Offscreen Notes
Larry Cohen
The generation of great American horror auteurs of the 1970s, when horror was wedded to social unrest without sacrificing scares, is slowly leaving us with the most recent to fall, Larry Cohen (1941-March 23, 2019). Cohen was 77. Cohen started as a scriptwriter and always hung on to his ability to write great eccentric characters and stories on the pulse of the underdog. Cohen spared no punches with his social criticism and was less concerned with visual style as he was with critical subtext (consumerism in Stuff, political paranoia in The Invaders TV show, religion and cult indoctrination in God Told Me To, greed and opportunism in Q, vigilantism in Maniac Cop, class in Bone, etc.). He was outspoken, brash, funny and a bit of an iconoclast. His wry social satire and gritty style will be missed.
