Larry Cohen

Filmmaker

Cohen is a director and screenwriter who has mostly specialized in B movies. Some of the films he has directed include It's Alive, Q:The Winged Serpent, The Stuff, Black Caesar, and Original Gangstas. Cohen's most irreverent film is the horror movie God Told Me To (a.k.a. Demon), in which a New York cop investigates a bizarre series of homicides committed by murderers possessed by a demon from outer space. When confronted by police, each murderer claims that God told him or her to commit the crimes. In an interview in the book Incredibly Strange Films, Cohen confirms that he saw the film as part of a general critique of religion:

"I don't relate to anyone who is a professional religionist...who has the ego to tell us that they know God's will, and can tell us what God thinks and what God likes and what God is, and how God feels about integration, South Africa, and AIDS. Everybody's got a different idea what God thinks; the crazy guy on the corner knows about as much as the guy in St. Patrick's Cathedral -- none of them know anything."

"People say, 'Reverend Moon -- what a crook!' and I say, 'But what about the Pope?' It's all the same, anybody who starts telling you what God thinks should be locked up immediately."