Sad to say......we've lost one of our all-time favorite writer-directors.......Larry Cohen, the brilliant idea guy and wildly freewheeling independent creator of such cult classics as the "It's Alive" trilogy, "Q-The Winged Serpent", "The Stuff", "God Told Me To" and classic TV shows like "Branded" and "The Invaders"........
Cohen wrote 'high concept' scripts long, long before the studios ever adopted that phrase as a definition of they craved......a story idea so striking, so imaginative and so deceptively simple what you couldn't resist it.......
Who else but Cohen could recruit the iconic, irascible legend Bernard Herrmann to write the score for Cohen's slapdash, primal "It's Alive".......about the birth of a monster baby who promptly kills everyone in the delivery room and chews off its own umbilical cord.......
And more great stuff followed........including, literally...."The Stuff" about a tasty ice-cream-yogurt-like dessert that eats YOU first.....and the immortal "Q-The Winged Serpent" about a giant flying bird-lizard that nests on top of the Chrysler building and swoops down to munch on sunbathers in penthouse pools.......
Cohen pumped out his wacky, pulpy little epics long before the studios began lavishing multi-million dollar budgets on sci-fi/horror films.........we can only dream of what his films might have looked like if he'd had the the kind of money thrown at junk like "Mortal Engines" and "Pacific Rim".....
But Cohen went his own way.......with meager cash, sheer nerve and sharp screenwriting chops, he managed to craft the most memorable filmography you'll ever enjoy.
A one-of-a-kind artist.........somewhere in the Larry Cohen universe, we can hear the plaintive wail of a monster baby......
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