Larry Cohen

by Michael Doyle

  7. Bob Newhart (b.1929) is an American stand-up comedian and actor, renowned for his deadpan delivery and hangdog face. His first major success was an album of comic monologues entitled The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart (1960), which topped the Billboard charts and won Album of the Year at the 1961 Grammy Awards. He later starred in two hugely successful sitcoms, The Bob Newhart Show (1972-1978) and Newhart (1982-1990), before playing a fictional comic book writer in the short-lived but critically acclaimed vehicle Bob (1992-1993). His notable film roles include Catch 22 (1970), On A Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970), The Rescuers (1977), The Rescuers Down Under (1990), In and Out (1997), and Elf (2003).

  8. Don Rickles (b.1926) is a highly-regarded and influential practitioner of “insult comedy” and is known by the monikers “Mr. Warmth” and “The Merchant of Venom.” His film roles include Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes (1963), Kelly’s Heroes (1970), Innocent Blood (1993), Casino (1995), and Toy Story (1995). He was also the subject of a feature-length documentary by John Landis, Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project (2007), which features appearances by Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Roger Corman, Robin Williams, Jay Leno, Debbie Reynolds, and Sidney Poitier.

  9. The werewolf transformations in The Howling were created by Rob Bottin with Rick Baker serving as “special makeup effects consultant.”

  10. Mort Drucker (b.1929) is an American comic book artist and caricaturist. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he first began contributing to MAD magazine in 1956 and has continued parodying an unrivalled array of celebrities, politicians, and other assorted public figures in his unmistakable signature style ever since. Capable of capturing the persona and personality of his subject with unerring accuracy, Drucker’s art has also appeared in Newsweek and Time (his covers for the latter publication currently reside in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute).

  11. Kenneth Mars died of pancreatic cancer on February 12, 2011, several months before this conversation took place. He was seventy-five years old.

  12. Edmund Gwenn (1877-1959) was an English actor, who achieved his greatest fame and success in Hollywood during middle age. He is mostly remembered today for playing Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street (1947), for which he won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor. His other credits include Foreign Correspondent (1940), Louisa (1950), Mister 880 (1950, for which he received a second Oscar nomination), Les Miserables (1953), Them!, The Student Prince (1954), and The Trouble with Harry.

  13. Edwin Thomas Booth (1833-1893) was a celebrated Shakespearean actor, regarded by some critics as the greatest American actor of the nineteenth century. He toured throughout the United States and Europe, and also founded his own theater in New York, Booth’s Theater, which was one of the most modern of its age. He was a brother to John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865), the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln (of which Edwin was an enthusiastic and vocal supporter). Ironically, a year or two before the assassination, Edwin had saved the President’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln, from serious injury — or perhaps even death — when he threatened to tumble off a platform and into the path of an oncoming train.

  CHAPTER 12: SEE CHINA AND DIE (1981)

  1. Good Times was an American sitcom that ran on CBS from February 8, 1974, until August 1, 1979. Developed by Norman Lear, it starred Ester Rolle and John Amos as Florida and James Evans, a couple whose devoted family are struggling to make ends meet in a Chicago housing project. Good Times was a spin-off from the series Maude (1972-1978), which itself was a spin-off from All in the Family (1971-1979), which in turn was derived from Johnny Speight’s landmark British sitcom Till Death Do Us Part (1965-1975).

  2. Paul Dooley (b.1928) has appeared in Slap Shot (1977), A Wedding (1978), A Perfect Couple (1979), Breaking Away (1979), Popeye (1980), Endangered Species (1982), Sixteen Candles (1984), O.C. and Stiggs (1985), Flashback (1990), Shakes the Clown (1991), The Underneath (1995), Clockwatchers (1997), Runaway Bride (1999), Insomnia (2002), A Mighty Wind (2003), Cars (2006), Hairspray (2007), Cars II (2011), and Turbo (2013). Dooley’s wife is the dramatist, screenwriter and producer Winnie Holzman (b.1954). Wicked (2003) marked Holzman’s Broadway debut, winning her the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical and a nomination for a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical.

  3. Despite Cohen not seeing him around, Kene Holiday (b.1949) has continued to appear in films and television since See China and Die. His movie credits include No Small Affair (1984), The Philadelphia Experiment (1984), Bulworth (1998), The Immaculate Misconception (2006), The Human War (2011), and Handle Your Business (2015). His TV appearances include Kojak, The Incredible Hulk, Lou Grant, Quincy, ME, Hart to Hart, Hill Street Blues, Benson, The Fall Guy, Matlock, Doogie Howser M.D., Jake and the Fatman, Diagnosis Murder, and The District.

  4. Miguel Pinero (1946-1988) is the Puerto Rican actor, poet, and playwright Cohen speaks of here. Pinero began his writing career whilst serving a prison sentence in Sing Sing for armed robbery. Deeply affected by the events he witnessed whilst incarcerated, he joined a prison workshop called “The Family” and wrote several short plays. Short Eyes is the most famous of these works and is the harrowing story of an imprisoned child molester who is put on trial, judged and then executed by his fellow convicts. In 1974, Short Eyes won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play of the Year and was soon followed by an Obie Award for Best Off-Broadway Play. Pinero also wrote the screenplay for Robert M. Young’s film adaptation of Short Eyes in 1977 and played the supporting role of Go-Go. Aside from essaying “Gonzales” in See China and Die, Pinero also appeared in The Jericho Mile (1979), Fort Apache The Bronx (1981), Breathless (1983), Deal of the Century (1983), Alphabet City (1984), and Almost You (1985) before dying of liver disease. A biographical film about his life, Pinero (2001), was written and directed by Leon Ichaso and starred Benjamin Bratt in the title role.

  5. Marathon Man (1976) is a flawed but compelling conspiracy thriller directed by John Schlesinger and adapted by William Goldman from his own 1974 novel. Dustin Hoffman plays a graduate history student and avid marathon runner who becomes inadvertently involved in the machinations of his rogue government agent brother (Roy Scheider) and an exiled Nazi war criminal (a terrifying Laurence Olivier) who is seeking to smuggle a priceless haul of Jewish diamonds out of America.

  6. Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians was first published in the U.K. in 1939 and in the U.S. the following year as And Then There Were None. The story concerns ten people who are invited to an isolated island under different pretexts, only to discover that an unseen killer is murdering them one by one for their respective past crimes and indiscretions. Often regarded as Christie’s masterpiece it is also the best-selling mystery novel of all time, shifting over 100 million copies.

  7. Witness for the Prosecution (1957) is a gripping courtroom drama directed by Billy Wilder and adapted for the screen by Wilder, Harry Kurnitz and Larry Marcus. Derived from Agatha Christie’s short story (which was first published in 1925 as The Witness For the Prosecution), it boasts a masterful performance by Charles Laughton as Sir Wilfrid Robarts, a brilliant but ailing barrister, who agrees to defend Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power), an American war veteran arrested on suspicion of murdering an elderly acquaintance. Marlene Dietrich plays Christine Helm Vole, the wife who testifies against the accused as the prosecution’s star witness. Apparently, Wilder’s film was Christie’s favorite of her works adapted for film and television.

  INTERMISSION: I, THE JURY (1982)

  1. Richard T. Heffron (1930-2007) began his career as a documentary filmmaker before branching out into cinema and television. His feature credits include Fillmore (1972), The California Kid (1974), I Will Fight No More Forever (1975), Futureworld (1976), Outlaw Blues (1977), Foolin’ Around (1980), Pancho Barnes (1988), Tagget (1991), and No Greater Love (1996).

  2. Mickey Spillane was a pseudonym of Frank Morrison Spillane (1981-2006).

  3.
Victor Saville (1895-1979) was an English director, who directed thirty-nine films between 1927 and 1954. He only produced the 1953 version of I, the Jury, which was actually directed by Harry Essex from his own adapted screenplay.

  4. The full title of this American/Spanish co-production is Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold (1984). Directed by Matt Cimber, whose previous efforts include the blaxploitation movies The Black 6 (1973) and Lady Cocoa (1975), and the horror film The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976), it plays like a modestly-budgeted amalgamation of the spaghetti Western and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Laurene Landon stars as Yellow Hair, a white woman raised from childhood by an Apache tribe, who becomes mixed-up in a series of adventures with The Pecos Kid (Ken Roberson). Cimber also directed Landon in Hundra (1983).

  5. Moonlighting is an American TV series created by Glenn Gordon Caron that aired for five seasons on ABC from March 3, 1985, until May 14, 1989. A deft mixture of comedy, drama, mystery, and romance, the show revolved around the working relationship (and underlying sexual tension) between Maddie Hayes (Cybil Shepherd) and David Addison Jr (Bruce Willis) of the Blue Moon Detective Agency. Invigorated by some sharp writing and the chemistry between its engaging leads, Moonlighting assisted in launching Willis on his way to stardom.

  CHAPTER 13: Q — THE WINGED SERPENT (1982)

  1. In an interview with the author published in Rue Morgue #137 (September 2013), conducted to publicize the release of Scream Factory’s Blu-ray of Q — The Winged Serpent, Cohen commented on the Aztec influence in the film: “I liked the idea of making a horror film that had an Aztec flavour [to it] as opposed to the Catholic flavour of The Exorcist or God Told Me To.”

  2. Randall William Cook (b.1953) is an American animator, visual effects and makeup artist whose credits include Caveman (1981), The Thing (1982), 2010 (1984), Ghostbusters (1984), Fright Night (1985), Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986), The Gate (1987), and Dragonworld (1994). Cook also co-wrote and directed the film Demon in a Bottle (1996) and played Malcolm Brand, the scar-faced psychopath in the horror film Hardcover (1989). Invited by Peter Jackson to serve as Animation Director on his Lord of the Rings trilogy, Cook won three Academy Awards and three BAFTAs for his efforts on The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002), and The Return of the King (2003).

  3. David Allen (1944-1999) was an American visual effects artist, considered by many to rival Ray Harryhausen and Jim Danforth as one of the best stop-motion animators to have ever lived. His extensive credits include Equinox (1970), When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970), Flesh Gordon (1974), The Crater Lake Monster (1977), Laserblast (1978), The Howling, The Hunger (1983), Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), Trancers (1984), The Stuff, Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), Batteries Not Included (1987), Dolls, Willow (1988), Robot Jox, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989), Ghostbusters II (1989), Bride of Re-Animator (1989), and Freaked (1993). From the late 1970s up until his death from cancer, Allen had also been toiling on an unfinished feature titled The Primevals, “a tale about a secret Himalayan valley populated with giant yetis and an ancient race of alien lizard men.” Hopes persist that it will one day be completed by other hands.

  4. Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013) was an influential American visual effects artist, writer and producer who lived in London from 1960 until his death. Famed for creating a form of stop-motion animation known as “dynamation,” Harryhausen served his apprenticeship under his mentor Willis H. O’Brien (1886-1982), who surrendered much of the animation duties on Mighty Joe Young (1949) to his gifted protégé. This assignment was later followed by Harryhausen’s work on The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955), Earth Versus the Flying Saucers (1956), and 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), for which he also co-authored the story. Harryhausen later created the animation for The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958), The Three Worlds of Gulliver (1959), Mysterious Island (1961), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), One Million Years BC (1966), The Valley of Gwangi (1969), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974), and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977). His swansong was Clash of the Titans (1981) by which time his stop-motion animation techniques, although still brilliantly executed, were beginning to look increasingly dated in the wake of other technological developments.

  5. Shortly after the furore caused by shooting this sequence Cohen took out a full page advertisement in Variety at his own expense which was published on Wednesday, July 1, 1981. It read: “Dear New York, Sorry If We Scared You: Last week, the headlines of the newspapers and national radio and TV told about the shock waves caused when a crack 75 man SWAT team invaded the pinnacle of the Chrysler Building and opened fire on the swooping forty foot flying SERPENT that had nested there. IT WAS ONLY A MOVIE — but thousands of New Yorkers saw and heard the scene in progress and thought it was real. Police even had calls reporting actual sightings of a giant bird up on the Chrysler tower. To anyone who was frightened, our apology. To the NYPD and the New York City Motion Picture Division our thanks for making this spectacular scene possible. It’s only one of many great sequences in this new thriller which stars MICHAEL MORIARTY, DAVID CARRADINE, CANDY CLARK, and RICHARD ROUNDTREE. Next time we scare you we hope it’s in a movie theatre.”

  6. The artist who created the poster art for Conan the Barbarian was Renato Casaro (b.1935). Cohen is mistaken here as Boris Vallejo (b.1941) is responsible for the poster of Q — The Winged Serpent. An award-winning Peruvian painter and illustrator specialising in idealized images of fantasy and erotica, Vallejo has developed his own distinctive and sensual style which can be seen on the posters for Barbarella (1968), The White Buffalo (1977), Knightriders (1981), Deathstalker (1983), National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), and National Lampoon’s European Vacation (1985).

  7. On June 4, 2009, David Carradine was found dead in his room at the Swissôtel Nai Lert Park Hotel in central Bangkok, Thailand. He had been staying there whilst shooting the French film Stretch. Carradine was found hanging by a rope and naked in a closet. Initial reports in the media suggested that the actor had taken his own life. Two autopsies were conducted and the cause of death was later thought to be due to autoerotic asphyxiation.

  8. The Royal Hunt of the Sun by Peter Shaffer concerns the Spanish explorer Francisco Pizarro whose expedition slaughters 3000 unarmed Incas and captures their deified (and supposedly immortal) chieftain, Atahualpa, on a ransom of 9000 pounds of gold. The play was first presented by The National Theatre at the Chichester Festival in 1964. It was subsequently performed at the Old Vic Theatre before transferring across the Atlantic to Broadway where it was staged at the ANTA Playhouse on October 26, 1965. The original Broadway cast featured Christopher Plummer as Pizarro and David Carradine as Atahualpa, and ran for 261 performances.

  9. Kung Fu was an American martial-arts/adventure/Western drama series that initially ran on ABC for three seasons and sixty-three episodes from October 14, 1972, until April 16, 1975. Created by Ed Spielman, Jerry Thorpe and Hermann Miller, the show centred on Kwai Chang Caine, a Shaolin monk who traverses the Old American West in search of his brother. The show later sired a TV movie, Kung Fu: The Movie (1986), and an unsuccessful pilot starring Brandon Lee, Kung Fu: The Next Generation (1987), before eventually being revived as Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. This syndicated series ran from January 27, 1993, until January 1, 1997.

  10. Robert Carradine (b.1954) is an American actor and the youngest of the three actor sons of John Carradine. After making his debut opposite John Wayne in The Cowboys (1972), Robert went on to appear in Mean Streets (1973), Massacre at Central High (1976), The Long Riders (1980) — in which he co-starred with his brothers, David and Keith, The Big Red One (1980), Revenge of the Nerds (1984), Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (1987), Rude Awakening (1989), Buy and Cell (1990), Body Bags (1993), The Tommyknockers (1993), Escape from L.A. (1996), Ghosts of Mars (2001), The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003), and Django Unchained (2012).

  CHAPTER 14: PERFECT STRANGERS (1984)

  1. A riff on the age-ol
d fable of the boy who cried wolf, The Window (1949) is an RKO thriller directed by Ted Tetzlaff. Adapted from a short story by Cornell Woolrich called “The Boy Who Cried Murder,” it concerns a youngster (Bobby Driscoll), who sneaks out onto the fire escape of his grimy tenement building one hot summer night and witnesses the couple in the apartment above killing a drunken seaman. Since the child has a habit of telling tall tales neither his parents nor the police believe his story, but when the murderous neighbours learn that the boy knows the truth of their crime they decide to ensure his silence. An accomplished and suspenseful Film Noir, Driscoll was presented with a miniature Oscar for his superb performance.