PSYCHOTRONIC.. VIDEO NUMBER ELEVEN FALL 1991 DIS PA T CHES FROM a THE (THE LARRY COHEN INTERVIEW) By MArrLanp McDonacu First, let’s get our Larry Cohens straight. We're not talking about Chicago-bom Lawrence D. (Larry) Cohen, who adapted CARRIE and GHOST STORY to the screen. Nor. are we talking about Lawrence J. Cohen, who wrote 1990's DELIRIOUS. We're talking about Larry Cohen of New York City, the man who brought us killer babies, lethal dessert food, an alien hermaphrodite that thinks it's Jesus and an Aztec lizard god nesting in the Chrysler Building. The Larry Cohen who says, “When chaos reigns, I shine.” His work is erratic: GOD TOLD ME TO is a great film, while WICKED STEPMOTHER is all over the place; THE PRIVATE FILES OF J. EDGAR HOOVER is just about a paranoid pulp masterpiece, but THE STUFF—freat concept notwithstanding—is pretty feeble, Sull, everything he: does is earmarked by a brilliant premise, quirky characterizations and a few genuinely offbeat plot-twists that seem like dispatches from some remote comer of civilization. “Not your mun-of-the- mill ideas, huh? 1 don’t like to imitate other people’s ideas or do hhomages to other people's films. My pictures are mine: They're individual and special and people say, ‘As'soon as we:heart that ‘dea, we knew it had to be one of yours.’ Larry Cohen directing IT'S ALIVE (with John Ryan and Sharon Farrell)Roy Thinnes and Diane Baker on THE INVADERS. Bom in 1936 and raised in Washington Heights, Cohen speat his childhood going to movies and drawing comics. “T ‘was drawing storyboards for movies—that's what a comic book js. 1 was writing when I was seven or eight years old. Many of the things I wrote as a child I have revised or updated or rewritten as an adult. I would venture to say that from the age of 10 I could probably have made a living ‘writing for television; the material I was writing then was as {good as some of what's being written now by adults.” ‘When his father bought an 8mm movie camera, Cohen started directing, bribing his friends and shooting at Fort ‘Tryon Park. But the Cohen story starts in earnest in 1958, At the age of 21, fresh from City College of New York and ‘working as a page at NBC, Cohen sold two screenplays to KRAFT MYSTERY THEATER (an early live color series that had been running under various names since 1947); “Night Cry,” adapted from the novel by William M. Stuart, and “87th Precinct,” based on characters created by Evan ‘Hunter. The newspapers loved it, and his from-the-hip mouth was already in evidence as he declared that “Any major writer is a fool to write for television,” and ripped the rmediam that had just given him his big break. By 1973, a Variety reporter was moved to describe him as “a very belligerent young man.” In 1958 he got the benefit of the doubt with “intense.” Cohen is aggressively smart, and he doesn’t suffer fools gladly; whether you find him charmingly outspoken or an abrasive loudmouth depends on how nice he’s decided to be to you. Cohen served his time in the Army, stationed in ‘Virginia, then returned to TV for several years. “I created BRANDED, which is still on television—3 o'clock in the morning, the damned thing is still playing. The idea for that was blacklisted cowboy,’ and in every episode he’s trying to live down the false accusations that have been leveled against him. I also created THE INVADERS, a witch- hunt where Roy Thinnes is hunting for these imaginary aliens who have invaded our country. They were both supposed to be about McCarthyism; I was in Roy Thinnes on an INVADERS ny political period. ‘Bubblegum Card The half-hour long BRANDED starred Chuck Connors (THE RIFLEMAN) as former Captain Jason MeCord, The:short-lived series had a memorable theme song: Drum rolls and a solemn voice slowly sings... “All but ‘one man died - there at Bitter Creek. And they say he ran away. Branded - marked with the coward's chain. What do you do when you're Branded. Well, you fight for your name. He was innocent - not a charge was true. But the world would never know. Branded - scorned as the one who ran. What do you do when your Banded - ‘and you know you're a man. Wherever you go for the rest of your life you must prove - you're a man.” (A. Alch & Dominic Frontiere). ‘THE INVADERS, an hour-long series from Quinn- Martin, lasted 43 episodes. It starred Roy Thinnes as David Vincent, the architect who sees a flying saucer and people whose little fingers don't bend. A few of the many guest cast members were Gene Hackman, Karen Black, Michael Rennie, Barbara Hershey and Jack Lord Dominic Frontiere wrote the theme. If you saw THE INVADERS when it was new, you never forgot it. The nearly 25-year-old series was recently a hit in France. “I had written many episodes of THE DEFENDERS, a long running series created by Reginald Rose [TWELVE ANGRY MEN] about father and son lawyers, played by E, G. Marshall and Robert Reed, so T'd had practice writing polemics. I also wrote ARREST AND TRIAL, a series with Ben Gazzara, and SAM BENEDICT, a series with Edmond O'Brien. All courtroom dramas; I was the original courtroom dramatist.” Cohen also did CUSTER (67), CORONET BLUE (67) (about a man with amnesia, pursued by killers; the only Key he has to his identity is the phrase ‘coronet blue’) and THE BLUE LIGHT (66), a World War II spy thriller series staring Robert Goulet that was filmed in Germany. “We {Cohen and director Walter, Grauman] made a feature out of THE BLUE LIGHT by combining three episodes; it actually gota ‘theatrical release [from 20°th Century Fox] under the title DEAL IN DANGER. I went to a theater in New York on 42nd street where it was playing and sat next to a man who became outraged because he paidto see the picture and realized he'd seen it all before on television. I tried to disappear into my seat.” Cohen was also executive producer of a daytime soap opera called NEVER TOO YOUNG. “I didn’t want to do it, but the network [ABC] insisted”. The program, designed to attract a young audience, was set in Malibu Beach and starred Tony Dow from LEAVE IT TO BEAVER and Tommy Rettig from LASSIE. When the show failed to catch on it was replaced by DARK SHADOWS(!) Even after he'd ‘graduated 10 features, Cohen occasionally went back to TV. In 1972, he created COOL MILLION, with James Farentino, “He was supposed to be a private detective who charges @ million dollars a case, and you needed someone you might believe you'd pay a million dollars a case to—maybe Roger Moore-but Farentino looked like $100 an hour, plus expenses. In addition to his work in series television, Cohen wrote made- for-TV movies and TY pilots: IN BROAD DAYLIGHT (71), with Richard Boone, about a blind actor ‘who tries to commit the perfect murder, SHOOTOUT IN A ONE DOG TOWN (74), a Western with Richard Crenna; MAN ON THE OUTSIDE (75), the pilot for the GRIFF series starring Lome Greene; and SEE CHINA AND DIE (81, which he also directed), “a pilot for a television series with Esther Rolle that was very much like MURDER, SHE WROTE except that it's about a black lady instead of Angela Lansbury.” DESPERADO: AVALANCHE AT DEVIL'S RIDGE (88) was one of a series of TV movies about a cowboy framed for murder. Between 66 and 70, Cohen had three feature screenplays produced: RETURN OF THE SEVEN, with Yul Brynner (the first sequel to THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN), DADDY'S GONE A-HUNTING (a psycho-thriller with a taboo twist, abortion, which Cohen co-wrote with Lorenzo Semple Jr.) and EL CONDOR, a Western with Jim Brown, Lee Van Cleef and Marianna Hill, “I originally wrote DADDY'S GONE A-HUNTING for Alfred Hitchcock. I met him in New York, told him the story and he liked it. He made a deal for me to come out to Hollywood to write the script, but then Universal talked him out of the idea, Lorenzo suggested we write it, then give it to Hitchcock anyway. We put in all the camera angles and everything we thought, Hitchcock would love, then gave it back to him. He did like it, but said, “You haven't left anything for me to do.” We'd defeated our own purposes.” The film was eventually directed by former Val Lewton protege Mark Robson and received a “Mature” rating. DADDY'S GONE A-HUNTING was produced by National General pictures, who turned to Cohen for their next project, EL. CONDOR, “They were going to make a Wester over in Spain, they'd built all the sets and decided they didn’t ‘want to use the script they had. They wanted me to write a picture around them. It was a crazy kind of backwards job, but I thought it would be fun.’ Lots of screenwriters spend half their lives bitching about the way their scripts are mutilated, but in 1970, Cohen did something about it, directing BONE (aka HOUSEWIFE and STYLE AND COMFORT) in his own house, BONE has also been referred to as “Dial Rat For Terror”, “Funny Bone” and “Beverly Hills Nightmare.” “It never actually played anywhere as “Beverly Hills Nightmare.” At one time we tried to sell it overseas under that name, because I thought that “Beverly Hills” were two very good operative words in & title. I was later proved right by BEVERLY HILLS COP and DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS. ‘Beverly Hills Thief’ would have been a good title, because it’s about a guy [Yaphet Kotto] who breaks into a house intending to rob a family, only to find they're more corrupt than he is.” BONE, which also featured Joyce Van Patton, the late Andrew Duggan (in his first of several Cohen features), and Jennie Berlin (daughter of Elaine May) was eventually released in 1972 by Jack Harris (THE BLOB, EQUINOX...) and promoted as a sex film, Cohen’s first featured as director led to BLACK CAESAR. “Samuel Z. Arkoff called me in for a meeting, said he'd seen BONE and that I really knew how to direct those black actors. One black actor in the picture—and he’s Yaphet Kotto, a very fine actor, and I really know how to direct, ‘those black actors.’ But I kept my mouth shut, and Arkoff said he was looking for something for black actors to do. I just happened to have a script down in my car that I'd done for Sammy Davis Jr. and he'd never paid me for: BLACK CAESAR, a LITTLE CAESAR kind of film about a guy who rises to criminal power. BLACK CAESAR was a huge hit So I called Arkoff up, told him there were lines around the block and I wanted to make a sequel before the actors became unreasonable, He asked me when I wanted to shoot and I said, ‘Next week.’ We wrote the script as we went along, and the picture (HELL UP IN HARLEM] sure looks like it.. great action scenes, though, and some good gags. Fred Willamson as BLACK CAESAR‘After that I did IT’S ALIVE, and I didn’t want to do any more Fred Williamson pictures. Fred Williamson was doing his ‘own pictures by then, and telling everyone he learned everything from me. And I was saying, ‘Be quiet! I don’t ‘want that credit.” “Years ago I saw Eddie Murphy at the Improv, he did a routine about it. ‘BLACK CAESAR, the blackest movie ever made. Filmed on the streets of Harlem with an all-black cast. You have never seen a black movie like this. BLACK CAESAR: A Larry Cohen film.’ Got a big laugh. But they ‘weren't black exploitation movies in any way. Blaxploitation pictures were usually about the black guy beating up the white guy and the black guy getting the white girl. BLACK. CAESAR wasn't like that at all. He’s a tragic figure. He rises from nowhere, from being a shoeshine boy, he tries to live the white man’s dream and then he's destroyed at the end. Like PUBLIC ENEMY or LITTLE CAESAR, a classic gangster movie; it doesn't matter whether the characters are black or white. He actually dies in the picture. We cut off the last minute and a half before the film opened so he wouldn't die, because we realized we couldn't do the sequel. We went 10 the Cinerama and the RKO 86th Street and the 59th Street RKO and in the projection room we cut out the last minute and a half of the picture.” (For more on the “Caesar” inovies, see last issue's Fred Williamson interview). ‘The monster babies of IT’S ALIVE! and its sequels are ‘one of those great Cohen ideas. What if your baby were a bloodthirsty mutant? “It’s been done before. There's all kinds Of stories in every society and every culture, where a normal woman gives birth to a monster child. And if I was the frst ‘one to film a monster baby in movies, I certainly wasn’t the last. Everybody and his brother has a monster baby nows just [recently] you saw them in THE FLY II and the latest NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movie.” The PG-rated IT'S ALIVE! was a hit for Warners, one of those movies everybody was dared to watch. It benefited from being released the year after THE EXORCIST, and an ad campaign with a ROSEMARY’S BABY carriage. Bernard Hemann’s score, Rick Baker's economically-used monster baby and convincing acting by John Ryan and Sharon Farrell as the parents, Guy Stockwell, Andrew Duggan and Michael Ansara all added up to a unique horror classic. Cohen's biggest hit, IT’S ALIVE grossed over 7M. In 75 Cohen went to the USSR. to ty and arrange to make a new version of CRIME AND PUNISHMENT there. GOD TOLD ME TO (also released by Roger Corman’s New World as DEMON!) is even creepier—it's too weird and nasty to lend itself to sequelizing. Starring Tony Lo Bianco (THE HONEYMOON KILLERS) as a religious NYC cop haunted by a rash of brutal murders committed by apparently ‘ordinary people claiming that ‘God told me to," it also featured Deborah Raffin and Sandy Dennis as the women in his life, Sylvia Sidney (who remembers her experience flying saucer), and Richard Lynch as the hermaphrodite alien from space with a messianic complex. “I always thought that if Superman was really played for reality, he'd think he was God. And that’s what GOD TOLD ME TO is about. Clark Kent, he can fly, see through walls, has more strength than anybody; then he reads about Jesus Christ and what's he going to think? That he must be Jesus Christ, because ‘obviously he’s nota normal man.” Location work included an actual St. Patrick's Day parade (with Andy Kaufman as a killer cop), the San Genero Fair and a Harlem pool hall, Q (from United) tackled the god thing again, six years later. Talking about God is a good way to get Cohen going. “T don’t trv to recreate God in mv own image or to personify Mutant baby trom IT'S ALIVE Ill God as a person who sits up there somewhere making judgments about what I do right or wrong. Or as somebody who's going to change the future to suit my personal needs. I don’t have the effcntery to ask God please to let me win the Academy Award this year. Or to go up there and thank God for granting me this wonderful award rather than the other four people nominated. I mean, I hear people get up there and sive these self-congratulatory speeches thanking God for their award and I wonder, what does that mean? The other four didn't pray enough? God doesn’t like them? Garrett Morris dummy In THE STUFF. “think God should be left alone. Sunday is his day off. It's supposed to be the day God rested and everybody goes t0 church and pesters the life out of him. How would you like it ‘on your day off if you got 200,000 telephone calls asking for things? If you have to do something on Sunday, you should 0 10 the country and look at the trees, look at the clouds, go for a swim in the ocean. That's closer to God than anything you can find in any church. Even looking at buildings andccars—things God gave man the ability to create—that's got more religion to it than going to church and listening to someone spout off about how people are going to burn in hell for what they do or don’t do. You don’t have to go to hell to ‘bum. People are burning right here, all over the place. Burning in hell from inside, consumed by disease. Burning because they're tormented, persecuted. The monsters are all here; there are worse things in reality than anything I've ever put into any ‘Lauren Landon and Armand Assante in|, THE JURY. of my movies. People who are unmol should be grateful every day of their lives.’ ed, unpersecuted, ‘THE PRIVATE FILES OF J, EDGAR HOOVER was an unusual film for Cohen, a pulp biography of America’s most famous eavesdropper. “It was a challenge to get it made, No ‘one had ever done a film about the FBI without FBI approval, ‘and atthe time, no one had done a film that was critical of the Bureau. Hoover had orily been dead for a couple of years, and LARRY COHEN FILMOGRAPHY MYSTERY THEATRE (NBC ANTHOLOGY __ SERIES) 2scereTs ” THE DEFENDERS (CBS sERtEs, 70 65) WROTE SCRIPTS FOR 13 EPISODES. M BENEDICT (NBC SERIES, 10 63) WROTE SCRIPTS sT AND TRIAL (ABC SERIES, To 64) ‘WROTE SCRIPTS BRANDED (NBC SERIES, 70 66) CREATED, WROTE RST EMIsoDes. © NEVER TOO YOUNG (ABC soar, 10 66) S ‘THE BLUE LIGHT (ABC stxtts) S IDEALIN DANGER -S ‘THE RETURN OF THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN - S ‘THE INVADERS (Gooprmes Vine) (ABC ‘SERIES, TO 68) CREATED, WROTE EPISODES CORONET BLUE (CBS sexies) $ - CUSTER (ABC senits) S DADDY’S GONE A HUNTING (WARNER) CO-S _EL CONDOR (Warner) S IN BROAD DAYLIGHT (ABC) S~ nobody had ever touched the subject. And once it was made we had a hard time getting it released, because all the studios were afraid it would offend the FBI and they'd somehow punish them for it. This was just at the time they were beginning to put out videocassettes and they had the FBI warning at the beginning of those tapes, and they thought they were relying on the Bureau to protect them so they didn’t want to offend it. Eventually it went through AIP. AIP wanted me to use Rod ‘Steiger as Hoover, but I wanted Broderick Crawford. He said it was the best role he'd had since ALL THE KING’S MEN, so he was on his best behavior. He was a character, a heavy-drinking guy, but when he ‘came on the set he was always sober and knew his lines. A thorough professional.” Rip Torn, as an FBI agent, related Hoover's rise to power over fi decades. Other actors played Roosevelt, Nixon, the Kennedys... and the soundtrack was by Miklos Rosa. HOOVER, a big-budget movie for Cohen atthe time (over $3 million) was barely released (late) by AIP/Filmways and lost money. Francis Ford Coppola recently announced he will be directing a Hoover film soon, IT LIVES AGAIN (78) featured three killer babies and was filmed in Tuscon; Arizona. Frederic Forrest starred with Kathleen Lloyd, John Marley, and Euro-star Eddie Constantine in a surprise part. John Ryan, James Dixon, and Andrew Duggan returned. Ryan tries to save the mutant killer babies (locked up in a research lab) this time. Bemard Herrmann had died in 75, but his score was reworked by Laurie Johnson and released on an LP. The film didn’t do nearly as well as IT'S ALIVE at the box office. THE AMERICAN SUCCESS COMPANY, starring Jeff Bridges and filmed in Germany by William Richert, was based on a Cohen script. It was released three times in different versions but failed to catch on. In 81 Cohen made a lttle-seen ‘werewolf spoof, FULL MOON HIGH, “a comedy version of I HOUSEWIFE (New Wortp) (STYLE AND COMFORT, BONE) P/D/S THE COOL MILLION/MASK OF MARCELLA (NBC) S (PILot POR THE 72-73 JAMES FARENTINO SERIES) BLACK CAESAR (Onto) P/D/S HELL UP IN HARLEM (Onion) P/D/S MAN ON THE OUTSIDE (ABC) S (PILoT FOR LORNE GREEN’S 73-74 GRIFF SERIES - FIRST AIRED IN 75) IT’S ALIVE! (Warners) P/D/S- SHOOTOUT IN A ONE DOG TOWN (ABC) co-S, ‘B/O HIS STORY é GOD TOLD ME TO (Cuarter)/DEMON! - P/D/S— THE PRIVATE FILES OF J. EDGAR HOOVER (annoy) P/DIS IT LIVES AGAIN (WanneR) P/D/S SUCCESS/ AMERICAN SUCCESS/ THE AMERICAN SUCESS COMPANY - STORY ONLY. FULL MOON HIGH (HBO) P/D/S SEECHINA AND DIE (CBS Pitot) D/S Q (MCA) P/D/S eT I, THE JURY (CBS/Fox) S/(REPLACED AS DIRECTOR) — PERFECT STRANGERS (Empassy) (BLIND ALLEY) DjS (RE 86). i:much more expensive Mike Hammer movie. Q starred Michael Moriarty (in his first of four Cohen films) giving one of his best all-out eccentric performances, David Carradine (an old Army buddy of Cohen’s in real life, see PV#5), Candy Clark and Richard Roundtree. This time it was the (animated) Aztec lizard god, Quetzelcoatl (once featured in THE FLYING ‘SERPENT back in 46), prayed back into existence and roosting {n the Chrysler building, one of New York’s temples to industry. Scenes were actually shot in the top of the art deco Chrysler building (great for publicity) and a few scenes of people falling from high places from GOD TOLD ME TO were economically re-used. Cohen received story credit on two (terrible) films, THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE, a 3-D invisible man picture starring Steve Guttenberg, and SCANDALOUS, a comedy about an investigative television reporter (Robert Hays). Cohen appeared in John Landis’ SPIES LIKE US in a scene with directors Martin Brest and Joel Coen. “We come up to an abandoned drive-in movie theater that’s really a front for some kind of government project. I asked Landis if I could go through the door, and he said, “You can’t, because the interior at the Pinewood studio in London.” And I said, ‘I know, that's ‘why T want to go through the door with them." Cohen also appeared in his own Broadway play, “Trick,” in 1980, filling in for an ailing Lee Richardson during previews, but he's resisted the temptation—one that’s ensnared many other directors—to make cameo appearances in his films. ‘Three Cohen films were released in 86 and New York's Public Theatre held an 11-film retrospective, “Gods and Demons: The Films of Larry Cohen.” PERFECT STRANGERS and SPECIAL EFFECTS had been made’ quickly in NYC as part of a two-picture deal. SPECIAL. EFFECTS was from a script he had written back before BONE. It started monologist Eric Bogosian (in his first film role) as an arrogant filmmaker. Zoe Tamerlis (MS. 45) co-starred as the | Sam Fuller n RETURN TO SALEM LOT. actress he murders on camera afd the look-alike he hires to ‘make a film that will culminate with the seal murder footage. PERFECT STRANGERS stars Anne Carlisle (LIQUID SKY), ‘Anne Magnuson, Stephen Lack (SCANNERS) and Brad Ri from SMITHEREENS (also in EFFECTS). Both features were picked up by New Line, but rarely screened anywhere, An 87 TV movie DANGEROUS AFFECTION later copied the PERFECT STRANGERS script (about a man trying to kill a baby who had “witnessed” murder) very closely, “THE STUFF [New World] was a big intricate production with a lot of special effects while the other two were just clever little exercises in suspense. 1 think they're really Tittle gems, I made them back-to-back with the same crew, $0 it was almost like making one picture. I saw LIQUID SKY and I saw Bogosian in his show Funhouse, suddenly, I wanted to make pictures with these kinds of underground people. I'd discovered this whole New York subculture. I had this script, SPECIAL EFFECTS, that I'd written years before and I thought Bogosian could play the director. The first day on the picture Bogosian was monstrous and we had a huge fight that ended with me saying, “That's the end. You go your way and ‘we'll get somebody else to do the picture.’ So off he went, then ccame back in an hour or so and said, ‘Look, I'm hypoglycemic and if I don’t eat every three hours I go crazy.’ So I said, “Why didn’t you tell me that? We'll get food on the set, you can eat all the time, whatever you want. just tell me.’ So we pat the food out for him and never had a minute's trouble.” THE STUFF, filmed in Kingston, New York, starred Michael Moriarty, Garrett Morris, Paul Sorvino and many famous guest siars endorsing the addictive “staff” junk food; A deal with Warner Bros, resulted in IT*$ ALIVE III and A RETURN TO SALEM’S LOT, a sequel in name only to ‘Tobe Hooper's TV movie. “Wamer Bros. gave me the tile and told me they had done very well with the videocassettes of SALEM'S LOT. | wasn’t a particular fan of the firstpicture, but I liked the book, and in fact I had once worked on the screenplay for the original SALEM'S LOT—my version budgeted up too high and they didn’t want to make it, The only clement they kept from my version was that the vampire was supposed to look like Nosferatu. They said they'd give me the property if I'd make a sequel, and they also asked me to make another IT’S ALIVE film. Two-picture deal, back-to-back, no particular restrictions or guidelines. I wrote an original screenplay using the idea of vampires in New England, There have been so many vampire and werewolf pictures ‘made over the years that | have never thought I had anything new to contribute until I started working on A RETURN TOSALEM'S LOT. I decided that instead of following the old legends I'd create my own. I created a community of vampires, a town that has been there for 300 years, since they came over from Europe to escape persecution. Like the Puritans. The vampires were the most persecuted race in Europe—people driving stakes through their hearts, burning them. They came to a new world looking for religious freedom, in their own way, Anyway, it's all Larry Cohen's version of vampires, an attempt to pep-up something that’s kind of tired.” The cast included fellow director Samuel Fuller as a Nazi hunter who stumbles onto the vampire town, “I think he thought I was going to write a cameo for him; little did he know he was going to be on screen for 45 minutes.” Michael Moriarty starred in RETURN... and ISLAND OF THE ALIVE. “We work well together; I throw him ideas, he capitalizes on them. ‘We've had some fruitful experiences working together, so we eontinue to do it. He's never camp or comical; his characters Say funny things, have funny attitudes, but he doesn’t make fun Of them.” RETURN... also featured Andrew Duggan, and old Hollywood names like Evelyn Keyes and June Havoc. ALIVE. Mi featured Karen Black, Lauren Landon and Gerrit Grabam, James Dixon was in both. Cohen had more producer trouble with DEADLY ILLUSION, which was finished by William Tannen. “I directed about three weeks of that picture before I couldn't stand the producers anymore. I was originally waitten as “I Love You To Death,” but the producers failed to register the title and some ‘other people came in with a picture called 1 LOVE YOU TO DEATH (directed by Lawrence Kasdan} ’and did register it. So wwe needed a new title and came up with DEADLY ILLUSION, which I think they thought was a fifth cousin to FATAL ATTRACTION. It was a private detective movie, pure and simple, with Billy Dee Williams as the detective and Vanity as his girlfriend. I wrote it because I knew I could fill it up with fun things, New York gags I've always wanted to do. A big fight on New Year's Eve over Times Square when a guy gets thrown out the window into the crowd below. A big chase through the RCA. building that ends with a leap through the window into the Christmas Tree at Rockerfeller Center. Things like that. The picture didn’t havea serious bone in its body. It was changed considerably from my version, but since I have the credit, 1 have — to suffer for im "Adam Arkin in FULL MOON HIGH,BEST SELLER was directed by John Flynn, featuring Brian Dennehy as a Joseph Wambaugh -like cop-turned-author, ‘and James Woods as the hit man who he wants to be the subject of his next book. It's a great movie, and brought the total of ‘Cohen features films in release in 87 to four. ‘The next year brought MANIAC COP. “Bill Lustig and I were in the restaurant of the Mayflower Hotel, and I asked him why he'd never done a sequel to MANIAC. He said he'd never been able to figure a direction to go with a sequel; the picture was a success, but the story wasn’t particularly strong. So we were bouncing around ideas and the title MANIAC COP came up. Then I got the line, *You have the right to remain silent forever!" He said, “That's a sale... that's a fuck up-proof idea.’ And he was right—lets face it, no matter what kind of movie you make, with a title like that you can sell it. The only people who disagreed were distributor) Shapiro/Glickenhaus. They said we couldn't release a picture called MANIAC COP, and I said, ‘Are you kidding me? That's the greatest box office title going.’ Eventually I prevailed, but it swas a long and tedious process. I mean, everything you need to know is right there in two words.” MANIAC COP 2 followed. “I tell you, it’s crazy that MANIAC COP 2 isn't in theatrical release, with all this stuff going on with the police in Los ‘Angeles; they'd make a fortune if they had that picture in every major inner-city area.” MANIAC COP 3 is in the works (again ‘with Robert Z’dar as the cop). Was he a god--the Devil rents Ny Mele Ore Es STs Cohen guaranteed his place in film history with WICKED STEPMOTHER, starring Bette Davis in her last role. She’s Miranda, a glamorous, chain-smoking, carnivorous monster (‘Call me mom”), who terrorizes the vegetarian yuppies whose father (Lionel Stander) she marries while they're away on vacation. “I wrote the part for her and sent her the script. She said she got a lot of laughs out of it, we hit it off and she agreed to make the picture. I knew she was frail and old and limped badly, but she was still Bete Davis and I thought she could carry it off. I hadn’t counted on her teth, It was her teeth that let us down. Her bridge was broken before we started the picture, and it just got progressively worse, so she really couldn't speak properly. When she realized she couldn't get through it, she went to her dentist in New York to get the bridge restored, Once she was there they found deterioration of the jaw, they pulled two more of her teeth—by the’ time they were through with her, she weighed something like 75 pounds and there was no coming back. But she didn’t want to be uninsurable, so she told everybody she walked, off the picture and I went along with it. Afier all, I thought she might work again, and anybody's false teeth might crack. And she could have worked again, too, She was bright and sharp and funny.” Mid-picture, Cohen re-wrote the script, adding Barbara Carrera as Davis’ equally wicked “daughter” (actually the same character magically transformed) and giving her scenes intended for Davis. I's a mess, but a game mess, A brief return to TV occurred in 89, when he created the syndicated COP TALK, “a talk show where real cops came on and talked about their most harrowing experiences” hosted by former cop Sonny Grosso. Cohen started making a feature called “The Heavy” featuring David Carradine, but the funding disappeared. He filmed THE APPARATUS in Paris this summer, It concerns a guy who goes out for a wild night on the town and wakes up to find something strapped to his chest—an apparatus that forces him to kill for the CIA. Cohen's latest completed feature is THE AMBULANCE (PV #10). “I've done killer babies, killer yogur, killer cops and now I've got a killer ambulance. THE AMBULANCE is a thriller, not one of those pictures like THE CAR or THE HEARSE where they drive around by themselves, possessed by the devil or something. There are perfectly rational reasons behind what's going on in my film; nothing supernatural about it, just suspense, like THE LADY VANISHES. You know, having an ambulance come to your house and take you away is a terrifying experience. under totally ordinary circumstances, so I thought it would make a great basis for a thriller, Eric Roberts plays a cartoonist who discovers that people all over New York are vanishing, James Earl Jones is a mentally-disturbed detective, and Red Buttons plays an old-time newspaper man who now writes obituaries for ‘The New York Post.. The characters really run away with this picture. One of my favorite moments was shooting James Earl Jones" death scene. It was a really hot night, and he gets killed in the gutter, so I'm thinking, ‘Oh God, how am I going to ask this really great actor to lie down in a New York gutter for his death scene?’ He did it without a word of complaint, then the ‘cameraman had to te-light it for the other angle, It was going to be about 20 minutes, and I asked him if he wanted to go back to the wales, but he said, ‘No, it’s real coo! and-nice down here,’ So I said, ‘Move over,’ and lay down next o him. Now you've got the two of us lying in the gutter, in the middle of the Bowery, having a conversation. One year I see him in ““Fences"—he was magnificent—the next year, I’m lying in the gutter with him. That's what's great about making movies.” (TTS