LARRY COHEN

(15 July 1936 - 23 March 2019)

The American screenwriter, producer and director Larry Cohen, who has died aged 82, began his career in television but graduated to films, in particular low-budget horror, sci-fi and exploitation. As a writer, his output was prolific on TV beginning in 1958 in such series as Kraft Theatre, Surfside 6, Sam Benedict, The Doctors and the Nurses, The Fugitive, The Defenders, Custer, The Invaders and Columbo, alongside many others. His first feature film as a writer was Return of the Seven, director Burt Kennedy’s 1966 sequel to The Magnificent Seven. I Deal in Danger, Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting and El Condor followed, but from 1972 Cohen started directing and producing his own screenplays, beginning with Blaxploitation titles such as Dial Rat (aka Bone), The Godfather of Harlem and Hell Up In Harlem and then the film he became most noted for – It’s Alive, the story of a baby turned monster. He went on to direct The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, a very sobering drama-doc with Broderick Crawford. It Lives Again followed along with Full Moon High, Blind Alley, Q: The Winged Serpent, It’s Alive III, A Return to Salem’s Lot, The Stuff, Wicked Stepmother (Bette Davis's last film), The Ambulance and Original Gangstas, the last feature directed by Cohen in 1996. After that he continued writing for films including Phone Booth, Captivity, a remake of It’s Alive and Messages Deleted, his last script (in 2010). Larry Cohen was married twice, first to the actress and producer Janelle Webb who had five children, and then to the actress Cynthia Costas. Both wives appeared in Cohen’s 1990 film The Ambulance.

MICHAEL DARVELL