Larry Cohen

by Michael Doyle

  What exactly did you make of the competition?

  I thought The Howling was very good. It’s a pretty scary picture with great special effects and good performances. An American Werewolf in London certainly has some good sections to it, and again the effects are wonderful, but I don’t think it’s quite as strong as The Howling. I didn’t think Wolfen worked very well at all. It was the weakest and most confused of the three movies.

  Was it at all frustrating for you to suddenly have several movies appear almost simultaneously that were dealing with the werewolf theme?

  It was just coincidence that there was a rash of werewolf movies being made around the same time, so I wasn’t frustrated by that. I actually paid very little attention to those other films. In fact, just a few years later, another werewolf picture came out called Teen Wolf that had far greater similarities with Full Moon High. [1] As I say, it isn’t unusual that you get a lot of the same kinds of things in movies and that is also happening right now, too. There are just a plethora of vampires, werewolves, and aliens — on television and in movies — that are coming out of your ears. We see them over and over and over again, and, of course, there are always the zombies! [Sighs] There are zombies galore now, and I’m getting sick and tired of them. What we need is some new monsters. Filmmakers have got to come up with a new monster every once in a while to reinvigorate the genre. I mean, The Mummy movies [2] that were made several years ago had nothing to do with mummies as I remembered them back in the 1930s and ‘40s. They were just these big, sprawling action pictures with great special effects, but there was no real connection with the mummy franchise from the old Universal pictures. They didn’t have the same atmosphere and scares because we’ve seen them all before. We really do need some new monsters, or at least a fresh take on the old ones, because I’m sick to death of sombre, pale-faced people with blood dripping down their cheeks. It’s all getting very tiresome.

  Ed McMahon plays the werewolf’s CIA commie-hating patriot father, who believes in conspiracies and has constructed a bomb shelter in his house. How did McMahon come to be drawn to the project?

  Ed McMahon was the co-host of The Johnny Carson Show, one of the most popular shows on television. I thought that since he was already recognizable and favoured by audiences, his involvement might help the television distribution of Full Moon High, which is a big part of the money that comes in from a film. Ed was a familiar name, but he was also an actor who had performed in a number of films. [3] I instinctively knew that he could do a good job playing the part of the werewolf’s father, and that instinct was proved correct. He was a very pleasant fellow, and I had a good time working with him. I remember that one day, I told Ed that he reminded me of another actor that had been in movies years before called Paul Douglas. [4] Well, it turned out that this was the greatest compliment I could have possibly paid Ed because he then proceeded to tell me that Paul Douglas was his all-time hero. He was absolutely thrilled that I had likened him to Douglas, and happily — just by coincidence — I had said the right thing.

  I like the line McMahon delivers a moment before enjoying the Romanian women: “Okay, my lovelies, let’s see what communist infiltration is all about!”

  [Chuckles] Yeah, I just made that line up. It was cute. I thought it was a pretty cute picture altogether, actually. Full Moon High was kind of an adorable movie.

  There are some neat low-tech touches in there, such as the toy airplane moving stiffly over the map to illustrate the journey to Romania.

  That was a takeoff on all those hokey devices they used to use in old movies whenever anybody travelled from one location to another. It just seemed to be in keeping with the whole feel of the picture. There’s a sweetness to it, don’t you think?

  Yes, I do. Another neat transitional device is the changing pictures of the American Presidents on the wall illustrating the elapsing of twenty years until finally we end up with the image of a Black woman. Who was that lady?

  She was my housekeeper, Bette Adams. I dressed her up in a nice little suit, and took a picture, and put her in a movie, implying, of course, that she would become the first female Black President. I was pretty close, wasn’t I? Nearly thirty years later, we did eventually end up with a Black President after all.

  What doubled for the brief exterior shots of Romania in the film?

  That was stock footage. I used to buy stock footage from the stock footage libraries, usually at MGM. They always had an amazing amount of stuff that you could utilize, so I would go there in the hope of finding something good. Sometimes I would pick out the stock footage first and then select the appropriate scenes so that the shots would fit in later. I wasn’t the only director that used to do that. I remember on one occasion when I went out to look for stock footage, I noticed that certain pages had been removed from the library catalogues — pages that had literally been stolen out of the books. I went to the librarian and said, “Look, these shots that I’m looking for are not here, even though I know they should be.” The librarian said, “Oh, it was Francis Coppola and his people that did it! They came in here and took that footage for The Godfather.” It turns out that whilst working on The Godfather, Coppola had made sure that nobody else could reuse the stock footage shots he had selected by tearing the pages out of the catalogues. This obviously meant that nobody else would ever be able to locate and order the same shots that he had used. I actually managed to find and use some of those same stock footage shots in Black Caesar, so some of the material that is in The Godfather is also in my movie, too. If it was good enough for Francis Coppola then it was certainly good enough for me. But the footage we used in Full Moon High was not authentic shots of Romania. I don’t know what they were or where they came from, but they seemed to resemble Romania — or at least the Romania of my imagination — and fit in rather nicely.

  The late Elizabeth Hartman gives a charming performance as the neurotic Miss Montgomery, a teacher at Full Moon High.

  Yes, she was lovely. Elizabeth had been a big star at one time and had received an Oscar nomination for a movie she had done with Sydney Poitier. [5] She had also starred opposite Clint Eastwood in The Beguiled [6] and was the lead in several other movies and had enjoyed a nice career. Unfortunately, for some reason she had experienced an emotional breakdown. I remember her agent called me up and said, “If you want to do a good deed, could you possibly find a part in your film for Elizabeth Hartman? She’s just got out of the hospital after having a mental breakdown and she needs a job.” I said, “Well, it just so happens that I’ve got a good part for her and I will give her the job.” Her agent said, “That’s great, but one thing: she can’t drive. You’ll have to pick her up every day and bring her to the set and then take her back home every night.” I said, “That’s no problem, we can arrange that.” So, we gave Elizabeth the part, and she was a delight to work with. She was a rather delicate and fragile lady, but was very cooperative and I had a good time with her. Then, tragically, a few years later, she killed herself. Apparently, she jumped out of the window of some building and fell to her death. I saw no evidence that such a thing was going to happen during the making of Full Moon High, but she was very shy and quiet. She probably had some terrible emotional trauma in her life. I don’t know what it was and I never tried to find out. I just tried to make every day a pleasant one for her. I always made sure to compliment Elizabeth on her work and give her as much support as I could. She did a good job, but she was vulnerable — very vulnerable. I would have certainly used her again in another of my movies if I could have found the right part for her.

  What about Alan Arkin, who plays Dr. Jacob Brand?

  Originally, before we hired Alan Arkin, the other people I was considering for that part were Bob Newhart [7] and Don Rickles. [8] They were both successful television actors, but I thought we’d be better off hiring Arkin because he was a legitimate movie star. Of course, Alan was also the father of Adam Arkin. One day I said to Adam, “Do you think your dad would like t
o be in the movie? I was thinking he could play the part of the doctor. Tell him we’ll give him a Rolls Royce as payment.” Adam came back later and said, “My father liked the script and said he would do the film. But he doesn’t want a Rolls Royce; he wants two Mercedes.” So, I called Sam Arkoff and said, “Alan Arkin has just finished doing a hit movie called The In-Laws. He’s a popular A-picture actor and we can get him in Full Moon High for the cost of two Mercedes.” Now, back in those days, a Mercedes was priced at something like $26,000. But as soon as I was given the okay, we agreed to buy Alan the two Mercedes, and he committed to doing the picture. During the shoot, he was very pleasant and we both got along fine. Alan bounced off every idea I suggested to him in terms of the improvisations and he was a very creative actor. He completed the film and, as promised, we gave him the two cars. Several years later, I ran into Adam Arkin and asked him if his father still owned the two Mercedes. Adam told me that Alan still had one of them, but that he’d given the second car to his friend. I don’t know who that friend was, but it must have been a pretty good friend to receive a car as a gift. Then, about three years ago, I actually ran into Alan Arkin in a supermarket and started a conversation with him. I happened to mention the two cars and suddenly he flew into a tremendous rage! He started screaming at me in front of some friends that I had with me. It was really rather embarrassing. Alan insisted that he’d never received any cars from me and didn’t know what I was talking about. He was infuriated and screamed, “Don’t ever say that again — that you gave me a car! You never ever gave me a car! I don’t know what the hell you are talking about!” [Exhales] Well, I didn’t know what to say to him, because I had run into Alan previously and he had openly acknowledged the cars. He knew very well we had given him two Mercedes, and his son knew it, also. The only reason I could think that prompted such an outburst was that the woman standing next to Alan was his wife, and whoever he’d given the other Mercedes to, she didn’t know about it. Anyway, I quickly decided to drop the entire matter. I didn’t want to wreck his marriage, but he certainly did embarrass me in front of the people I was with. I mean, just moments before I had said to them, “Oh, there’s Alan Arkin. I once directed him in a film; he’s a friend of mine. Let’s have a word with him.” Then, to walk over and have him react like that, so viciously; I’m not kidding, I really thought he was going to attack me! At any rate, I certainly won’t be mentioning it to his face again. However, the fact of the matter remains that Alan Arkin did indeed receive two Mercedes for appearing in Full Moon High.

  At the time Full Moon High went into production, the flourishing technology of special makeup effects was being embraced by filmmakers such as John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, John Landis, and Joe Dante.

  Well, any new or developing technology is going to be embraced by filmmakers. That’s just the way it works. The field of makeup effects was really moving ahead in leaps and bounds at that time through the efforts of people like Dick Smith and Rick Baker. The popularity and proliferation of special effects really happened after The Exorcist and Star Wars. Suddenly, a lot of effects were being used in movies.

  And in some cases dictating the content and narrative of films.

  Oh, dominating them I’d say. A lot of movies, then and now, were full of special effects and were almost an excuse for them. I think the 1980s was a time when effects really began to take over. Movies started becoming cinematic spectacle rather than any truly meaningful experience. Some of those pictures contained very few interesting characters and very little story. They merely paraded the effects. Full Moon High was almost taking a step back from all that. I guess it was a little more restrained and old-fashioned in a way, but that was okay.

  In keeping with the admittedly low-tech approach on Full Moon High, you decided to employ jump cuts for the werewolf transformation instead of the traditional lap-dissolves favoured by some filmmakers in the 1940s. Why is that?

  I never liked those old lap-dissolves in werewolf movies as they were always so obviously done. They would put makeup on the actor, sit him down in position, shoot him, then put a little more makeup on, and shoot him again, and slowly this transformation would occur. That didn’t work for me because they would never get the actor back in the exact position, so when they dissolved between shots the eyes, nose, or mouth never quite matched up. To me, that looked crummy and destroyed the illusion. During our discussions on Full Moon High, I thought it would look better if I had the werewolf writhing around in motion and then tried to sneak the cuts in there as the transformation was taking place. I don’t know if we got away with it or not, but I much preferred that energetic approach as opposed to using static lap-dissolves. Having the actor simply lying there absolutely still as this horrifying metamorphosis is happening to him just seemed ridiculous to me. Today, they have “morphing,” which allows a person to turn into a werewolf in one fluid shot without a cut, but CGI still doesn’t improve on the makeup effects in The Howling and An American Werewolf in London. Those movies may be more than thirty years old now, but the work of Rick Baker has a reality and a texture to it that digital effects can’t duplicate. Actually, I think the very best werewolf transformations ever done were in The Howling, where it was all done live on the set with prosthetics. [9] Seeing that movie for the first time and watching this guy’s head literally stretch and grow fur and fangs was amazing. You can’t beat that.

  There are what seems like conscious nods to other horror films in Full Moon High, not only to The Wolf Man but Carrie and Psycho.

  I’m not entirely averse to referencing other director’s movies in my own work when and if I think it’s appropriate. I know some filmmakers do that a lot, but you can lose a little of what makes your movie uniquely your own if you do it too often. You are playing to some other director’s sensibilities and style, rather than your own ideas. I mostly strive for originality, but I thought the subject matter and general tone of Full Moon High allowed for those moments. So, we did a takeoff of Carrie in the cemetery scene and a takeoff of Psycho with the girl in the shower and all that. Those are two seminal films in the world of horror and I thought the fans would immediately recognize and appreciate the connotation of it all. Those pictures were hugely popular and influential, and I greatly admired them.

  An inventive moment occurs when the man at the disco inadvertently creates a new dance craze whilst trying to convince the other revellers that a werewolf is on the loose.

  I don’t know where that idea came from, but it seems to work in the scene. It was one of those moments of inspiration. If something gets a laugh in the right place and works then you keep it — if you’re smart! So, I just threw that in there. That scene is probably a good example of why I couldn’t work in regular, traditional motion pictures at the studios. Let’s face it, I’m a one-man show. I’m producing these pictures, and writing and directing them, and I can make up anything I want and insert it in as I go along. I have nobody that I have to get approval from and nothing I have to run by someone. I’m totally spoiled. I don’t want to go on about this, but when you are in a situation where you have to get approval for everything you do and there are all these people on your back telling you what the schedule is, and how much time you have left to shoot, and whether or not you are on budget or over budget or under budget — no way! You then have people reporting back to the front office and looking at dailies, and that’s too much like factory labour for me. My movies are my own and I supervise every element of them. The only person I don’t supervise is the composer. I’m not going to tell Bernard Herrmann or Miklós Rózsa what to do and I don’t want to. Aside from that, everybody else doesn’t exist.

  Most filmmakers would concede that filmmaking is a collaborative process.

  Not me. I mean, I don’t even like to have a production manager on my movies. I usually pay my production manager and ask him not to come to the set, because I want to do all that. I must be in absolute control of every aspect of production and not have to deal with anybody
else. I don’t want to boss anybody or push anybody around. I just don’t want anybody else to be there. Don’t misunderstand me: none of this affects the atmosphere or vibe I try to create on a set. I like a happy and productive atmosphere on my sets, and that was certainly the atmosphere I tried to create on Full Moon High. I make movies in a very enjoyable way that cultivates a real sense of freedom, elation, and creativity. Most of the actors who’ve worked on my pictures have never worked in a situation like this before, where one person has all the power and makes all the decisions and calls all the shots. They are sometimes amazed to see that I can basically do anything I want to do. So, if I want to make up a new scene, or get a new location, I just do it. That’s it. I doubt that a moment like that dance scene in Full Moon High would survive the studio process and that’s a shame.

  Do you have any interesting anecdotes regarding the shooting of Full Moon High that you would like to share?

  The funniest thing that happened was when we were shooting at the John Burrows High School in Burbank, California. I remember one day the fire department suddenly walked in wearing their shiny hats and uniforms. The fire chief strode over to me and said, “You can’t shoot here because you don’t have a permit.” I said, “Well, we’ve been paying $1,500 a day to this high school for the privilege of filming here.” He said, “I’m afraid that’s not enough. You need a permit from the City of Burbank.” I said, “Nobody at the high school told me that we needed a permit. Can’t we go over and get the permit from the necessary authorities?” He said, “Yes, but it’s going to take a week to get it approved.” I was absolutely horrified by that. I said, “You mean I can’t shoot my movie for an entire week? I’ve got all these actors and crew standing around here and I’m paying them big money. Look, we’ve already got the set lit and the camera is in position and everything.” The fire chief just shook his head, “No, it doesn’t matter. I’m afraid you can’t shoot here. You’ll just have to take all the lights down and vacate the premises immediately.” Oh, I could hardly breathe! I literally had my head in my hands at this point. I thought, “Jesus, this is an unmitigated disaster! How am I going to get out of this mess? What am I going to do? All the risks I’ve taken in my career, all the crazy stunts I’ve gotten away with, and now everything unravels so tamely?” Then, at the very moment I was contemplating all this, our production manager — who was standing right next to me — suddenly collapsed to the floor and went into an epileptic seizure. We were all just standing there in shock, looking down at the guy as he’s writhing and convulsing on the floor. Now, the fire department were accompanied by the emergency guys and the medics came running in and heaved our production manager onto a stretcher. We were just staring open-mouthed as they strapped him down, carried him outside to their vehicle, and sped off to the hospital. Meanwhile we were all still standing there in silence, just looking at each other. The fire chief then walked over to me, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, “Go shoot your movie.” And that was it! The fire department simply turned around and left and didn’t bother us anymore. We quickly continued shooting the scene and everything was beautiful again. But I just couldn’t believe what had happened. It was as if the production manager had suffered his epileptic fit right on cue. I mean, that was certainly the one time when I didn’t have any way of getting out of the situation. I was completely pinned to the wall and couldn’t figure out what my next move would be. I was thinking, “How am I going to outwit these firemen? What do I have to do to finish this picture?” Then — and precisely then — the production manager drops and the whole situation changes almost in an instant. I thought, “God is now my production manager!” [Laughs] It was crazy. I can’t think of a more bizarre story than that one.