Larry Cohen worked on the script for 2004’s CELLULAR while he tried to get his screenplay for PHONE BOOTH sold. In a New Yorker article, he said he wrote the film with the intention that it would be the direct opposite to PHONE BOOTH. That film was about a man trapped on a phone in a booth, while this movie is about a man who is still trapped on a phone but can go anywhere. However, his friends told him that he had written the same screenplay twice. Even so, Cohen sold the script for a reported $750,000.
In CELLULAR, a young man (Chris Evans) receives an emergency phone call on his cell phone from an older woman (Kim Basinger). The woman claims to have been kidnapped, and the kidnappers have targeted her husband and child next.
David R. Ellis directed the film. John Ottman’s score was released by La-La Land at the time the film was released. CELLULAR didn’t do quite as well at the domestic box office as did PHONE BOOTH, grossing $32 million against its $25 million budget. But foreign receipts pushed its total to $56 million.
CELLULAR was Larry Cohen’s last major film project. The Roland Joffé film CAPTIVITY (2007), for which he co-wrote the screenplay, was nominated for a Razzie Award as “Worst Excuse for a Horror Movie.” The 2008 film CONNECTED, which was based on his story, never had an American release. The 2009 remake of IT’S ALIVE, which he co-wrote based on his original screenplay, went straight to video in the U.S. Cohen’s last produced screenplay shown on U.S. screens was a comedy western called THE GAMBLER, THE GIRL AND THE GUNSLINGER, which aired on the Hallmark Channel in 2009.
In 2017, Steve Mitchell wrote and directed a documentary on the life and work of Larry Cohen entitled KING COHEN. The film is available for purchase from La-La Land.
Thanks for all the fun, Larry.
“Life has been good to me. I keep making pictures. Every year I make something. As long as I keep working, I have nothing to complain about. And the films I've made have all had some point to them. Otherwise, I wouldn't have felt they were worth doing. You have to have some direction in which you're headed and a destination which you have to arrive at by the end of the film, so that you feel it was a satisfactory trip. Some kind of personal statement has to be made.”
“Many of the A-movies are long forgotten. They're boring, slow, and tedious. The B-movies are fast-moving, exciting, and energetic.”
Sharon Farrell and Larry Cohen on the set of IT’S ALIVE
“Some kids were great playing baseball; other kids were great at playing the piano; some kids were terrific at math. Writing was just something that came naturally.”
Janine Turner, Eric Roberts, and Larry Cohen in THE AMBULANCE (1990)
"I've gotten a great deal of enjoyment out of making these films. There's always a sense of the danger of the unknown. And, yet, you have to proceed with the absolute belief that everything will work out fine - and it has. Isn't that what life is all about?"
“Coronet Blue” took so long to get on the air, that a later series created by Larry Cohen, “The Invaders”, actually began airing before it. In “The Invaders,” Roy Thinnes stars as “David Vincent,” a man who tries to thwart an in-progress alien invasion, while hampered by doubting officials and the public. The series was a Quinn Martin Production.
For many viewers, the theme of paranoia infusing “The Invaders” often appeared to reflect Cold War fantasies of communist infiltration that had lingered from the McCarthy period a decade earlier. Larry Cohen acknowledged that this was intended, along with a political theme for the series. Cohen said his knowledge of the blacklisting of Hollywood screenwriters for their communist connections inspired him to make "a mockery" of the fear of the infiltration of society, by substituting space aliens for communists.
Cohen also acknowledged he was not the first to turn Cold War fears into science-fiction drama; such fears had influenced such films as INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and especially I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE. Cohen also stated that the political intent inherent in some of his creations, including “The Invaders,” was not always appreciated or shared by left-wing producers and actors. The character "David Vincent" was ranked #6 in TV Guide's list of the "25 Greatest Sci-Fi Legends" (August 1, 2004 issue).
ABC premiered the series on Tuesday, 10 January 1967, as a mid-season replacement for the failed sitcoms “The Rounders” and “The Pruitts of Southhampton.” Although “The Invaders” faced the same withering competition as did those series—CBS’s #2-rated “The Red Skelton Show”—it was better counter-programming to Skelton than were the sitcoms. So, “The Invaders” was given a full-season pickup for the 1967-68 season.
In its second season, even though “Skelton” dropped a little in the ratings to #5 overall, the competition on NBC heated up, as that network’s “Tuesday Night at the Movies” broke into the top 30 shows to claim the #18 spot. In an attempt to save “The Invaders,” at mid-season ABC moved it to the later 10 PM slot, where it faced the news program “CBS Reports.” But it was hard to get audiences to switch over from the in-progress NBC movie, which started an hour earlier, and “The Invaders” aired its last episode on March 26, 1968. A total of 43 episodes were produced.
Dominic Frontiere composed the theme for the show’s explanatory opening. The music was originally heard in “The Outer Limits: The Form of Things Unknown” in 1964.
What was unusual about the episode title cards is that they didn't feature copyright dates (which was featured on Quinn Martin's other series).
Funny that the New York Times obit would single out Herrmann's IT'S ALIVE score for mention "...Vincent Canby...was unimpressed. The score 'sounds as if it might have been composed to accompany World War II.' "
Loved Larry Cohen for his fertile imagination and his ability to get films made. The invaders was a favourite TV show and a great idea. Love Q and The Stuff in particular. Watched his recent documentary and just assumed he had another 20 years in him. Thanks for everything, Larry!
THE INVADERS (and to a lesser extent CORONET BLUE) work much better as metaphors for the C.I.A. infiltration of the government and subsequent takeover via the Kennedy assassination. That COld War crap is lame! brm ------------------------------------------------------------- The Invaders works better as a show about alien invaders. Fuck metaphors. They're for people doing film-making degrees and crap like that. Jehannum
You're not going to like this then. In explaining how he came up with the idea of the aliens' signature extended pinky finger on "The Invaders", Cohen said: "The extended pinky used to be a symbol of effeminacy . . . you know, the effete [person] holding a glass of champagne with the pinky extended? When this show was done back in the '60s, the homosexual community was kind of a submerged, invisible community. People were living secret lives. I thought, here are these aliens living amongst society, keeping their true identities secret, their true selves secret, and this is funny because the pinky kind of symbolizes homosexuality in some way, and nobody will get the gag, but I'll put it in there anyway."
Hidden aliens as a metaphor for closeted homosexuals. Hahahahaha.
