King Cohen Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

King Cohen Blu-ray Movie Review

A one man Cohen Media Group.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 3, 2018

La La Land may be the film that was infamously the Best Picture winner at the Academy Awards for one brief shining moment, but for those of us who love movie and television music, there’s another La La Land, namely La-La Land Records, a specialty label based in Burbank which puts out a really interesting array of soundtracks (I’m currently wending my way through their multi-disc compendium of music from The Wild Wild West). La-La Land has now entered the Blu-ray fray, but perhaps plays to its particular demographic by also including a soundtrack CD with this release. King Cohen is a charming and informative tribute to Larry Cohen, whose name may not be widely recognized outside of a certain niche of film fan who enjoys at times undeniably schlocky efforts that have been made on shoestring budgets and which often feature horror or science fiction elements. Even those who love some Cohen films like Q: The Winged Serpent or It's Alive may not be aware of Cohen’s long and rather fascinating history in both television and film, both of which are covered extensively in the documentary.

In fact, until I watched King Cohen, I really had no idea (or at least no memory) that Cohen created two of my all time favorite cult television items from the late sixties, The Invaders (the phrase “David Vincent, architect” is permanently emblazoned in my memory in the stentorian tones of what I call the “Quinn Martin voice”, which according to the IMDb must have been either Dick Wesson or William Woodson) and Coronet Blue (in the music geek department, I actually have the fairly rare sheet music to the series’ theme by Laurence Rosenthal), but Cohen has a long list of other credits, including writing for such venerable series as The Defenders. (For those interested, there are some patently bizarre outtakes from The Defenders available as a supplement on the recently reviewed Television's Lost Classics Volume One , including noted character actor E.G. Marshall dropping the f-bomb.) One thing that King Cohen makes clear is that Cohen rarely took “no” for an answer, and frankly seemed to never even wait for an answer at certain junctures in his career, choosing instead to simply maraud ahead and reach whatever goal he was aiming for at the time.

There are some almost outrageous anecdotes relayed by a variety of talking heads documenting Cohen’s so-called “guerilla filmmaking” within the context of not just not taking “no” for an answer, but in many cases, not asking for permission to begin with. Supported by some at times very funny clips from Cohen films, there are great little scenes that were “stolen” (as the participants call it) in various public locations, including a knock down drag out fight at an airport, a supposed shooting on a crowded urban street, and (just for good measure) Andy Kaufman dressing up like a cop and taking part in a policemen’s parade. It’s kind of a joyous approach to the often tedious work of filmmaking, and in fact one of the endearing things that Cohen states in one of his interviews is the nice thing about low budget filmmaking is it’s best not to make any plans, and to just let stuff develop on any given day as events warrant. That said, Cohen, for all his geniune qualities, is evidently not above developing a kind of myth about himself, as is revealed in a really funny back and forth contrasting almost Rashomon like memory differences between Cohen and Fred Williamson with regard to a stunt from one of their Blaxploitation collaborations. The fact that Cohen is also at the forefront of this particular subgenre (as evidenced by such films as Black Caesar) is just one more indication of how far reaching his influence has been over the years.

For soundtrack nerds like myself, there’s perhaps another really good reason that King Cohen is coming out via La-La Land Records, and that’s Cohen’s relationship with at least one iconic composer, Bernard Herrmann. Many film fans will know that Herrmann’s last completed score was for Taxi Driver, but how many of those fans can name Herrmann’s last score released during his lifetime, or what he was already scheduled to work on when he died? Those two answers are directly related to Cohen, with the first answer being 1974’s aforementioned It’s Alive and the second answer being 1976’s God Told Me To. Herrmann was not the only composer to forge a strong working relationship with Cohen, and noted (no pun intended) music historian Jon Burlingame offers some comments on some other writers, including Miklos Rozsa and Frank Cordell (Cordell ended up doing God Told Me To).

That said, the relationship with Herrmann seems to have been very meaningful both to Cohen and to his ex-wife. Cohen mentions dropping Herrmann off at Herrmann’s hotel the night he died, and Cohen must have found him expired the next day, since Cohen talks about Herrmann’s position in bed. And Cohen’s ex-wife seems visibly moved by her memories of Herrmann. Martin Scorsese is on hand giving his personal thanks to Cohen for how Cohen arranged for Herrmann’s funeral, and there’s a pretty funny anecdote about a rabbi needing to assemble a minyan and how a few non-Jews like Scorsese, Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro “chipped” (kippahd?) in to make that happen. (Cohen's advice to the assembled goyim about how to appear knowledgeable in front of a rabbi is very funny and echoes a similar sentiment that's espoused in the also very funny book How to be an Extremely Reform Jew by David M. Bader.)

Cohen has an undeniable sense of humor about himself (his walk through some sort of celebrity showcase event is a great example), and that self effacing quality permeates King Cohen. The many interview subjects aside from Cohen himself seem to have genuine affection for Cohen, and King Cohen is a really sweet love letter to an interesting and highly unique talent whose impact is arguably not sufficiently recognized.

King Cohen Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

King Cohen is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of La-La Land Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. As tends to be the case with documentaries cobbled together from such a disparate array of source material, there's fairly wide variance in video quality on display throughout this piece. The contemporary interview segments all look fine, if at times a little drab and on the brown side, but the archival video and even stills can look a tad ragged at times. There also seems to be some stock footage employed for establishing shots and the like, and some of that shows video anomalies like ghosting or upscaling. Most of the usually very short snippets from various Cohen films look reasonable if not outstanding.

King Cohen Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

King Cohen features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that intermittently provides at least a bit of surround activity courtesy of Joe Kraemer's score and a few of the film clips included. Otherwise, though, this would be interchangeable with a stereo or even a mono track with probably no real discernable difference, since so much of the film is made up of talking heads speaking directly to the camera. Fidelity is fine throughout, without any issues to mention. (The back cover incorrectly states LPCM Mono and Stereo tracks, but I sure wasn't able to find anything other than the surround track.)

King Cohen Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

All of the supplements save the trailer come with a warning that they're sourced from raw video and have variances in video and audio quality, but I frankly found nothing really very problematic at all in any of these:

• An Audience With the King (1080p; 46:32) contains more interviews with Cohen, who delivers a fantastic array of anecdotes.


• More Stories from the King's Court (1080p; 37:43) offers a glut of other talking heads discussing Cohen in clips that weren't used in the final documentary.


• Monsters on the Table (1080p; 3:25) features Cohen leading a little "tour" of some props from his films.


• Hello, World (1080i; 13:21) is a couple of introductions Cohen taped for various film festivals screening his work.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:39)

Additionally, a Bonus Soundtrack CD of Joe Kraemer's enjoyable score for the documentary is included. With no disrespect toward Mr. Kraemer, might I suggest to La-La Land Records that a really fantastic bonus for Cohen and original soundtrack fans would be to cobble together an original soundtrack release of Dominic Frontiere's incredible score for The Invaders. Along with those indelible imprints of "Quinn Martin voice", I also can't shake that great descending half step swoop on brass that Frontiere used to ID the "visitors" with the weird hands.

King Cohen Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Cult television fanatics like myself who have wondered for decades about the unsolved mystery at the core of Coronet Blue will be happy to know Cohen clarifies things in this piece, and the answer is weirdly almost like the flip side of another Cohen creation from the previous season, the similarly named (and similarly short lived) Blue Light, which featured Robert Goulet as an undercover spy during World War II. But even those who aren't overly aware of or care that much about Cohen's television achievements, and I dare say even those who may not be overly aware of Cohen's cinematic achievements, may well find King Cohen completely engaging. It's the rare Hollywood story where a seemingly good guy triumphs, or at least manages to scrape by with the help from a few of his friends like Samuel Arkoff. Technical merits are solid, and King Cohen comes Recommended.