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If you're not familiar with the subject of this documentary, here's a
quick rundown on Larry Cohen: He started out as a TV screenwriter in the
late 1950s, eventually graduating to motion pictures in the 60s before
making his directorial debut in 1972 with Bone.
In the 1970s and 80s he directed a slew of cult classics including Black
Caesar, It's Alive, God
Told Me To, Q: The Winged
Serpent and The Stuff,
before returning to screenwriting from the 1990s onwards again - but he
sure left his mark on genre filmmaking as his movies were at their best
not only fan fare but also social commentary and satire, something one
might want to call intellectual shlock. Now when I first read
the full title of this movie, my reaction was "finally someone's
paying tribute to one of the unsung heroes of intelligent genre
cinema," and of course I wanted to watch the movie asap - and hey,
this is a movie that really doesn't disappoint as not only does it tell
Cohen's story in quite some detail, it also maps out his guerrilla
filmmaking style that made sure his films looked much more expensive than
they were, and it treats the audience to interviews with many a fan
favourite of cult-filmmaking, be they Cohen's (frequent) collaborators
like Michael Moriarty, Fred Williamson, Yaphet Kotto, Eric Roberts,
Laurene Landis, Barbara Carrera and the like, but also fellow filmmakers
like Joe Dante, John Landis, and even Martin Scorsese. Plus, clips from
many of his movies only fatten up the thing to a documentary every genre
enthusiast, whether or not he's a fan of Mr Cohen, ought to watch, just
for the abundance of information, not only about the man but about low
budget filmmaking in general. Definitely recommended.
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