Just recently watched Q-the Winged Serpent for the first time and thought it was pretty great but also weird and flawed. It also made me think that, now that I've seen a handful of Larry Cohen wirrten and/or directed films, he's kind of a little ball of 2000ADish filmmaking. You get a lot of blue collar 'heroes' who are often pretty unpleasant people, in sci-fi/fantasy situations, with imagery you almost never see in normal films, overblown dialogue, and it's all a bit scrappy. Almost all his films that I've seen would make great 10-12 part 2000AD series, of the kind that aren't all-time classics but you wish they'd reprint in a floppy at least.
In case anyone doesn't know his work, here's a sample.
It's Alive: a series of new mothers and fathers discover that their newborn offspring are ravenous, carnivorous monsters. But they love them and want to protect them against evil government types.
God Told Me To: a random selection of people are driven to murder because God told them to.
Q: a mad academic blood sacrifices (willing) people to summon the old Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, who appears as a flying serpent that terrorizes New York
The Stuff: a weird alien marshmallow yogurt thing lands on Earth and inflitrates people through being addictively delicious
Maniac Cop: a sort-of undead brute of a Cop goes on a murder spree making even White people scared of the police
-It's notable that none of these synopses give you even the slightest hint of who the main characters are in each story! The plots tend to be happening around the lives of the actual protagonists, who all have their own things going on.
Anyone else a fan of Mr Cohen? Any others of his films I should seek out?
