In short: Perfect Strangers (1984)

aka Blind Alley

Johnny Ross (Brad Rijn) is working as a “subtle” killer for the New York mob. He’s a bit of their pet killer because there’s apparently nothing connecting him to the life of crime whatsoever. That changes when the toddler Matthew (Matthew Stockley) witnesses Johnny’s newest killing.

Johnny’s not that kind of asshole, so he doesn’t do anything to the kid. His bosses are very unhappy about the decision. After all, Johnny’s going to be completely useless in the future with a witness who can’t even talk or walk too well hanging over him. In fact, to the mafia he’s going to be completely useless even if he’s only getting arrested once without any actual legal trouble, for…reasons. The only way out of the problem is for Johnny to charm himself into the life of Matthew’s mother Sally (Anne Carlisle) and arrange an accident for the kid. Which makes total sense, I’m sure.

The films of Larry Cohen often have a messy quality about them, with plots that don’t always hold up to logical scrutiny, and an approach to any given scene that puts a heavy emphasis on adlibbing. The former, Cohen often makes up for with dark humour, heavy New York local colour and the ability to make his audience believe that any crazy shit can and will happen in one of his movies.

The latter adds charm and fun when he’s working with actors like Michael Moriarty, who live for that sort of thing. In the case of Perfect Strangers, alas, even a kind viewer will have to admit that Brad Rijn is no Michael Moriarty – in fact, Rijn’s the sort of actor who looks so uncomfortable in front of a camera, I wouldn’t trust him with fully fleshed out and thought through scenes. To make matters worse, the poor bastard’s improvisational partner in too many scenes is a sodding toddler, a breed that does not tend to give a guy hanging on the ropes a “yes, and” or a “no, but”.

Unlike in your typical Cohen film, there’s not much help from any character actors to find either. Only female lead Anne Carlisle and Ann Magnuson (who at least knows how to act in front of a camera) do much that’s worth a damn there, despite some really Cohen-typical funny set-ups for shenanigans with a mafia boss who is also a barber, some business with a private eye with a heavy German accent, and so on.

On the positive side, while it is terribly messy, the film has moments where it becomes bizarre enough to be interesting. There is, for example, an absurd suspense scene where Matthew wanders through Johnny’s apartment while our protagonist tries to hide him from mafia goons, played perfectly straight as if this were a sensible thing to base a suspense scene on.

If that sort of thing is enough for anyone but me and other weirdoes is anyone’s guess, but at the very least, Perfect Strangers tries not to bore its viewers too much.

In short: Deadly Illusion (1987)

Private detective Hamberger (Billy Dee Williams) may not have a licence, but he’s got a sexy taxi-driving girlfriend and partner (Vanity), and half of New York’s working class loves him to bits, for reasons he doesn’t understand himself. He, as it turns out, is also the kind of guy who exclusively identifies women by their hair-do; at least that’s what the film implies, for otherwise, most of the plot would make even less sense than it actually does.

“What plot is this?”, you might ask, and the most honest answer would be “hell if I know”. It’s not that the elements of the plot are all that confusing – there’s the usual stuff about the bad guys trying to frame our protagonist for murder and a large scale drug operation – but the way writer/director Larry Cohen fits them together really doesn’t make a lick of sense. It’s not just that the film only works when our hero can’t understand that Morgan Fairchild in a frizzy wig and Morgan Fairchild with her usual blonde hairspray thing are the same person, there’s really little else about this mystery that fits together in a sensible way, be it the plans of the villains (whatever they might be exactly), the actions of our hero or the police. Half of the time, I didn’t even know why any given scene followed the next, and not in a noirish expression of existential confusion, but simple confusion.

Unless, of course, scenes follow each other because Cohen, one of the most New York of all directors, simply thought showing Billy Dee Williams running through this part of New York would be pretty cool at any given moment. After all, Cohen, despite his experience as a screenwriter, often shows a very leisurely idea of plotting, giving his actors a lot of room to improvise. Williams isn’t terribly great at improvisation here, alas, so most of the obviously improvised scenes end up as the sort of goof comedy that should have ended up on the editing room floor.

The film’s not a complete write-off, however, for there are couple of worthwhile moments, at least if you like Larry Cohen’s New York, with some pretty funny moments and lines coming from the various character actors involved. Two of the New York action set pieces are rather fun, too, seeing as they do involve some running and shooting through Shea Stadium and Billy Dee having a chase down a certain rather large Christmas tree.

Which certainly doesn’t turn Deadly Illusion into a film for the casual viewer but keeps it of interest to the Cohen die-hards like me.

In short: Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence (1993)

Turns out the revival of maniac cop Matt Cordell (always Robert Z’Dar) at the end of Maniac Cop 2 is the responsibility of some New York voodoo priest. He needs Cordell for something vague and hand wave-y to do with justice, apparently, though the undead cop will still spend the movie killing the guilty and the innocent alike, so no idea what’s going on there.

Cordell will show – probably (nec)romantic - interest in Katie Sullivan (Gretchen Becker), a cop who spends most of the film in a coma after getting shot. She just happens to be a protégé of Sean McKinney (Robert Davi), so the whiny cop is back with us again. She’s also framed for killing and innocent who was anything but, but given that here nickname is Maniac Katie, and she polices New York with a sub-machine gun and hollow point bullets, she’s not exactly the innocent victim of circumstance hear. Cordell’s implied search for a bride leads to him spending most of his killing time in and around the hospital she is in. McKinney obviously takes an interest.

Ah, how far the dynamic duo of Larry Cohen and William Lustig has fallen, not only from the heights of not only the wondrous Maniac Cop 2 but also the pretty entertaining original Maniac Cop! There are a couple of interesting ideas hidden away in the script here – the whole pseudo-romantic angle at least gives us a nice dream sequence – but none of them is developed at all. It’s all random goofy shit all the time, but unlike with the last film, the goofy shit isn’t cleverly embedded between sleazy New York and insane stunt work. Well, we get some of the latter in the final couple of scenes, but the whole scope of the film seems much reduced since the last time out, and the plot and pacing meander in many directions, none of them much fun to witness. Well, I enjoyed Robert Forster’s little outing as the vilest physician (shortly) alive.

The film as a whole feels reduced, in fact, not just because of the comparative dearth of action, and the lack of Claudia Christian. Cordell’s killing spree feels rather lackluster too this time, and for much of the film’s running time, he could be any third row slasher killing himself through an improbable hospital. Why, even Cohen’s dialogue isn’t as fun as it usually is.


There’s just too little of interest going on here at all, so I’m happy enough the series ended with this, before Cordell could be kung-fu kicked to death by Bustah Rhymes.

Maniac Cop 2 (1990)

Formerly half-undead serial killer cop Matt Cordell (Robert Z’Dar) is back from his watery grave, now even more dead, and still so angry about being framed for crimes he didn’t commit by THEM and then being murdered in prison, he is still murdering basically everyone he meets. In fact, he seems to put little effort at all into seeking out the political higher ups responsible for his fate and only in the very end of the film gets around to kill off their pawns. As an undead seeker of vengeance, Cordell’s not terribly impressive. He’s great at killing random people, though.

Because he has so much time off, Cordell uses the film’s first act to kill off the heroes of the first Maniac Cop (bye, Bruce Campbell, so long, Laurene Landon!), leaving the audience to the tender mercies of whiny, self-righteous, hard-ass cop Sean McKinney (Robert Davi) and police psychologist Susan Riley (Claudia Christian) as our new protagonists. After the usual dance of scepticism and mutual dislike, these two team up to get Cordell off the street and clear his name. Because that’s important after the dozens of innocents the zombie cop has slaughtered.

Cordell doesn’t want to be left out of the partnering up business this time around, so he shacks up with serial killer of Times Square strippers Turkell (Leo Rossi, wearing some sort of hilarious alien hair mop creature on and over his head, looking for all the world like one of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers).

As sarcastic as I may sound above, I really had a hell of an entertaining time watching the second of the three Maniac Cop movies from the dynamic duo of that great New York writer/director/producer Larry Cohen (only writing and producing here), and that loveable, semi-great sleazebag William Lustig. The plot makes little sense – though you can see the vague shapes of the sense it is probably supposed to make – but every scene here is basically written to provide either some intensely goofy shit (the scenes of Turkell and Cordell showing each other their knives, and Landon’s short chainsaw fight against Cordell stand as obvious examples), provide Lustig with opportunity to wallow in by 1990 old-school New York sleaze, or win the audience’s hearts with insane stunts and absurd violence.

As such, the film is a raving success. The goofy shit is indeed goofy as heck, New York has seldom looked more like some sort of crazy nightmare built out of trash and human desperation, and the action scenes are insane and gritty in idea and execution. Because Cohen and Lustig know and love actors, the film also contains a ream of fun performances. Even the in theory utterly unlikeable McKinney becomes great entertainment in the hands of Davi who is after all one of the guys who wrote the book on playing these types of characters in low budget films, and Christian pretty much wins my heart by playing her character absolutely straight even though she’s moving through a world made out of absurd nonsense.

Adding even more value to the whole proposition is Cohen’s patented dialogue that sounds sharp and fun (and often funny) in a way which tempts one to talk of realism; in truth nobody does talk like a character written by Larry Cohen, of course. It’s rather that one feels this version of New York should be populated by people talking this way, so there’s a feeling of veracity to the dialogue. Which beats boring realism any day.


Indeed, all of this adds up so well I hands-down prefer Maniac Cop 2 to the first one by a mile or two, and that even though it uses one of my least favourite horror movie tropes by killing the first film’s heroes off in the first act. But then, Davi/Christian are much more entertaining than the original pair (sorry, Mr Campbell), and the rest of the film clearly sets out to outdo the first one in everything, from grime to explosions, and succeeds wonderfully.

The Ambulance (1990)

While mullet-crowned comics artist Josh Baker (Eric Roberts) is accosting some poor woman (Janine Turner) on the street  - though I’m pretty sure he thinks he is flirting, an interpretation of his behaviour even a 70s Bollywood hero would raise an eyebrow at – his victim suddenly breaks down into some kind of fit that may or may not be caused by her diabetes. Very quickly, an absurdly old-fashioned ambulance arrives and carts her away. But hey, at least the woman we now know is called Cheryl asks Josh to come visit her and see if she’s alright. When our hero – you better get used to the idea that this is what Josh is – tries to follow through, he can find Cheryl in no hospital in New York. The thought she might have given him a false name to get rid of him obviously never crosses his mind, so off Josh goes to the police.

Alas, eccentric to outright crazy – with the hospital record to prove it – cop Lt. Spencer (James Earl Jones) thinks Josh is a nut – he’s a comics artist after all! Ironically, later on, Spencer will actually turn out to be one of the more competent cops around.

Josh is not easily dissuaded by little problems when he’s hoping to get into the pants of a really hot woman – the film’s finale really suggests that this is his main or perhaps only motivation for all the crap he’s going to pull from now on – so he starts his own investigation. Soon, his potential breakthrough at Marvel is threatened (and that “just because of a girl”, as Stan Lee repeatedly emphasises – I kid you not), as is his life, and his ability to stay out of a mental institution. On the plus side, he makes friends with the only police in New York actively trying to solve crimes (Meghan Gallagher) – who also happens to be a perfect fit for a replacement girlfriend should his main victim not work out – and an elderly reporter (Red Buttons) from the old muckraker school.

As a thriller, Larry Cohen’s The Ambulance certainly is one of the least successful films of the great New Yorker director but as a character-based comedy that just happens to have a thriller plot, it is insanely enjoyable, at least if you can survive a hero who is quite as much of an asshole – and a casual homophobe to boot - as Josh is in any social interaction not involving him trying to “charm” a woman. Then, he’s outright creepy. He’s basically a Hitchcockian everyman protagonist as written by someone who has actually met everymen; fortunately, as Roberts in one of his most entertaining performances plays Josh, his mouthing off to everyone but Stan Lee and the various ways he gets himself into trouble are incredibly fun to watch.

Roberts is ably – and often hilariously – assisted by a whole bunch of character actors chewing scenery while embodying various New Yorker stereotypes, clearly given leeway for improvisation and farting about. Particularly James Earl Jones – just watch the incredible business with the chewing gum in his death scene – and Red Buttons are a joy to watch. But the minor cop characters – like James Dixon as the cop who really doesn’t like to be compared to Jughead – and the heavies all get their little moments here too, so that the first two thirds of the movie are a series of perfect and absurd vignettes made out of New York, Hitchcock and actors letting loose. Each and every character interaction is a perfect storm of actors, fun dialogue, and the somewhat skeezy charm one expects from a film set in New York in this era.

The final act makes little sense: so why exactly has the evil doctor (Eric Braeden for some probably awesome reason doing his mad scientist as if he were channelling a facial-hair deprived Sam Elliott) put his secret lab into a night club? Is there really a big market in the USA for using kidnapped diabetics in illegal human trials? Why don’t they just shoot Josh? I certainly don’t know. On the other hand, I didn’t find myself actually caring about these questions either, for the final act is still full of awesome and bizarre acting, some decent if absurd action sequences, and whatever it is Roberts does here.


If all this still doesn’t sound wonderful enough to you, imaginary reader: how about the fact that Josh is actually working at Marvel, with Stan Lee in what very well might be his largest acting role, and guys like Larry Hama and Jim Salicrup hanging around. Why, even the great Gene Colan is involved as “artist photo double”! And if that still doesn’t sound quite awesome and fun enough, I  really don’t know what Cohen could have added here.