Nerds That Geek Movie Review: 'King Cohen'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

If there’s one thing that fans of cinema love to do on a regular basis, is celebrate the men and women that have left their mark upon this industry by way of their incredible work. Sometimes the celebration comes about at home with a marathon among friends, and other times, some people set out to document their respective careers with beautiful documentaries that reflect upon their finest works and how those particular films have impacted the landscape of cinema for years to come.
 
However, there is one inherent problem when it comes to that more mainstream style of celebration in that…documentarians tend to focus heavily upon the bigger names out there. While that’s not a bad thing by any means, because I love Spielberg’s work as much as the next guy, there are countless other names out there that have done incredible things for the motion picture industry, revolutionary things in fact, and because their work didn’t raise $200 million at the box office on the regular, their names don’t come up that often. But sometimes, you stumble upon a documentary that does bother to recognize the mavericks of the industry and I recently had the pleasure of watching one that celebrated the work of a true American filmmaking genius in King Cohen.
 
Now this documentary takes the time to explore the life and career of filmmaker Larry Cohen, a name that may or may not sound familiar and if it doesn’t, well then, you’re either missing out, or have watched his work and never realized it. Because this magnificent tale touches upon every single corner of Larry’s rich career in the industry and really, that’s the first unique thing I noticed about this documentary, the sheer fact that it doesn’t try and tell us some stylized story about Larry, it highlights every single moment of his career in honest fashion, including all the highs and the lows, with much of the stories coming straight from Mister Cohen himself. 

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​Yet, while Larry’s stories are amazing in their own right, what truly blew me away about his career, is how diverse it turned out to be. I literally had no clue that Larry had a hand in giving life to the Blaxploitation genre of films by helming the revolutionary King Caesar and Hell Up in Harlem, or that the man spent a lot of time writing for television in his younger years before he turned to film and really, it was just fascinating to learn how much Larry has yearned to make phenomenal films that entertain the audience through and through and his diverse resumé truly speaks to this fact. 
 
However, while this film could have just documented his career and left it at that, it does take things one step further by giving us some beautiful interviews with the people that worked with Larry or admired his work through the course of his illustrious career and well, this part of the story is what elevates this documentary to a whole new level. Because everyone that speaks about Larry and their experiences with him do so with a giant smile on their face and it’s inherently obvious that Larry’s passion for filmmaking was infectious to say the least and he brought joy to everyone he worked with and that’s just rare and refreshing to see.
 
But you don’t just watch a documentary without having some kind of personal interest in the topic at hand and for me, this was a beautiful nostalgic ride because my experiences with Larry’s work come from my love of horror and I am a huge fan of The Stuff and Q: The Winged Serpent, so to learn more about Larry and his career was an outright treat and I have to admit I’m curious to see more of his work thanks to this documentary and when all is said and done, if you’re fan of Larry’s work, or the horror genre or film as a whole, see this documentary as fast as you can. Because it’s charming, heartwarming and honest, and quite frankly, inspirational as well. But what matters most about King Cohen, is that it doesn’t put Larry Cohen on a pedestal, and offer up all kinds of strange labels about his genius. It merely presents him as a man, one that loves cinema and believes in nothing more than making fun and impactful movies and that…is something that is definitely worth celebrating. 

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