Cohen To Remake "It's Alive"

Larry Cohen wrote and directed the 1974 cult classic "It's Alive!", along with "Scream, Baby, Scream" (1969), "Beverly Hills Nightmare" (1972), and Maniac Cop 1-3 - among his 64-movie writing career. His most recent movie was the Colin Farrell vehicle "Phone Booth".

Now, Cohen wants back into horror. He bought the remake rights to "It's Alive!" and is shopping it around to studios, hoping to get in on audience's renewed interest in horror.

He's also working on another script called "Captivity", a thriller revolving around a supermodel and a Starbucks employee who are kidnapped together. "I set up a paranoid situation," Cohen says, "and they have to get out of it. I've been experimenting with this form for years -- small cast, limited frame of time and constant suspense."

But the same quality that makes such films marketable commodities -- the familiarity of the brand name -- also makes them less startling than the original films on which they were based.

As writer and director Robert Parigi puts it: "The great horror films are themselves monsters and freaks. They come from out of nowhere, overturn the natural order, and shock and amaze everyone."

B-horror movies, Cohen says, often served as Trojan horses for serious cultural ideas that studios were too conservative to confront directly.

"Nobody likes a message picture," Cohen says. "But horror movies used to be about something -- Vietnam, the sexual revolution, morality, relationships. Now they're just scare-the-pants-off-you movies."

Source: Variety