these old time stars in decent roles. Crawford has gravitas ... but I couldn't help wishing he was more animated. His performance is okay but it's a superb role, a gift - a better actor would have done more.

The handling could have been tighter - I say this a lot about Cohen's movies but it needed more of that Warners 30s/40s pace. Occasionally its clunky and rough but it was grand fun.

Movie review - "Black Caesar" (1973) **1/2

Larry Cohen's use of Yaphet Kotto in Bone was enough to encourage AIP to approach him to make a blaxploitation gangster film. He responded by doing a black version of old Warner Bros gangster films - and very good it is too.

All the tropes are there - scenes of the gangster as a young kid (a shoe shine boy who helps a gangster kill a rival - a solid opening), gangsters getting knocked off on his way to the top, flashy clothes, molls, the woman he marries and makes unhappy, a childhood friend, a neighbourhood priest, a disapproving mother, the wife has an affair with the childhood friend. There's even scenes were someone falls down stairs, and people get shot on sidewalks - you can imagine the whole thing being done with George Raft and Edward G Robinson.

Sure it had been done before but doing it with black actors does make it seem fresh.   Fred Williamson is a decent (anti) hero - handsome, driven. He's not a top league star, but he's a good B picture star. A leading man.

Admittedly, once I found out the treatment had originally been commissioned by Sammy Davis Jr I kept wishing that he'd played the role. He was shorter, less good looking, more charismatic, more driven. Williamson's character's main obstacle is that he is black - which don't get me wrong is a problem (the scene where he gets a comeuppance on the corrupt police captain is brilliant), but Davis Jnr would have all this extra stuff: height, looks, no eye - not to mention all that extra energy.

The handling is a little flabby. I tend to find this a lot with Larry Cohen's films. He has a pleasing taste for documentary style realism - shooting on the streets of New York (lots of scenes where extras look at the camera) but this needed some of that old Warner Bros tightness - some bang-bang-editing. Some sequences drag. I feel Cohen the director didn't always serve Cohen the writer that well.

But it is a lively script and there are plenty of good moments.

Script review – “Phone Booth” by Larry Cohen (warning: spoilers)

Cohen says he discussed the concept of this film with Alfred Hitchcock years ago but it only came to life when he thought of the sniper idea. It’s a very clever movie, logical enough, which is all it needs to be, and sufficient story beats to keep you watching… just. After some okay set up (Stu is a publicist – Cohen presumably settling scores here, or paying homage to The Sweet Smell of Success) he makes sure something new happens every ten pages or so: the initial threat, the shooting of the pimp, the arrival of the cops, the arrival of Kelly (his wife), etc. 

This draft doesn't have the arrival of the pizza guy or the ending of the film where the sniper gets away - the sniper is killed here. Also here Stu saves the day by sneaking a call to emergency services as opposed to Kelly.

Script review – “Sorry Wrong Number” by Lucille Fletcher

Superb radio script, which ranks with Howard Koch’s adaptation of War of the Worlds as probably the most famous radio drama of all time. Larry Cohen always speaks highly of it, it was an inspiration for Phone Booth. 

Like that and Buried it’s broken down into sequences: woman overhears the phone conversation, tries to trace the call via a phone company, tries to speak to the police but they don’t really help, tries to contact her husband but fails, realises the killers are in the house. I assume the stuff about overhearing phone calls and talking to operators is correct. 

The character of the woman is also good, constantly complaining, a naggy bitch, deserves to die. Creepy, memorable finale.

Radio review – Suspense - “Sorry Wrong Number” (1943) **** by Lucille Fletcher

Larry Cohen once said that this was one of his favourite scripts – I’m not surprised from the writer of Phone Booth and Cellular. It’s a classic radio play, right up there with War of the Worlds.

Agnes Moorehead is brilliant as the jittery, paranoid sickly woman whom we are quite happy to see killed. The technology crucial to the plot (i.e. talking to operators) means this is very much of its time, but the structure, characterisation and mood have hardly dated at all. I love the line where she explains her husband has adored her, he's looked after her since she took sick 12 years ago. Moorehead does this beautifully. A copy of the script is here.

Movie review – “Q: The Winged Serpent” (1982) **1/2

Probably ranks with It’s Alive as Larry Cohen’s best known film as director. It has many of his hallmarks – imagination, wit, a sort of exasperated affection for New York and its inhabitants, a feeling of being sloppily put together.

The central idea is a good one – an Aztec serpent is running amok in NYC – and Michael Moriarty is fun as a piano-playing ex-junkie who stumbles upon the creature’s nest and tries to blackmail the city. After that though the ideas seem to run out and the film does drag. It felt as though it needed another character or subplot or something – maybe more of Cnady Clark, or to find out who the local religos are earlier, something like that. I loved Moriarty in his scenes with David Carradine, two very different actors having a good time together. Moriarty’s singing on the soundtrack is a little irritating.

NB Sam Arkoff produced this in the wake of his departure from AIP – along with teen comedy classic Up the Creek (I’m not being sarcastic, I loved that film growing up). He didn’t make much else, which is a shame. Great pity he sold that studio.

Book review - "Backstory 4" Ed Patrick McGilligan

Another brilliant instalment of this excellent series, covering writers who excelled in the 70s and 80s. Unlike the previous editions, all of the writers are still working. It includes several of my favourites: John Milius, Walter Hill, Larry Cohen. Full of surprises - Alvin Sargeant's insecurity, Donald Westlake's extensive career. Endlessly fascinating.