The Cohen Case Files: The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977)

Written, Produced, and Directed by Larry Cohen

In an attempt to change the course of his directorial career away from being known only as a genre specialist, Larry Cohen tried his hand at a sweeping biopic. The choice of the late FBI director gave him plenty of sensationalistic material to work with. After watching the film, perhaps it was too much material, as the story is stuffed with historical figures, infamous scandals, violent shootouts, blackmail, and a romantic subplot. Despite the constant threat of the film to collapse under its own weight, Cohen finds a consistent through-line in Hoover’s paranoia and contradictions that makes the film oddly fascinating even as it sometimes feels like random moments and scenes are just being thrown at the screen in hopes that something will stick.

The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover is told in flashback by former FBI agent Dwight Webb (a young and almost unrecognizable Rip Torn). Webb is hired by reporter Dave Hindley (John Marley) to dig up the dirt on the recently deceased Hoover’s personal and professional life. Still angry at the Bureau for his firing after twenty years of service because of his affair with a female employee, Webb happily accepts the job.

The flashbacks start with Hoover (played as a younger man by James Wainwright and as an older man by Broderick Crawford) working as a legal clerk at the Bureau during the time when it was best known as an embarrassing part of the Teapot Dome scandal. Sickened by the corruption and morally repulsed by the behavior it breeds among the men who work in the Bureau, Hoover initially makes a name for himself by over-stepping his duties and spearheading the arrest of hundreds of Italian immigrants suspected of being Communists. When he discovers the immigrants are not going to be given due-process and simply deported, he is horrified and takes his fight for their rights to the Attorney General only to lose. Impressed by Hoover’s integrity, the Attorney General offers him the position of FBI director. With no law enforcement experience and at only 29 years of age, Hoover is seen as an unqualified choice, but is also believed to be squeaky clean and easy to manipulate in the first of the film’s many ironies.

While the film traces his rise from a man who still lives with his mother to the most-feared man in America, it touches on his near paranoid sexual repression, the positive and negative changes he made to the FBI, his hypocrisy when it came to corrupt government officials, and the many personal vendettas he nursed as his trusted inner-circle grew smaller. It’s an enormous story, but Cohen tells it with energy and a refreshing fidelity to historical accuracy.

A large chunk of the story is given over to Hoover’s relationships with three men—no, I don’t mean those kinds of relationships.

Actually, the first relationship is with two men: John Dillinger (Reno Carrel) and Melvin Purvis (Michael Sacks). Driven by a desire to take away the mythologizing press given to Dillinger and put it on himself, he turns to FBI Agent Purvis to stop Dillinger once and for all. In a scene leading up to Dillinger’s killing, Hoover even jokes about the man’s upcoming death. When Purvis and his men gun down Dillinger, the agent gets much of the attention from the press, infuriating Hoover. When Purvis leaves the FBI and opens his own private detective agency, Hoover sees to it that he is unable to get clients, eventually driving the former agent to drastic measures in a harrowing scene.

The second relationship that fuels the film comes from Hoover’s adversarial time working under Robert Kennedy (Michael Parks). Annoyed by the young Attorney General’s efforts to reign in Hoover’s power and show him who’s boss, he uses threats of personal blackmail to not only gain back all his power, but also to drive a wedge between the Kennedy family and Dr. Martin Luther King (Raymond St. Jacques) by forcing the younger Kennedy to authorize wire taps and surveillance of the civil rights leader. While Hoover uses the excuse of King’s possible connection to communist groups as an excuse for the surveillance, he is shown in actuality to only want incriminating information against a man whom he sees as yet another possible threat to his power.

The final relationship is the one with the potential to be the most inflammatory. Clyde Tolson (Dan Dailey) was Hoover’s bodyguard and constant companion for over three decades. Since the two showed no real interest in women and were rarely without the others company, rumors floated about a possible homosexual relationship. Cohen never tips his hand if the two men had romantic feelings for each other that they were afraid to express, but he does make the case that nothing sexual ever happened between them. This makes sense, especially when the Hoover shown in the rest of the film is so paranoid about protecting secrets and gathering information on others. It goes to reason he would never expose himself in such a manner to those he considered his enemies (a list that grows ever longer as Hoover ages). Instead of being a source of psycho-sexual drama, Hoover’s relationship with Tolson is portrayed as the most human he had. The two are shown never really wanting anything more from each other than companionship. In an odd way, it’s a touching subplot that allows Cohen and Crawford to bring Hoover at least a few redeeming elements.

But just because Cohen does not take the easy bait when it comes to the relationship between Hoover and Tolson, he is not afraid to delve into the man’s sexually repressive nature. Two scenes have Hoover being seduced by women. In the first scene, he hides his disgust behind paranoia, leveling accusations of a setup. In the second scene, when he is older and more powerful, he is unafraid to simply walk out on the encounter, growling his moral disapproval at the entire idea of sex. Not only is he offended people would want to have sex with him, he disapproves of it in the case of everyone else in the movie, punishing agents for reading Playboy or engaging in sexual relationships outside of marriage. Unfortunately, Cohen never tries to form a theory for why Hoover is so repressed.

Perhaps the reason Cohen never tried to get to the root of Hoover’s discomfort with sex is because the movie presents him as a man who is simply unknowable. There is a huge gulf between what he professes to believe and how he acts. He calls into question the legality of wiretaps when President Roosevelt (Howard Da Silva) wants to use them, but becomes reliant on them to gather information on people of power. He obsesses over the appearance and moral behavior of his agents, but he is overweight and enjoys liquor and gambling on horse races. He decries the favorable press that criminals get during the Great Depression, but he hires his own press agent and sets up staged arrests to personally make in front of reporters. In short, the man is portrayed as the ultimate hypocrite, but if he realized he was acting in a hypocritical manner it’s never made clear.

As much of this uncertainty about Hoover’s actions comes from Crawford’s performance as Cohen’s screenplay. Crawford uses his gruff way of spitting out dialogue to find humor in tragedy. He plays him as a man who understands what people fear and how to use that fear to manipulate them. It’s perhaps the largest contradiction in the character that he knows how to psychologically maneuver people to bend to his will, but that he is not aware how alien he behaves in casual social situations, becoming especially uncomfortable going anywhere without Tolson for company. It’s telling that one of the few times in the film he is shown on his own in a public situation, he proceeds to unwittingly horrify his waiter when he feels he is doing the man a favor by revealing how much he knows about his family. The scene is also a hilarious bit of squirm-inducing comedy before going to the dark places of secrets and blackmail that Hoover finds more comfortable.

Beyond Crawford’s excellent anchor performance, the cast is uniformly solid. Dailey is sympathetic and brings a stoic presence to the potentially thin role of Tolson. Parks (perhaps best known for his role as Texas Ranger Earl McGraw in multiple Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez films) is a revelation as Robert Kennedy. While he does not bear a strong resemblance to the late Attorney General (and falls into the same trap of many actors by going overboard on the Boston accent), he shares the same slight build and is boyishly handsome, exuding a playboy confidence bordering on arrogance. He also displays a striking vulnerability that stands in stark contrast to his obvious intelligence.

The film really does boast the best cast Cohen ever put together. Beyond the leads, the supporting roles are filled with veteran scene-stealers and familiar faces. In any given scene, actors like Torn, Marley, Wainwright, José Ferrer, Celeste Holm, Ronee Blakley, George Plimpton, and Cohen regulars June Havoc, Andrew Duggan, William Wellman Jr., and James Dixon pop up to lend some color and shading to important characters in a small amount of screen time. Many of these actors bring with them personalities that audiences carry over from other films, allowing Cohen to use them as a form of storytelling shorthand.

As much as I really like the film, I was slightly frustrated with Cohen’s inability to turn individually brilliant scenes and performances into one great story. The plot races from one famous historical incident to the next while occasionally pausing to provide some shading to Hoover’s personal life. While it is impressive that Cohen is able to fit in so much story in a film running just under two hours, I would not have minded if the film ran ten minutes longer and allowed certain scenes to breathe a little.

Surprisingly, considering there is very little use of special effects, the seams show a little more in this film than in some of Cohen’s other low-budget indies. While he makes good use of locations and maintains a more-or-less consistent level of period details, Cohen has trouble integrating footage shot on sets. Many of these scenes look cheap and haphazard when put up against a scene shot in the actual Justice Department building or FBI headquarters.

Even if The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover fails to fully come together to be as great as some of its best scenes, it is a fascinating picture with a frightening and humorous central performance by Crawford. It plays in the muddy ethical waters of politics and shows that no one can come out clean—no matter if they are just doing their job or bending every rule in the book to build and maintain power. In Cohen’s view, Hoover was no better or worse than the politicians he punished or the ones who tried to punish him. That is probably the scariest message the film can send about our government.

James Dixon Sighting: As one of Hoover’s fellow clerks during the Bureau’s early years.

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The Cohen Case Files: A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987)

Executive Produced, Written (Also Story By), and Directed by Larry Cohen

Any discussion of A Return to Salem’s Lot has to begin and end with Sam Fuller (yes, I am aware he is credited in most of his films as Samuel Fuller, but it seems wrong not to refer to him as Sam). A journalist, decorated World War II veteran, indie writer/director, and all-around force of nature in his eventful life, Fuller is dropped into the film just when the plot needs a jolt and he provides one with his natural energy, stealing every scene he’s in and providing a needed moral center.

Before I can get into a plot setup and proper review of the film, I have to lay out a miniature flowchart of its literary and television connections. This film is a sequel-in-title-only to the 1979 TV miniseries Salem’s Lot. Directed by Tobe Hooper, the miniseries was based directly on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. Due to this literary lineage, A Return to Salem’s Lot sports a “based on characters created by Stephen King” credit, but all the film shares in common with either the novel or the miniseries is the titular New England town. All the characters are new and there is no mention of the earlier events, meaning viewers can jump straight into this film without having any knowledge of the previous projects.

Joe (Michael Moriarty) is a cold-blooded anthropologist who is introduced filming a remote tribe as one of their members is sacrificed. Not horrified in the least by this display, all Joe can think of is what his footage will do for his career. He is understandably annoyed when he receives word that his son has been in an accident and he races home only to discover his ex-wife (Ronee Blakley in a blink and you’ll miss her cameo) and her new husband have lied to force his return so they can dump young Jeremy (Ricky Addison Reed) on him.

It seems that at only eleven-years-old, Jeremy has already blossomed into a troublesome teenager. Angered by what he sees as being abandoned by Joe (who hasn’t seen him in three years) he has started pulling stunts like taking his stepfather’s new Mercedes out for a joyride. Reed expresses the inner turmoil of a boy trying to understand his relationship with his distant father by spitting out his tough talking dialogue in a stilted manner that threatens to sabotage the movie before it gets started.

Joe, unexpectedly saddled with the responsibilities of being a parent to a fairly awful little boy, remembers the small house left to him by his Aunt Clara. Of course, the house is in Salem’s Lot, but since Joe is not aware he’s in a horror movie, he takes Jeremy to the small town with the plan of fixing up the house as a way to bond with his son. That’s when they discover the town is populated almost exclusively by vampires.

Led by Judge Axel (Andrew Duggan), the vampires have been hiding in plain sight, protected by the public’s belief that vampires don’t exist. They mostly feed on cattle they raise specifically for blood, maintain appearances of being a regular small town by having a few humans (called “drones”) around that they breed and raise for this purpose, and wait for the day when the rest of the world will accept them for who and what they are.

Judge Axel wants Joe to write the vampire Bible, explaining their history and how they have evolved into their current society. While Joe is torn between keeping Jeremy safe by leaving town and the promise of achieving fame through what is arguably the greatest anthropological discovery in history, the vampires do their best to subtly manipulate him.

First, they work to create a divide between Joe and his son by trying to seduce Jeremy into the vampire fold through a lovely young vampire named Amanda (a very young Tara Reid). Next, they provide Joe with Cathy (Katja Crosby), a beautiful vampire he had a crush on when he was a child visiting his aunt. Finally, they use threats of violence, killing a group of humans who wander into town to send the message that they may feed on cattle to avoid problems with humans, but they still have the power and the desire to kill.

This is a ton of plot setup and the movie meanders a lot during the first act. I’m not sure if Cohen was trying to make the vampire’s actions just as mysterious to the audience as they are to Joe, but I was certainly questioning the lack of cohesiveness. We first see the vampires kill and drain four teenagers who get pulled over by Rains (James Dixon!), the town’s drone constable. One of these victims is killed right in front of Joe, even as Judge Axel tries to convince him of his plan to write a Bible. At the same time that Cohen seems to be making the case that the vampires should be treated like any other indigenous tribe and allowed to live their lives, he portrays them as evil killers trying to turn Joe’s son against him.

It’s a confusing and morally muddy place that Cohen takes the characters and the film. At times, this ambiguity is interesting. But for most of the first act, the film is just frustrating as Cohen seems unable to decide what he wants the film to be. Is it a satire of traditional vampire films where the undead characters are treated as just another tribe in the world? Or is it a straight horror film where Joe will eventually try to rescue his son and fight back against the bloodsuckers? At this crossroads, arrives Sam Fuller.

Fuller plays Van Meer, an elderly gentleman who shows up in town looking for someone he claims is an old friend. He’s eventually revealed to be a vengeance-driven man seeking out Nazi war criminals that escaped punishment. When he is told what is happening in the town, as a man who has seen the worst of what humans can do to each other, he accepts the truth without blinking an eye. When questioned later about how the outside world would accept such a fantastic premise, Van Meer’s response is simple but telling: “In 500 years, who’ll believe there were Nazis?”

By linking a group responsible for the worst human atrocities in semi-recent history with a group of the most frequently used supernatural villains of horror fiction, Cohen makes his choice for the direction taken by the rest of the film. While the moral issues the film wrestled with in the first act setup are interesting, it isn’t until Van Meer arrives and puts the issue in simple terms of good and evil that the film takes off and becomes a lot of fun.

But would the film have been as much fun if Cohen had cast someone other than Fuller as Van Meer? I suppose it’s possible that he could have found another elderly actor with as much playful, hard-charging, enthusiastic personality as Fuller, but I doubt it.

Fuller’s acting career before this film had consisted of cameos in his own films and the work of other directors who admired him. Never before (or, for that matter, after) this film had he been given such a large, pivotal role. I have no idea what led Cohen to think of Fuller for the role. Perhaps it was the similarity the two share in their respective careers—like Fuller, Cohen chafed under studio restrictions and carved out his own niche creating pulpy genre films with underlying social messages. After seeing the film, it’s hard not to think of Fuller as perfectly cast. Chomping on a cigar, waving a gun around at the slightest provocation, delivering his dialogue in a rapid rhythm that would warm David Mamet’s heart, his performance is so much fun to watch, he steals the movie with gusto.

In fact, much of the entertainment value of the film comes from the casting. Moriarty is always a blast when he works with Cohen and while he’s in more of a leading man mode in this film, he still gets plenty of oddball scenery to chew as a man suddenly facing a crisis of conscience. Much of the rest of the cast is made up of Cohen regulars (Dixon, Duggan, Brad Rijn, Jill Gatsby) who give eccentric performances in roles large and small. Duggan, in particular, is impressively sinister as the villainous Judge Axel.

The film has one of the largest budgets Cohen ever worked with and the money is evident on the screen. Shot by veteran genre cinematographer Daniel Pearl, the town is given an alien look during the daytime scenes that are made all the more disturbing by its deserted appearance. Needing fewer extras and with an entire town at his disposal, Cohen also does away with some of his more guerilla techniques of stealing shots in public places. This control of the entire environment gives the film more of a classic filmmaking feel, as though it were a studio project from the ’40s or ‘50s shot on a backlot.

Surprisingly, the film doesn’t have much of a reputation, even among Cohen fans. It definitely is more lightweight in terms of subtext than many of his directorial efforts and sports a terrible piece of child acting from Reed. But it also has a loopy sense of humor that makes up for those shortcomings. While most of the laughs come from Fuller’s hardboiled one-liners, there are plenty of sublime sight gags along with some goofy attempts by Joe to talk frankly with his son to spread the comedy evenly around.

I had a lot of fun with A Return to Salem’s Lot. Even though the philosophical questions of whether instinctual or tribal traditions excuse the taking of another life failed to fully engage me, as a piece of genre entertainment, it’s elevated by its anything goes tone and Fuller’s dynamic turn.

James Dixon Sighting: Not only does he have the small role of Rains, he also co-wrote the script.

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Twelve Days of Axe-mas / The Cohen Case Files: Maniac Cop 2 (1990)

Written and Produced by Larry Cohen

Note: This review will contain spoilers concerning the first Maniac Cop. I urge you to watch the first film before reading this review.

I am taking part in The Chicago Creepout’s Twelve Days of Axe-mas holiday viewing event. This is my day twelve.

Admittedly, Maniac Cop 2, like the similarly titled Maniac, has next to nothing to do with Christmas, but both films take place within the horror realm and are set during the holiday, so I’ve included both of them as part of my special series of films for the season. Maniac Cop 2 also has the added bonus of being a part of The Cohen Case Files, so I get to kill two homicidal, undead cops with one stone.

Maniac Cop 2 is that rare genre sequel that realizes what failed to work about the first film, eliminates those problems, and emerges as a solid piece of exploitation filmmaking that is much better than it has any right to be.

Literally picking up at the end of Maniac Cop, the story follows Officer Forrest (Bruce Campbell) as he is cleared of all wrongdoing in the murders from the first film. But as is made clear to him by the new police commissioner (Michael Lerner), he is expected to forget about Matt Cordell (Robert Z’Dar), the possibly undead titular character. Desperate to keep his job, Forrest agrees, but Mallory (Laurene Landon), his girlfriend and fellow officer, is not so eager to let the issue go, especially when Cordell’s body was never recovered from the wreckage of the police van he drove into the East River.

Trying to convince Mallory to drop the investigation, the commissioner has Detective McKinney (Robert Davi), attempt to chase her off what everyone considers a wild goose chase. But McKinney comes to believe that Mallory’s story might be the truth and, assisted by police psychologist Riley (Claudia Christian), he digs into the conspiracy that sent Cordell to prison.

Add to this plot a nifty twist that has Cordell partnering up with Turkell (Leo Rossi), a serial killer who targets strippers, and you have the makings for one of the better low budget action/horror films of the late ’80s/early ’90s.

Gone from the first film is the confused reasoning behind Cordell’s rampage. Thanks to his interactions with Turkell, there is an understanding of the method to Cordell’s madness as he is revealed to be more than the mindless killer who might kinda sorta be out for revenge from the first film. In this film, he is a cold-blooded killer with a purpose that finds him using criminals and cops to definitely advance his agenda for revenge against those he did not punish in the first film. This allows for some moral muddying of the waters as Cohen and director William Lustig show some sympathy to the killer who does deserve his revenge against certain people. But they never allow that sympathy to get in the way of the fact that Cordell is also a remorseless killing machine who will slaughter scores of innocent people in his attempts to get to the truly guilty parties.

As much as I usually love Bruce Campbell in anything, he was wasted in the first film and is largely left to dangle in the sequel. These films never took advantage of his gift for physical comedy and saddled him with a grim-faced character lacking a funny bone. It’s a relief when he is pushed into the background in favor of Davi who is right at home as the gruff, no-nonsense lead detective who doesn’t care who he offends—or shoots—in his pursuit of criminals. Christian is also a huge upgrade in the female lead department over Landon. She brings a steely presence but never misses the humor in the situation or her character. It’s also a kick to see the supporting cast populated by great character actors. Beyond the always reliable Lerner, Z’Dar, and Rossi, Lustig finds room for actors like Charles Napier, Clarence Williams III, and Lou Bonacki. Every member of the cast delivers at least one memorable moment that often elevates scenes of exposition to oddball comedy.

While the film largely occupies the supernatural horror/suspense genre, Lustig stages some impressive action sequences: a fight between Mallory and Cordell in which she employs a chainsaw, a potential victim does her best to avoid a grisly fate when she is handcuffed to a runaway car, Cordell’s jaw-dropping assault on a police station, the climactic scene in the prison to which Cordell was originally sent. All of these set pieces are put together with nothing but solid stunt work, clever camera movement, smooth editing, and lots and lots of squibs. If you watch enough ’70s, ’80s, and early ’90s action films, you might be surprised by how visceral these “old-fashioned” techniques are, especially when compared to the CGI fests of the last fifteen years.

As is common when it comes to films Cohen wrote but did not direct, there is the lack of social or political commentary that marks his best work. But it is a fun movie. All Cohen and Lustig are trying to do with the film is to entertain the audience. By that measurement, Maniac Cop 2 is a rousing success.

James Dixon Sighting: Carrying over his role from the first film as a uniform cop who is handy with exposition, he gets to exchange some fun dialogue with Riley at a police shooting range.

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The Cohen Case Files: Maniac Cop (1988)

Written and Produced by Larry Cohen

If you are attacked, fear for your safety, or witness a crime, who do you call? The answer, of course, is the police. Unless you’re a criminal engaged in illegal activity, any rational person would see a policeman as someone who will help, someone who is safe, and someone who is not going to kill you. It’s this twisting of everything we’re told from the time we’re old enough to learn—that the police will help—that makes Maniac Cop a reasonably affecting movie during its first act. I just wish the rest of the film explored more interesting territory.

In scary late-‘80s New York City, a large shadowy figure dressed as a police officer is killing innocent citizens. First, a young waitress has her neck broken by this giant, using only his bare hands. Next, a drunk driver is slashed to death and thrown, blood gushing from his throat, into the windshield of his own car. Finally, a man is killed by having his face forced down into wet cement.

The high-ranking police and city hall officials are keeping the secret that a police officer may be the killer. But when McCrae (Tom Atkins, playing approximately his 500^th policeman role in a genre film), the detective leading the investigation, leaks word of the department’s investigation into its own men, the citizens become just as paranoid of police officers as they are of being attacked or robbed by criminals.

If the film had focused in more on the paranoia surrounding the police, Maniac Cop might have been a memorable and intriguing exploitation film, but Cohen and director William Lustig quickly move past the paranoia angle and focus on the rather ho-hum story of who the killer cop is and why he is murdering random people. Not surprisingly, the answer contains possibly supernatural elements.

Swept up in the investigation are Forrest (Bruce Campbell) and Mallory (Laurene Landon), two uniform cops who are also lovers. Forrest is framed by the actual killer (a hulking Robert Z’Dar) to be the fall guy, something the police commissioner (Richard Roundtree) and the officials in the mayor’s office are only too happy to accept. But McCrae and Mallory don’t believe Forrest is the killer and continue their investigation which leads them to a police officer who was sent to prison for political purposes and murdered by the inmates. Or did he actually die?

The investigation becomes the main storyline during the second act and bogs the film down as it veers from graphically violent horror territory into a routine procedural. McCrae methodically pursues leads, confronts officials trying to stop his investigation, and eventually uncovers the truth. While the reliable Atkins turns in a solid turn that keeps things from ever becoming boring, it still feels like a bit of a letdown to be given a title as inspired as Maniac Cop and then discover it’s actually a police procedural with occasional horror elements.

There is a twist to the film as it shifts gears again in a surprising transition from the second to the third act. But the storytelling becomes sloppy with characters quickly introduced only to be killed off and plot twists given big revelation moments even though the twists were obvious at least thirty minutes before they actually happen.  Everything leads to a final confrontation between Forrest and the killer that is loud and chaotic, but not entirely satisfying.

Cohen wrote and produced the film, turning the directorial duties over to fellow genre veteran Lustig. I am not entirely sure why Cohen did not direct the film, but their sensibilities never mesh well. Lustig has more mainstream instincts than Cohen and gives the film a more straight-forward feel than Cohen’s looser style of directing. But he fails to inject the wit into the film that Cohen puts in the script. Several funny dialogue exchanges fall flat and a subplot about McCrae’s questionable mental state is brought up early in the film and dropped without another scene addressing the subject.

Then there are frustrating technical gaffes that usually do not happen in a Cohen-directed film. During an extended set-piece, the boom mic droops into the frame for several seconds. The film is set in New York City, but much of it was shot in Los Angeles with very little effort put into covering up the differences in geography (streets are too wide, exterior scenes are far too sunny, Los Angeles street signs visible in the background, the occasional palm tree makes a fleeting appearance). At one point, a character is murdered and then visibly moves to allow another character space to move around him. It’s one thing to have sloppy storytelling or continuity errors; it’s something else to include blatant technical mistakes in the final cut of the film.

Even with all the complaints I’ve logged, I still found the film modestly entertaining. Lustig presents the scenes of the killer going about his business in a brutal fashion that heightens the horror elements. The same can be said of a flashback sequence that is bloodier and more graphic than initially expected. Combined with the fun that Atkins, Roundtree, and veteran character actor William Smith (as a police captain) have with their roles, these elements make the film worth seeing. Just don’t expect it to live up to its terrific title.

James Dixon Sighting: As yet another cop, this time supplying reams of exposition to assist McCrae in his investigation.

Special Note: The film also operates as a semi-companion piece to Evil Dead 2. In addition to Campbell, look for Sam Raimi as a television reporter covering a parade and Danny Hicks as a policeman.

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The Cohen Case Files: The Ambulance (1990)

Written and Directed by Larry Cohen

The Ambulance is a snapshot of an industry in transition. Released in 1990, it’s the type of low-budget independent thriller that would soon start going straight to video, but still managed to make its way into theaters…barely. If not for an eclectic cast of solid character actors and a former leading man working his way down the Hollywood food chain in Eric Roberts, it’s likely the film would have been completely forgotten by all but Cohen completists like myself. Fortunately, the goofy casting, a nifty premise working as a hook, and a tonally bizarre script keep the film such an oddity that it’s all but impossible to ignore it, even if it is just of mid-level importance when it comes to Cohen’s filmography.

Roberts plays Josh, an artist with one of the greatest late ’80s/early ’90s mullets you have ever seen. Josh works for Marvel Comics—a plot point that only exists to give Stan Lee a small role as himself. While he’s a talented artist, Josh is socially inept. He has a crush on Cheryl (Janine Turner), a woman he sees on the street everyday when he goes out for lunch. One day, he finally decides to introduce himself in a way that makes him seem like a crazed stalker. Walking along the sidewalk, badgering her for a date, even though she has been far kinder than the situation calls for in turning him down, Josh refuses to give up. Past the point when most sane women would have called the cops, Cheryl suddenly falls ill and collapses. Josh screams for someone to call an ambulance and gets just her first name before an old-fashioned ambulance (think the old model kind used in Ghostbusters) arrives in a fashion that’s quicker than normal. Before Josh has time to process what has happened, she is loaded into the ambulance and gone.

When Josh tries to visit her in the hospital, he discovers she was never brought in. In fact, she doesn’t seem to have been taken to any hospital in the city. Josh goes to the police and talks to a detective named Spencer (James Earl Jones), who dismisses him as having a nervous breakdown.

Frustrated, Josh turns to Cheryl’s roommate (Jill Gatsby) for help, only to see her kidnapped by the men in the ambulance. Becoming more paranoid by the minute, Josh careens from scene to scene, trying to track down where the ambulance is taking people and what is being done with them. His investigation is helped along by an aging New York Post reporter named Elias (Red Buttons), a uniform cop nursing a crush on him (Megan Gallagher), and a begrudgingly helpful Spencer. As the investigation reveals a bizarre conspiracy involving people with diabetes and a sinister doctor (Eric Braeden), Josh’s obsession threatens to destroy his life.

The Ambulance easily could have been a generic thriller that disappears from the mind of the viewer as soon as the end credits roll. But thanks to Cohen’s playful handling of the material and a wonderfully over-the-top performance by Roberts, it winds up as something unquantifiable; played too straight to be a commentary on the conspiracy thriller, but too aware of its own absurdity to operate as a true piece of suspense, it exists in a no-man’s-land of odd laughs and sudden violence.

While Cohen sets a tone that falls just short of outright mocking of his own film, the cast deliver several big laughs. Roberts turns his crazed intensity into a performance that borders on uncomfortable. Throwing his body around the locations, pulling off strange line readings that range from unintelligible to wildly inappropriate, he does everything to make sure all eyes are on him when he’s on screen. But even with Roberts going apeshit in thirty ways at once, Jones nearly steals the movie as a man even more paranoid than Josh, nervously chomping on gum and bellowing angrily at everyone he thinks is out to get him. It’s almost a shame when Cohen takes a break from the Roberts and Jones show to move the plot forward with a piece of exposition.

While the loose feel and indulgence in out-of-place comedy is pure Cohen, the film is lacking any kind of social or political commentary that is usually found in the projects he directs. Sure, there is a healthy dose of satirical humor as he takes a few jabs at the more ridiculous thriller clichés, but the film seems to exist in a vacuum, where the outside world does not matter. Even the New York locations that Cohen normally uses so well, feel routine and functional at best, generic and forgettable at worst.

In a strange way, The Ambulance feels like a companion-piece to the Cohen-scripted and produced Maniac Cop films. Both trade on the clever idea of authorities who show up to the scene of an emergency to harm, rather than help the victims. While this film does not delve into supernatural horror the way the Maniac Cop films do, it does plug into the same paranoia of not knowing whether to be thankful for the siren in the distance or if it should instill fear. Or, in the case of The Ambulance, the characters are always given the third option of laughing at how silly the thriller genre can get. For the most part, I laughed right along with them.

James Dixon Sighting: Playing yet another cop in a Larry Cohen film, he gets to be the butt of several jokes about his resemblance to a certain comic book character.

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The Cohen Case Files: Messages Deleted (2009)

Written by Larry Cohen

As the direct-to-DVD market proliferated in the ‘90s and into this century, it was only a matter of time before a Larry Cohen script was given the slapdash, bare bones treatment and dropped into the nearest bargain bin (of course, I am ignoring films like Uncle Sam that Cohen had a hand in producing specifically for the DTV market). What makes Messages Deleted an odd case is that, while it was released to the DTV market back in 2010, Cohen was so unhappy with what director Rob Cowan did with his script, he purchased the rights to the film, recut it, and is hoping to secure a theatrical release for his new cut. I love the passion, but even if he had a better film on his hands, Cohen would still be facing an impossible battle with that idea.

I had the opportunity to see Cohen’s cut of Messages Deleted in May when he brought it to the Portage Theater in Chicago. Cohen was on hand to do a Q&A after the film and this review will use some of his insights into what went wrong with the film.

Joel Brandt (Matthew Lillard) is a film professor at an unnamed college in an unnamed town that looks a hell of a lot like Vancouver, British Columbia. Joel had a brief moment where he thought he was going to be a professional screenwriter. He sold a script to a studio at one point, but it never made it into production. Even now, years after his brief glimpse into a possible screenwriting career, he holds out the slimmest of hopes that he can leave behind the drudgery of tearing apart the clichés of his students’ screenplays and make it back into the life he nearly had.

When he receives a frantic message from a complete stranger on his answering machine claiming that if he doesn’t help, he’s going to be murdered, Joel chalks it up as a prank played by his friend Adam (Michael Eklund). It’s not until later, when a man with the same name as the mystery caller is killed right in front of him that Joel realizes the call was real. When he is unable to play the message (see the title) for the detective (Deborah Kara Unger) on the case, he becomes suspicious in the eyes of the law. He becomes even more of a suspect when another similar murder occurs. Of course, the police are not aware that the killings are almost exactly the same as murders described in one of Joel’s old scripts. This is a connection it takes Joel longer to realize than it should. It’s not long after this twist that he finds himself on the run, scrambling to clear his name with the help of a few allies.

That these allies are also prime suspects when it comes to who the actual killer might be is no surprise. Could it be the afore-mentioned Adam? In the best thriller stereotype way, as a best friend, he is sleazy and seems to enjoy pointing out to Adam what a failure he has been in his life because, hey, what are friends for? What about his on/off girlfriend Claire (Chiara Zanni)? Could she be getting back at Joel for his refusal to settle down? And just why is Millie (Gina Holden), the student whom we first meet when Joel is crushing her hackneyed script in front of a class, so keen to help out her professor who is wanted for murder? Does she have a crush on him or could she be the killer?

As always, red-herrings abound and in a good thriller, we would not be sure if any of these characters are innocent until they become victims. Unfortunately, Messages Deleted is not a good thriller. Despite Cohen’s attempt to cut it into something more closely resembling the self-referential thriller deconstruction he had written, the film is still nothing more than a mediocre exercise in genre tropes.

What went wrong? According to Cohen, director Rob Cowan took his script and turned it into a by-the-numbers thriller. I have not seen the Cowan cut of the film, but Cohen’s edit is only marginally better than what he described in the Q&A.

To really get into what doesn’t work with the film, we can begin with the (lack of) production values on display. I mentioned Vancouver earlier and I do not wish to mean this as an insult to that fine Canadian city, but at this point, so many films and television shows are shot there, it has become almost nothing more than a generic backdrop. There is no flavor to the locations used in the film. Everything is bland and formless. There is none of the grit or authenticity of one of Cohen’s shot on a shoestring indies that takes advantage of its locations to build atmosphere.

The lack of budget and dull choice of locations only highlights how flat the film looks. There is nothing cinematic about Cowan’s shooting style. Every shot is strictly utilitarian, resembling an episode of something you would see on the CW network.

Outside of Lillard and Holden, the cast sleepwalks their way through their scenes. Unger, in particular, looks bored out of her mind. But I can’t really blame her for that response. Her character has nothing to do for much of the film and is only used to move the plot forward when Joel needs to get back on the run.

Then there is the script.

I cannot overstate how much respect I have for Larry Cohen as a filmmaker. When he’s working at the top of his game (It’s Alive, God Told Me To), he can cross the line from a good filmmaker into genius territory. But the story idea behind Messages Deleted is dated and just as clichéd as the scripts its protagonist faults his students for writing. Simply commenting on ridiculous thriller stereotypes without doing something to subvert them or twist them in any way does not make the script any cleverer than the ridiculous thrillers it’s trying to deconstruct. Even worse, Cohen shows himself to be slightly out of touch with the modern world by basing his film on the use of an answering machine. Honestly, who uses these things anymore?

At the very least, the film is worth following because of Lillard’s sympathetic performance. Not only is he believably frantic as the classic “wrong man” protagonist, he brings a gently self-deprecating tone to his failed screenwriter. When a producer leaves a message on his answering machine describing himself as being from Hollywood, Lillard’s mocking delivery of the “You are from Hollywood!” line is just as much directed at himself as the producer. As written, Joel’s disappointment in his life is tempered by the understanding that he could have ended up a self-absorbed industry hack using “Hollywood” as a way to impress people trying to break into the industry. Lillard nails that tone of not knowing whether to count himself lucky or cursed in the early scenes and this helps maintain sympathy for his character as he inevitably does dumb things to keep the plot moving forward.

I have no doubt that Messages Deleted could have been a decent film had Cohen directed it. Several of his films have used outlandish and contrived plots as their basis but he nearly always makes something interesting through savvy casting and letting his actors go to unusual places with their performances. The feeling that his films are being improvised as they go along gives them a natural feel that makes it easier to accept the ridiculous plot twists. Without his guiding hand behind the camera during production, no amount of post-production tinkering is able to salvage the footage he has to work with in this case. But I still admire him for trying.

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The Cohen Case Files: Bone (1972)

Written, Produced, and Directed by Larry Cohen

Bone holds several distinctions in Larry Cohen’s filmography.  It’s his first feature film as a director.  It’s a straight social satire, eschewing many of the genre trappings on which Cohen often likes to hang his social commentaries.  It’s also one of his few films where the female lead is the most interesting and fully formed character.  Maybe it’s because I have such a familiarity with Cohen’s normal formula that the variations on display in Bone explain why the film feels so unusual and daring.  But I doubt that’s the case.  I have the feeling that even newcomers to Cohen’s world would find the film’s handling of racial and class issues to be surprising, occasionally offensive, and completely fearless.

Bill (Andrew Duggan) and Bernadette (Joyce Van Patten) are a seemingly wealthy couple living in Beverly Hills.  Bill owns a car dealership and is something of a local celebrity from starring in the commercials for his business.  Hovering around fifty, he’s at least a decade older than Bernadette.  On the surface, Bernadette relishes playing the role of the trophy wife.  Lounging by the pool at their impressive home, she smirks knowingly at Bill’s frustration and anger at the shoddy work of their pool cleaner.  Always grumpy and frustrated at what he sees as a world that fails to live up to his high standards, Bill never actually follows through on his complaints.  When he angrily calls the pool service to complain, he immediately becomes a polite pushover.  Bernadette’s smirk is enough to tell the audience this is a routine with Bill and to also make it clear all is not well with their marriage.

It’s during the situation with the pool service that Bone (Yaphet Kotto) walks into the unhappy couple’s life.  Who is he?  Where did he come from?  What does he want?  These are the questions that normal people would immediately ask a stranger who wanders, uninvited, into their back yard.  But Bill and Bernadette immediately try to adhere to a societal political correctness.  Instead of asking any of the questions that I put forth, they respond to Bone in a confused manner that at first finds them clumsily polite to the stranger, even mistaking him as being from the pool service.  When it becomes apparent Bone is not from the pool service, the couple remains nervously polite, this time out of fear.  The reason for this fear is initially unspoken, but it’s abundantly clear to Bone—and the audience—that Bill and Bernadette are practically pissing themselves because a large, African-American man has waltzed into their pampered, predominantly white, corner of the universe.  Where the film becomes fascinating to me—and could potentially rub people the wrong way—is that Bone counts on the fear his presence strikes in the hearts of rich white people.

It turns out that Bone has decided to rob Bill and Bernadette because they have the biggest house on the street.  As a bonus for his troubles, he reveals he might even rape Bernadette.  But what Bone doesn’t count on is the capacity for some people to live in complete denial.  Instead of finding money or jewels in the house, Bone finds nothing but bills.  It turns out the couple have been living well past their means for quite a long time and the collectors are nearly to the point of beating down their door.  When Bone finds a savings account book that reveals Bill is holding an account solely in his name that contains five thousand dollars, he forms a plan to have Bill go to the bank and withdraw the money while he stays at the house with Bernadette.  If Bill isn’t back within an hour or goes to the police, Bone promises to do terrible things to Bernadette.

Of course, the reason the account is only under Bill’s name is obvious.  As Bone says with a laugh upon discovering the book, “You’re stealing from your wife!”  This complication calls into suspicion just how eager Bill will be to close the account and makes Bernadette a wildcard as she looks to an alliance with Bone as a possible solution to getting some money out of Bill before ending their marriage.

Bone works best in its first and third acts.  The setup of the characters and the situation they inhabit in the first act is beautifully played for uncomfortable laughs.  A sequence where Bone forces Bill and Bernadette into the house is the most striking, playful, and perverse of these comedic moments: as Bone goes through the rooms of the opulent home, Bernadette describes the architecture and art work on display in a chipper voiceover.  The voiceover is supposed to be from a previous tour for a group of friends, but there is a desperate undertone to her voice, as though she were a guide concerned with impressing a bored tour group in a museum.  Bone certainly reacts in a bored manner (aside from one perfectly placed double-take that produces maximum laughter) until he has had enough of Bill and Bernadette’s debts and babbling.

The second act sags a bit as the leads are split up by the plot.  While Bone and Bernadette have an intriguing side story where they bond in the most unexpected of ways, Bill is left to drift.  A subplot where he briefly wanders from a bank to a grocery store to a dingy apartment with an unnamed young woman (Jeannie Berlin) is absurd, occasionally funny, but ultimately pointless (even if it does point out the obvious mental problems that plague the classic manic pixie dream girl).  While Duggan does do some fine work expressing Bill’s mounting desperation and anger, most of his scenes in this section of the film feel like nothing more than filler to pad out the film’s running time.

The weak nature of Bill’s side trip is made all the more clear as he transitions from his time wandering about to rejoin the main plot with Bone and Bernadette.  The clashing needs of the three leads and the desperate measures they take while heading to a dark climax and powerful resolution, brings the ugly and cynical subtext of the film briefly to the surface.  For a brief moment, while one of the leads (No spoilers in this review) watches the actions of another character in disgust, Cohen fully shows just how sickened he is by the irresponsibility and greed on display.

It’s Cohen’s willingness to scold Bill and Bernadette for racially profiling Bone when they first meet him, while also presenting him as a remorseless criminal that keeps the film walking a tightrope between social satire and tasteless pandering to racial fears.  For the most part, Cohen makes that walk look easy.  His only missteps tend to come when trying to make too blunt of a point.  A piece of Bone’s dialogue (“I’m just a big, black buck doing what’s expected of him!”) is so tone-deaf and obvious, not even an actor as skilled as Kotto is able to salvage it.

The actors deserve much of the credit for pulling together the myriad traits that Cohen hides within their characters.  Much like the script slowly peels away layers to show each character for the frauds they are, Kotto, Van Patten, and Duggan never tip their hands too early when it comes to showing the vanity, cruelty, and ultimately pathetic levels to which they are willing to sink.  Kotto makes great use of his imposing physical presence and quick laugh to keep Bone an unpredictable force.  Duggan brings a smarmy, television pitchman’s patter to Bill that breaks down into a sad, mean aggression in believable fashion.  But it’s Van Patten who does the best work with the most interesting character.

Initially looking and acting like nothing more than a stereotypical trophy wife, Van Patten allows Bernadette to betray a sneaky intelligence as she moves from acting as Bill’s ally to teaming up with Bone in the second act.  While this description may make Bernadette sound like nothing more than an opportunist, she has very personal reasons for turning on Bill that go beyond financial.  Regretting a serious, life-changing decision she allowed Bill to make for the both of them, it’s not hard to argue with her as she seizes the chance to punish Bill for an incredibly mean and selfish act he committed in the past.  Van Patten plays these changes as more than an intellectual exercise, turning them into something akin to a sexual awakening.  It’s no accident that Bernadette becomes more attractive to Bone as the wheels for revenge start turning in her head.  Intelligence is just as sexy as any physical attribute and Van Patten takes advantage of this fact.  It’s an impressive performance that brings to life one of the best female characters Cohen ever created.

While it may lack the pulpy plotting that makes so many of Cohen’s films fun to watch, Bone emerges as essential viewing.  It’s daring and entertaining while speaking to race and class issues that are still very relevant forty years after its release.  It’s also a kick to watch Cohen develop his loose, improvisational style of filmmaking.  As a directorial debut of one of America’s most important independent filmmakers of the twentieth century, it comes very close to brilliance.

Note:  The trailer refers to the film as Housewife, one of the titles the film played under when released.  It also completely misses the tone of the film by shamelessly preying on racial fears.

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The Cohen Case Files: Cellular (2004)

Story by Larry Cohen

There’s a subtext to Cellular that is inadvertent and generally more interesting than the actual movie.  Even though the filmmakers weren’t trying to make a film that points out how quickly technology changes and becomes obsolete, the space of a few years has turned the film into just such a story.

The surface plot of the film is as disposable as the technology at its heart.

Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) is a high school biology teacher living a charmed life.  She’s married to Craig (Richard Burgi), a successful real estate agent.  They have a stereotypically cute little boy named Ricky (Adam Taylor Gordon), who she walks to the school bus in an early scene as clichéd as it is dangerous to diabetics.  The point is made abundantly clear: Jessica has a perfectly ordinary and comfortable life, so logic states that nothing unusual should ever happen to her or those she loves.  But real-world logic has no place in studio action films, so it’s no surprise when chaos and destruction in the form of Ethan (Jason Statham) crashes into Jessica’s life.

Breaking into her house with a crew of interchangeable (and therefore, disposable in the third act) thugs, Ethan unceremoniously shoots Jessica’s housekeeper and kidnaps our hapless heroine.  Thrown into the attic of a strange house with no chance of escape, Jessica turns to her only means of contacting the outside world: a wall telephone that Ethan shatters into a thousand pieces.  Using the scientific talents she picked up from her training as a biology teacher (I am assuming this is the case, because no other explanation is given for how she has the knowledge to pull off such a trick), Jessica connects some wires in the phone to dial a random number.  The party on the other end of that random number is Ryan (Chris Evans).

To put it bluntly, Ryan is a cipher–even more so than Jessica.  When we first meet him, he’s glumly wandering Santa Monica pier on a beautiful day, ignoring his best friend Chad (Eric Christian Olsen) as he goes on about the amazing video function on Ryan’s new phone (and if you don’t think that video function will come in handy by the end of the film, you’ve apparently never seen a mainstream Hollywood thriller in your life).  You see, Ryan is sulking over a break up with his girlfriend.  And that’s all we know about Ryan.  We don’t know what he does for a living, if he has any siblings, if he’s a nice guy who didn’t deserve to be dumped, or if he’s a jerk who deserved getting the heave-ho.  Nope, all we know about Ryan is he has just been dumped, has a cool new phone that can shoot videos, and apparently has a job that allows him time to wander the beaches of Santa Monica, possibly stalking his ex-girlfriend.

Thankfully, once Ryan answers Jessica’s call, the film’s creaky plot starts rumbling forward at a pace that makes character development (and logic) a moot point.

When Ryan’s initial plan of just turning the panicked call over to a cop (William H. Macy, in a typically scene-stealing turn) fails because of the bureaucracy of the police department and a fading cell phone signal (Did I forget to mention Ryan can’t disconnect the call because he might not ever be able to reconnect to Jessica’s number?), he’s forced to take matters into his own hands.  From trying to prevent the bad guys from snatching Jessica’s son from school to finding her husband before the villains, Ryan is sent racing across the greater Los Angeles area with a cell phone pressed against his ear for most of the film’s running time.

Cellular is a film that is better than it has any right to be.  Yes, the plot is far-fetched, the twists contrived, the characters nothing more than personality types to be moved around as the plot dictates, and the sentimentality is ladled on with shovel.  But the flick moves like a Ferrari on the Autobahn.  Much of the credit for this propulsion goes to the director, David R. Ellis.  A veteran stunt coordinator and second-unit director of studio comedies and action films, Ellis has mostly worked as a director on dreck like Snakes on a Plane and the Final Destination sequels.  Given that background, it’s not surprising that the early, expository scenes feel so clunky and disjointed.  But Ellis understands that the film is all about its pulpy plot.  At its essence, it’s a perpetual motion machine that Ellis keeps moving at a zippy pace to gloss over the more ludicrous moments.

And there are plenty of ludicrous moments.  From Ryan car-jacking a sleazy lawyer to his use of a construction debris chute to escape the bad guys, the script serves up one ridiculous action cliché after another.  But the tongue-in-cheek tone created by Ellis, a likable turn by Evans, and Macy giving dignity to a throw-away role make the rote action and silly plot twists go down easy as they combine into a satisfying whole.

Surprisingly, for a film based on a Larry Cohen idea, the script is the weakest component of the film.  Given the success of the thriller aspects, maybe it’s too much to ask for at least a few decent lines of dialogue to elevate the proceedings, but the script seems to have no time for such niceties as wit or subtlety.  This is especially a shame, given how much fun is otherwise had with the film.  Basinger, in particular, is forced into some truly awful exchanges that lead to some of her worst work ever put on film.  In seemingly every scene, she delivers a slight variation on the line, “You have to hurry, Ryan!”  Maybe a better performer could have done something with this dialogue or come up with a different, more engaging way of whispering into a telephone in panic, but I doubt it.  The script does no favors to its leading lady and she, in turn, literally phones in her performance.

Also missing is the satirical undercurrent in the best Cohen projects.  Phone Booth, another film working from a Cohen idea (although he was credited on that one as the screenwriter), has an inverted premise of Cellular with a protagonist who is also on the phone, but is literally stuck in one place.  While that film shared the slick thriller atmosphere of Cellular, it at least attempted to add on a shallow look at a man being forced to find his soul and treat other people in a more respectful manner.  That idea leads to the obvious question of whether the protagonist’s redemption is earned or if it is invalid because it was forced on him.  Granted, this isn’t the headiest philosophical question, but at least that film tried to be a little more than a rote studio thriller.  Cellular is not interested in an intended subtext or character arcs.

While the film works surprisingly well as a thriller and very poorly as a showcase for Basinger, I found myself increasingly fascinated by the rapidly changing nature of technology accidentally on display.

Released in 2004, the film still looks very modern.  The automobiles look like the vehicles I see every day on the street; the clothing and hairstyles, while generic, would not be out of place today; the homes and businesses look up-to-date.  What does look hopelessly dated–just eight years after the film was released–is the technology at the center of the film.  While I’m sure Ellis, Cohen, and credited screenwriter Chris Morgan weren’t trying to make a film that commented on the disposable nature of cell phone technology and how we evolve with it as a culture, that’s what I will remember the most about Cellular.

Take Ryan’s phone as an example.  Just on looks and style alone, it is incredibly out-of-date.  Beyond that surface detail, there is Chad’s fascination with a phone that can shoot video.  The lack of Internet access, GPS, or other features which are now common on cell phones and would have been useful for Ryan as he raced around the city became readily apparent as I wondered why he failed to use these tools before realizing that they were not regular features on phones when the film was made.  Even more interesting to me was a moment in the third act as Ryan is talking to Ethan on the phone, while blending into the crowd at Santa Monica Pier.  There are too many people to spot him easily and Ethan tells one of his henchmen to look for young men talking on cell phones.  The henchman’s response is to complain that everyone’s on a cell phone, which is an accurate detail for 2004.  But would that be the case in 2012?  Most likely, everyone would be texting and Ryan would be an easy mark because of his use of a cell phone for what it was originally intended: talking.  For a movie that consists of more scenes of people talking on cell phones than The Departed, I am stunned that I cannot remember a single incidence of a character sending or receiving a text message.

Even if you don’t have my fascination with basing a film around instantly dated technology, Cellular still works surprisingly well as a mainstream thriller.  It has its rough spots and much of the plot fails to hold water if too much thought is given to it, but the film works as one of the rare examples of studio filmmaking rules elevating a script that’s only competent.  As it turns out, sometimes all you need is a high-concept idea, a likable lead, a name to put above the title, a supporting cast of good character actors, and an experienced action director who can organize the chaos into a coherent story.  I still don’t endorse this type of thinking when making a film, but Cellular is the exception that proves the rule.

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The Cohen Case Files: Q [aka Q: The Winged Serpent] (1982)

Written, Produced, and Directed by Larry Cohen

Q (aka Q: The Winged Serpent) hit theaters in 1982.  But for me the film came along circa 1984-85.  You see, that’s when the film was in heavy rotation on cable.  I was a terribly impressionable ten year old, watching in shock and disgust by peeping through the fingers I used to cover my eyes at what seemed the most frightening movie I’d ever seen.  As a child, I was a complete wimp when it came to horror films.  It wasn’t until I grew up and started taking the study of film seriously that I grew to appreciate the extreme gamut the horror film can run from pure cheese to intentionally funny to downright unsettling.  No other genre of film offers such an extensive emotional playground for filmmakers to run rampant through.  I’ve since seen hundreds of horror films better than Q, but I don’t think I have as much of a nostalgic connection to a film in any genre as I do to Larry Cohen’s silly little monster movie.

NYPD Detectives Shepard (David Carradine) and Powell (Richard Roundtree) have two very baffling cases on their hands.  In the first case, a window washer working high up on the Empire State Building, loses his head.  Literally.  The problem is, no one can find it.  In the second case, a professor travels thousands of miles to New York City, checks into a hotel, visits a museum about the ancient Aztec civilization, and is later found in his hotel room, dead from being skinned from head to toe.  After doing a little digging, Shepard starts to wonder if the two cases are connected while Powell wonders if Shepard has lost his mind.

Meanwhile, low rent criminal Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty) gets caught up in a jewelry heist gone wrong.  To escape from the police and his partners in the heist, Jimmy hides out at the top of the Chrysler Building.  This turns out to be a great hiding place since the building is undergoing renovations to its iconic pyramid top.  While finding the usual construction mess that comes with such a large renovation project, Jimmy also finds a gigantic nest containing an egg the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.  When he also finds a human skeleton, stripped of its flesh, it doesn’t take Jimmy long to realize that whatever laid the egg, is probably also responsible for the skeleton.

And just what laid that egg?  It turns out it’s a giant flying lizard that somehow manages to swoop through the skies above busy Manhattan streets without being seen by anyone.  How is this possible?  At some point in the movie, Shepard theorizes something about the creature flying in line with the sun.  This is obviously a half-assed explanation if ever there was one.  In fact, there’s no point in even trying to answer that question, because the honest answer is that it doesn’t matter.  The question that does matter, once the creature is finally spotted when it snatches a man from a swimming pool becomes: Is the creature just a monster, or is it the reincarnated Aztec god Quetzlcoatl?  Because as Shepard muses, if it’s just a monster, you should be able to kill it, but if it’s a god?  Well, who knows?

Who, indeed?  The only character who does know something is Jimmy.  He’s willing to share that knowledge–namely, where the creature’s nest is located–for what he sees as the very reasonable fee of one million dollars and immunity from any crimes that he may have committed.

Like most of Cohen’s films, Q introduces an outlandish premise and then uses that as a launching pad to explore a male protagonist who’s infinitely more interesting than the silly plot.  From my plot description, you would think that protagonist was Shepard, but Cohen makes the very wise decision to focus on the self-pitying loser, Jimmy.

In a more mainstream film with a conventional leading man, Jimmy would be a criminal with a heart of gold.  In a Larry Cohen film, Jimmy is a pathetic schlub who is unable to do anything right.  Whiny, self-pitying, and only occasionally redeemed by his affection for his girlfriend (Candy Clark) and a love of playing jazz piano, Jimmy is a hard character to care about, but Moriarty pulls off the difficult role with aplomb.

In my look at The Stuff, I talked about the “kind of special magic when Moriarty gets together with Cohen.”  The magic is on display here, as well.  As played by Moriarty, Jimmy is constantly covered in flop-sweat, nervously talking a mile a minute in his distinctive mush-mouthed way.  He goes from being a loser that everyone takes advantage of to a loser who tries to take advantage of an entire city.  It’s not exactly a redemptive arc and to the credit of Moriarty and Cohen, they never attempt to make Jimmy a hero.  If anything, Jimmy is made out to be almost as bad as the serpent flying around eating people; the serpent is only doing what comes with its nature while Jimmy is attempting to profit from the deaths of innocent people.

Cohen has been very open that the only reason Q came into being is because he was fired from his job as director of I, the Jury.  Angered by this slight, he hastily wrote the script for Q and began second uint photography within a week of being fired.  By the time he scraped together the funding and finished casting, the film was already well into production.  Despite this, the film is a fairly polished piece of work.  The acting is impressive, the cinematography crisp, and the editing sharp.  The only moments when the feature shows its lack of production values come about with some grainy stock footage recycled from God Told Me To and with some cheaply done effects.  But even the stop motion animation used to bring the crudely sculpted serpent to life and the matte paintings used for backgrounds seem less inept and more like a charming throwback to effects work of years gone by.

Perhaps because he had just lost his job on I, the Jury, Q feels slightly angrier and less thoughtful than Cohen’s other low budget creature features.  This leads to the cynical uses of some excess gore and nudity that Cohen rarely indulged in with previous films.  And while Carradine seems to be enjoying himself as he hams up his straight-man role, there’s something slightly sinister about the way he keeps urging scores of nameless police officers to their deaths with a smile on his face during the film’s action-packed climax.

I’m sure I’m not the only one out there who has an affection for this film that outweighs what it deserves.  Anyone who watched too much HBO in the early ‘80s probably has some kind of nostalgic memory of this film playing on a seemingly daily basis.  It’s not the best film ever made (if I’m being really honest, it only falls somewhere in the middle of Cohen’s filmography in terms of quality), but it’s certainly fun.  If I’m indulging in nostalgia by recommending the film, at least it’s entertaining nostalgia.

James Dixon Sighting: As one of the NYPD detectives investigating the mutilation murders.

Beware a spoiler for the death of one of the main characters in this trailer:

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The Cohen Case Files: I Deal in Danger (1966)

Screenplay by Larry Cohen

Before he was a prolific spec screenwriter, he was a prolific independent filmmaker, and before he was a prolific independent filmmaker, Larry Cohen was a prolific television writer.  In the ‘60s alone, he created four series and wrote episodes of thirteen other series, including such popular programs as The Defenders and The Fugitive.  Needless to say, this is a man who doesn’t take a lot of time off.  But even the busiest of film and television scribes can pad their number of credits (not to mention their wallets) by repackaging old projects into something sort of new.  Such is the case with I Deal in Danger.

A theatrical release in 1966, I Deal in Danger was actually just a few episodes of Blue Light, a Cohen-created World War II espionage series reedited into a ninety minute film.  As the product of industry recycling, it lacks the production values or sweep of a cinematic production, but it still manages to work as modest, pleasantly old-fashioned entertainment.

David March (Robert Goulet) is an American spy working undercover in Nazi Germany during World War II.  Having convinced the Nazis that he doesn’t believe the Allies will win the war, he apparently switches sides.  But March is actually working for a secret organization of Allied spies code-named “Blue Light”.  David’s job is to gain the trust of the Nazi superiors who are using him as a propaganda tool so he can sabotage a secret weapons project that the Nazi’s plan to use against the Allies during the D-Day invasion (never mind the fact that the apparent intimate knowledge of the D-Day plans several months in advance of the invasion ought to be enough of a Nazi advantage to turn back the surge–historical accuracy and logical military planning take a back seat to melodramatic plot twists and espionage suspense in the world of I Deal in Danger).

To aid him in his efforts, March is joined by another apparent traitor in the lovely form of Suzanne Duchard (Christine Carère), the daughter of a shamed French aristocrat who was executed by the French Resistance for collaborating with the Nazis.  Using her supposed anger at the French Resistance as a cover, she is trusted almost completely by the Nazis.  It’s this trust that leads them to assign her to keep tabs on March, who they fail to fully trust.  If the filmmakers or the characters recognize this obvious irony, they fail to acknowledge it.

Oddly enough, for a plot that finds the hero always just one piece of bad information away from being killed, I Deal in Danger at times feels an awful lot like an episode of Hogan’s Heroes (which was on the air at the same time as Blue Light).  The main reason for this is that the Nazi characters are nothing more than a a bunch of easily duped caricatures–vain, full of the righteous belief that Germany will prevail, they are easily blinded by David and Suzanne’s schemes.  Unfortunately, the relative ease with which the Nazis are fooled removes a lot of their maliciousness, which only serves to deflate any tension the film occasionally builds up.

At the same time that the film turns highly trained SS officers into the Keystone Kops, Cohen and director Walter Grauman go out of their way to avoid mentioning anything that could even be an oblique reference to the Holocaust.  I suppose I’m thankful for that choice.  After all, exploiting such a tragedy for a piece of escapist entertainment such as this film, would have been in very poor taste.  But the fact remains, the filmmakers fail to ever clarify what makes the Nazis so sinister.  Yes, they’re trying to take over the world, but the film portrays them as so clueless and inept, the only reason I was able to believe them as a threat to David or the rest of the world, was to think of them in terms of how real world history played out.  In that regard, I suppose the film manages to have the best of both worlds–it never has to deal with the sticky ethical issue of how to approach the Holocaust without seeming crass, yet it’s able to capitalize on the immediate negative and hateful thoughts that spring to the mind of most people when Nazis are trotted out as the villains.

The film is largely buoyed by the presence of Goulet in the lead role.  While his late-career work turned him into a kitschy punchline, Goulet provides just the right mix of humor, gravitas, and swashbuckling attitude to keep the events entertaining.  Without his impressive turn, I more than likely would have focused on the television rhythms of the editing, the cheap sets, and the silly plot.  But Goulet’s performance allowed me to process those problems as merely adding to the charm of a misguided attempt to create an American “James Bond-type” for weekly television.

If I Deal in Danger does nothing else, it highlights Cohen as a show business survivor.  Very few writers are lucky enough to have one script produced during their career.  Here is a man who has worked steadily in the industry for fifty years, did what he wanted, and has made a good living at it.  I Deal in Danger may not be a good movie–technically, it’s barely even a movie–but it is fun in a nostalgic sort of way.  It’s also a good reminder of why, as a writer, I respect and admire Larry Cohen so much.

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