Some critics have suggested that Davis’ final performance should have been in Lindsay Anderson’s The Whales of August rather than Wicked Stepmother.
I agree, The Whales of August should have been her final film, even though Bette looked pretty bad in that one, too. She played a blind woman who was mostly confined to a chair, so she didn’t have to walk around and do very much. The Whales of August was a quality picture, but I think Wicked Stepmother is far from the worst movie Bette ever made. If you look at the films she made over the years, Bette was involved in some real stinkers. I remember one awful movie she did with Ernest Borgnine where they played two elderly folks dressed as hippies who basically just rode around on a motorcycle. [8] So, Bette made quite a number of bad pictures that she wasn’t proud of. She was always looking around for employment and did several television pilots that never got on, including one shot in England called Madame Sin in which she played an evil Chinese woman. Let’s face it, even though Bette had been one of the biggest stars in the history of motion pictures, at this late stage of her career she desperately needed a job. In fact, Bette didn’t have a great deal of money when she died. She left around $1 million, which included her apartment and that was probably worth $750,000. So Bette only had something like $250,000 in the whole world, which she left to her stepson and to her secretary, Kathryn Sermak. A lot of people in Hollywood have accumulated vast fortunes over the years — some people are even billionaires — but Bette had fairly little to show for her career, except for all those wonderful movies she’d made at Warner Bros. She was more than happy about the $250,000 she was getting for Wicked Stepmother. But there’s no getting away from the fact she had accepted a lot of very poor roles over the years. I guess Wicked Stepmother is historically significant because it was the last picture Bette ever made. She died the following year in Paris after attending a film festival.
Is it safe to assume you have no regrets about making Wicked Stepmother?
None whatsoever. I’m glad I made the film, despite all the chaos and subterfuge that went on. If I had to do it all again I would, because I enjoyed having Bette as an acquaintance and having her at least appear to like me. I certainly liked her. I guess that, ultimately, it was my fault because I was the one who hired her. I was the one who insisted on going ahead and making Wicked Stepmother with Bette despite certain people advising me against it. I’ve thought a lot about this over the years and I now realize that on one level I simply couldn’t accept the fact that Bette Davis could no longer be in movies. I was such a big fan of hers, maybe I just wanted to prove all those people wrong. I wanted to bring some of that old magic back to the movies.
Cohen poses with Anne Carlisle on the set of Perfect Strangers. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
Cohen gives the cameraman the hairy eyeball during the filming of Special Effects in New York. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
The late, great stop-motion animator, David Allen, readies a shot on the manually-operated revolving set of The Stuff. Photo courtesy of Steve Neil.
The Stuff — poised to strike! Photo courtesy of Steve Neill.
FX technicians operate the fake head and body on the set of The Stuff. Photo courtesy of Steve Neill.
The FX crew prepare Garrett Morris’s fake head and body for the gruesome death of “Chocolate Chip” Charlie in The Stuff. Photo courtesy of Steve Neill.
The Stuff emerges from Charlie’s mouth. Photo courtesy of Steve Neill.
“Are you eating it or is it eating you?” Charlie’s shattered remains after he is consumed by The Stuff. Photo courtesy of Steve Neill.
An “awful movie”: Cohen and Billy Dee Williams during happier times on the troubled set of Deadly Illusion. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
Cohen, Laurene Landon and Michael Moriarty in bed together on the set of It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
Cohen directs Sam Fuller in Peacham, Vermont, during the shooting of A Return to Salem’s Lot. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
The fully-transformed Judge Axel shows his true face in A Return to Salem’s Lot. Photo courtesy of Steve Neill.
Cohen takes a call in his office. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
“Bette is Bad Again”: The poster for Wicked Stepmother featuring Bette Davis and Barbara Carrera. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
Cohen and Bette Davis on the set of Wicked Stepmother. The air of calm and delectation would soon come to an abrupt end. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
A delighted Cohen with Bette Davis and Lionel Stander shortly before Davis’ sudden departure from Wicked Stepmother. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
Cohen and James Earl Jones lying in the gutters of Lower Manhattan, trying to cool off between set-ups on The Ambulance. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
Cohen with Eric Roberts during the shooting of The Ambulance on the streets of New York. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
Cohen with his friend, the immortal Vincent Price. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
Cohen with his second wife, Cynthia Costas Cohen, a successful therapist in Beverly Hills. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
Promotional poster art for The Man Who Loved Hitchcock featuring Sir Peter Ustinov, who was set to play the legendary director. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
Cohen nestled comfortably amongst the iconic monsters that have crawled, creeped, and killed in his movies. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
Cohen with Sanford Meisner. The Sanford Meisner Center later mounted Cohen’s stage-play, Fallen Eagle. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
A promo shot of Cohen from the 1990s. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
Cohen with Oscar-winners Robert Benigni and Red Buttons. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
Cohen with movie mogul Samuel Z. Arkoff, co-founder of American International Pictures. “I have usurped Sam’s trademark cigar,” Cohen remarks of this picture. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
Cohen on the set of Phone Booth with director Joel Schumacher and producer Gil Netter. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
Cohen on the set of Phone Booth with Colin Farrell. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
Cohen hangs out with legendary Italian director Dario Argento during one of the Masters of Horror dinners held periodically in a “reasonably priced restaurant” somewhere in Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
Cohen in front of 20th Century Fox studios shortly before the release of Phone Booth. Photo courtesy of Larry Cohen.
Cohen with filmmakers Adam Rifkin, Mick Garris, Katt Shea, Mary Lambert, Si Litvinoff, Ken Russell, and Russell’s wife, Lisa Tribble, during a Masters of Horror gathering in 2010. Photo courtesy of Mick Garris.
Cohen at another Masters of Horror dinner. Amongst those pictured with him are Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Joe Dante, Frank Darabont, Mick Garris, Don Coscarelli, Stuart Gordon, Tom Holland, Adam Wingard, Ernest Dickerson, Adam Green, Axelle Carolyn, David Arquette, Ti West, and Laurene Landon. Photo courtesy of Mick Garris.
Intermission: The Heavy (1990)
When we discussed Q — The Winged Serpent, you briefly alluded to a film called The Heavy, which you started shooting in October 1990 but then shutdown. Can you reveal more about what this movie was or might have been?
The Heavy was a script that I wrote especially for David Carradine. It was basically a tribute to all the great movie heavies, you know, all those mean-looking actors that you’ve seen in hundreds of films. You know their faces, but you can never remember their names. These actors are always playing the bad guys, and you see them on screen all the time, and you get used to them. You say, “Oh look, there’s that same guy again! Who the hell is he?” These nameless faces usually have long careers in the movie business. They’ve never made much money, but they appear in lots of pictures. They are the men who are constantly getting killed by every major star, because heroes always need villains to dispatch. In this particular film, David was playing a character, who is a long-time movie heavy
, not unlike his father, John Carradine, who was a famous movie heavy. [1] This guy’s career is going nowhere, and so he decides to leave Hollywood and go back to New Jersey where his family lives. As he is driving across country, he gets mixed up in a real-life crime that occurs in this small town. People recognize his distinctive face, as he is this mean-looking guy. The townsfolk are sure they have seen him somewhere before although he is a perfect stranger. Anyway, this actor becomes embroiled in a dangerous situation and ends up having to play the hero and solve the crime. The heavy wins the first fight he’s ever had where he didn’t have to lose, because every villain must lose a fistfight or get killed in a gunfight. That’s the general law of movies, it seems. But on this occasion, the heavy gets to win the girl, save the day, and turn everything around in these strange set of circumstances he finds himself in while en route across the United States.
Were you excited and enthused to be making the movie?
Oh, yeah. The Heavy was a very good script and it would have made a very good movie. Of course, the story doesn’t work so well anymore because of the advent of the Internet. The fact of the matter is that the heavy would probably be able to very quickly identify himself to the townspeople using a computer or one of these new-fangled cell phones. If I was going to make The Heavy now, I would set the story back around 1970. Back in those days, there were great movie heavies and there were great movie heroes. It’s like I told you before — and it’s very true — today, there are no great movie heroes anymore. Now everybody is an anti-hero.
Several articles published in November 1990 reported that “differences between Cohen and Carradine came to a head during an arm-waving and shouting match on Halloween evening.” [2] You indicated to me in an earlier interview that The Heavy fell apart due to Carradine’s behaviour.
Yeah, he was drunk. That’s the simplest way of putting it. I hate to speak ill of the dead, but David arrived drunk and he stayed drunk. He just became very difficult to deal with. I told David that I had written the script especially for him as a gesture of our long friendship. I thought his behaviour on The Heavy was inexcusable, particularly since I’d gone to all the trouble to do this for him. I quickly realized that the biggest favor I could possibly do for David was to fire him, so he could then go into rehab and wouldn’t be drinking all the time. So, after just two days of shooting, I’d had enough. I just closed the film down.
What were the immediate consequences of your hastily terminating the production after two days of shooting?
Well, I managed to get the insurance company to pay off most of the losses by claiming that alcoholism was an illness as defined by the American Medical Association. I basically argued that I had to close the production down for medical reasons, because David’s drunkenness was indeed a medical problem. In order to keep from going to court on this situation and setting a precedent, this was obviously a delicate matter. I mean, it might have cost the insurance companies an absolute fortune if every drunken actor could be fired, because there are plenty of them around in Hollywood. The insurance company eventually did pay off the majority of the losses on the picture and I got out of The Heavy alright in the end. In fact, when I left the production in New Mexico, I travelled to Tucson, Arizona, which was fairly close by. There was a convention of criminal attorneys congregating there, and, after we got talking, they kindly invited me to dinner. So, I sat with all these lawyers and we started discussing various legal matters. It was fascinating, and I actually got the idea for Guilty as Sin from those conversations. It’s certainly true that I would never have gotten the inspiration for that screenplay, or had the opportunity to later work with Sydney Lumet, had I not fired Carradine and closed down The Heavy. So, it all worked out spectacularly well in the end because I ended up selling Guilty as Sin for a lot of money.
You may have survived the termination of The Heavy intact, but certain members of the cast and crew were reportedly “gloomy and crying” upon learning that the film was being shutdown, as was the manager of the local Palomino Hotel where the company were staying during the shoot. He was expecting his rooms to be occupied for the next three or four weeks.
What can I say? It was a highly unfortunate situation and I was also very upset about it at the time. It certainly wasn’t a decision I made lightly, but it was an entirely necessary one. There was no other alternative, really. I’m sorry that certain people were upset about what happened, but I don’t have any regrets about it. I did what I thought was the right thing to do. Honestly, I simply could not do my best work under those conditions. I would not have been able to deliver a good movie, that’s for sure.
Who co-starred with Carradine in The Heavy?
Uh, I don’t really remember. Let me think. [Pause] Oh, there was Robert Carradine, David’s brother, and then there was Keith Carradine, David’s other brother. [3] So, all three Carradine brothers were going to be in the picture.
Had the other Carradine brothers arrived on set by the time you closed the film?
Bobby Carradine was there when it all happened, but Keith had not yet arrived. As a matter of fact, I had to pay Bobby his entire fee because he would not relinquish it. After we closed The Heavy down, he wanted to be paid and I had to pay him his whole salary.
How did Robert Carradine feel about the whole situation? Was he allied with his brother?
Well, Bobby certainly knew what was going on. He knew David was drunk all the time but, naturally, he wouldn’t admit it. Bobby just said that he wanted to be paid in full for his services, even though we had only shot for two days. So, we paid him.
As you revealed to me previously, David Carradine later tried to make amends by offering you the chance to direct an episode of Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. That series ran between 1993 and 1997, so it was a few years before you and he patched up your differences.
Yeah, it took a little while. After I did the firing on The Heavy, and the dust from all the recriminations that inevitably followed had settled, we were able to talk again. It was a few years later, when David wrote me the apology letter saying he was sorry. That’s when he stopped by my house a couple of times, rang the doorbell, and came in. We settled our differences and were on friendly terms again — that was until the final encounter we had at Paramount studios, when David was inexplicably obnoxious again. I guess that was the parting of the ways for us because the next thing I heard he was dead over in Thailand. Frankly, I think David was murdered by a pimp or a prostitute. There was no way he committed suicide. I mean, that was just complete nonsense. There is no way that he hung himself in a closet, particularly whilst wearing women’s clothes. I’m almost certain he was murdered.
What makes you believe that?
They have these prostitutes over in Thailand, who appear to be beautiful women, but they are actually men. What these people sometimes do is they accompany you back to your hotel room and then beat you up and rob you. Of course, afterwards you are too ashamed to go to the police because you have brought a man up to your room who you mistakenly believed was a woman. Sometimes, these individuals come in pairs, and I suspect what probably happened that night is David fought back against his attackers and was killed. David was physically capable but if he was drunk or doped-up or drugged, he would not have been able to put up as good a fight as he might have done. I think somebody tried to rob him and he was murdered as a result. That’s just my opinion. I have no proof, but there is no way that Carradine was going to kill himself. He was doing a movie over there and was working. I mean, nothing ever bothered the guy, at least not the things that sweat most people. When the tax people were following David around everywhere and were heavily on his back, it never mattered to him. He couldn’t have given a fuck! He just moved on to a different house or a different apartment and everything always rolled right off him. There is simply no way that a guy like that would have ever killed himself.
Larry Cohen Page 53