It
is mind-blowing, but true: both Bernard Hermann and Miklos Rozsa composed
scores for Larry Cohen films. Reportedly, they got along with the exploitation
auteur like a house on fire. Heck, even Cohen’s first wife has good things to
say about him, so he must be quite a guy. Of course, his body of work is also something
else. The horror legend and blaxploitation pioneer gets his due in Steve
Mitchell’s King Cohen: The Wild World of
Filmmaker Larry Cohen (trailer here), which screens during DOC NYC 2017.
Those
who know Cohen probably had their impressions formed by cult classics like It’s Alive (the killer baby horror movie
scored by Rozsa) and Q (the
winger-serpent monster movie that would be his first collaboration with the
great Michael Moriarty), but he had quite a bit of initial success in
television. He was even an uncredited creator of the show N.Y.P.D., which would later be the primary inspiration for Leslie
Nielsen’s spoof series, Police Squad! However,
Cohen wanted creative control and autonomy, so he became an indie filmmaker before
that was an acknowledged thing.
Ironically,
Cohen started with one of his most serious films, Bone, an edgy comedy about interracial relationships. He then
jump-started the blaxploitation genre with Black
Caesar and Hell Up in Harlem. Those
films really established his practice of “stealing shots” in public places,
without any kind of license or permissions. There are a lot of crazy stories
about his guerilla filmmaking practices and Fred Williamson is not shy about telling
him. Indeed, King Cohen is laugh out
loud funny when Mitchell contrasts the very different recollections of Cohen
and Williamson (who still looks like he can throw down like the old days).
Of
course, Cohen worked with Eric Roberts, who naturally notches another screen
credit talking about the experience. Filmmakers Mick Garris, Joe Dante, Martin
Scorsese, and J.J. Abrams all show their respect, as does makeup artist Rick
Baker. However, Cohen’s reminiscences of working with legends like Hermann,
Rozsa, and Sam Fuller will genuinely deepen viewers’ respect for the taste-challenging
auteur.
