Gary P. Cohen
Directing
Biography
Gary P. Cohen is the producing director of Plays-in-the-Park, a respected summer theater in New Jersey, where he has directed more than fifty plays and musicals. In the early 1970s he founded a 100-seat semiprofessional theater, where he honed his craft before joining Plays-in-the-Park in the 1980s. He is the author of The Community Theater Handbook (Heinemann, 2003). Cohen has co-authored Off-B'way's Frankenstein, A New Musical and A High School Monster Musical with Mark Baron, as well as The Reluctant Dragon. A former William Morris agent, Cohen has also written and directed three 80's cult shot-on-video horror films: Video Violence Video Violence Il, and Captives, currently on DVD & Blu-ray.
Known For
Using testimonies by pioneers and witnesses of the times, delve into the feverish visual culture the media generated – with far-fetched examples of canine television games, seduction manuals, aerobics class while holding a baby, among others.
VHS Revolution
A documentary capturing the modern day VHS culture and VHS collectors.
Adjust Your Tracking: The Untold Story of the VHS Collector
A couple open a video store in a new town, and come to find out that the locals only rent horror films and the "occasional triple X'er", and make their own snuff videos.
Video Violence
A young woman purchases a bed n breakfast unaware of the home's blood-soaked past. Twenty years earlier a cannibalistic elderly woman owned the establishment and now the murders are about to start again...
Grandma
The killers are back and now hosting their own TV show broadcast secretly from their basement. They examine the fine art of murder, letting other aspiring psychos send in videos of their handiwork for the world to enjoy.
Video Violence Part 2
Referred to as “the most accomplished SOV horror film from this era,” Captives, is the sophomore effort of director Gary Cohen (Video Violence 1&2). Three weirdoes invade the home of a well-to-do family while the husband is at work. They aren't there to steal anything; they have a video they want to show the wife. On it is the past life of her husband, something much more violent and drug-fueled than she ever could have expected. When things go wrong for the invaders and blood gets shed, the wife must reconcile what she has seen and what she knows, and her new knowledge of the past makes her future unthinkable.
Captives
Series dedicated to preserving the legacy of shot on video horror movies. Hear the true stories from the innovators themselves on these important works in cinema history.
S.O.V. The True Independents
Petey Monahan, or as the bullies call him, "Pizza Face," is a quiet, acne faced boy who loves working at his father's pizza shop, Pizza World. But, after a childish prank goes awry, Petey gets trapped in a burning pizza delivery car and is left for dead...or so they thought. Now, Petey is back with a brand new look and is hungry for revenge. Who gets the last slice? Find out...in PIZZA PARTY MASSACRE!
Pizza Party Massacre
Join Gary P. Cohen, director of Video Violence, Video Violence 2, and Captives aka Mama's Home as he travels to the seemingly normal small town of Lambertville, NJ and watches it transform into Halloweenville.
Halloweenville
A shot-on-video straight-to-television comedy adaptation of the Frankenstein story. Co-written by, and starring Gary Cohen (director of Video Violence).
Frankenstein (I Swear on My Mother's Eyes) The True Story
Documentary about the cult Shot On Video Horror flick Video Violence, it's fans and it's legacy.
Video Violence: The S.O.V. That Wouldn't Die
A faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley's original novel, Frankenstein, The Musical is a thrilling, new interpretation of the classic tale of horror and romance. The story follows Victor Frankenstein, the scion of a wealthy Swiss family, whose scientific genius leads him to a great, audacious experiment: to create a human life.
Frankenstein - A New Musical
An anthology film featuring three tales of Halloween hijinx, Thanksgiving terror, and Christmas carnage.