Larry Cohen

Monster pictures with a joke inside. A couple's newborn is a killer in It's Alive, a giant flying lizard starts eating people off New York's rooftops in Q, and nobody can say what is in a new dessert called The Stuff. Cohen wrote his own premises, shot fast on real streets, and aimed the satire at parenthood, the police and the food industry. He began in blaxploitation with Black Caesar, the rise of a Harlem crime boss.

Signature

• High-concept horror written by Cohen himself.
• Guerrilla shooting in public places.
• Satire of consumer America (The Stuff) and of the FBI (The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover).
• Harlem gangster films with Fred Williamson (Black Caesar, Hell Up in Harlem).