Manhattan-born genre auteur Larry Cohen, best known for his slimy, effects-laden creature-features, is the brain behind such cult favourites as It’s Alive (1974), Q: The Winged Serpent (1982), and most famously, The Stuff (1985) – all of which have goopy gore and rubber monsters aplenty. When the late, great director came to make his 12th feature film, a movie quite literally titled Special Effects (1984), he decided to strip things back and turn the camera around to focus on a different, more grounded kind of horror – abuse, misogyny, and corruption within the film industry. Unfortunately the film has been overlooked by many compared to other sleazy and satirical New York-set thrillers of its era, but it’s now making its UK Blu-Ray debut via Transmission (the sub-label of Radiance Films dedicated to preserving and re-releasing titles from the more offbeat side of genre cinema), and thanks to their shiny-new limited edition release, it might finally be ready for its close-up.
Special Effects opens with the murder of up-and-coming actress Andrea Wilcox (Zoë Lund), a victim of the washed-up, death-obsessed filmmaker Chris Neville (Eric Bogosian), whose latest FX-laden picture bombed at the box-office, leaving him exiled from Hollywood. When Andrea’s husband Keefe Waterman (Brad Rijn), is arrested and wrongfully charged with her murder, Neville bails him out – albeit with a sinister purpose. The director wants to turn Andrea’s life story into his big comeback picture, and he wants Waterman to play himself in the movie, an offer which Waterman reluctantly accepts. He doesn’t know that this is just the beginning of a bizarre and elaborate scheme by Neville to get away with murder while making his most shocking film yet, and things are complicated even further when the role of Andrea goes to Elaine Bernstein (Zoë Lund in a dual role), who bears a striking resemblance to the murdered woman …
This is a fascinating film, partly because of the satiric edge to Cohen’s screenwriting, but it’s also an interesting takedown of the misogyny and abuses of power within the American film industry. While those are still topical problems in 2026, they were rife back in 1984 when the #MeToo movement, or even the concept of an “intimacy coordinator”, were nothing but a distant dream. Cohen’s tale of murder, desire, framing, and doppelganger hijinks riffs on Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), but his script also isn’t afraid to rip into the kind of man that the Master of Suspense was both on set and when it came to his attitudes towards women. Don’t get me wrong, Special Effects is as sleazy as your average blood-and-boobs exploitation picture can be, and entertainingly so, but it does this while fixing its stern gaze upon the film world and the behaviour of those who hold power and authority within it.
Don’t get me wrong, Special Effects is as sleazy as your average blood-and-boobs exploitation picture can be, and entertainingly so, but it does this while fixing its stern gaze upon the film world and the behaviour of those who hold power and authority within it.
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Special Effects also happens to just be a fun little ’80s killer-thriller romp, playing like a lower-rent New York version of the films that Brian De Palma was making in Hollywood around the same time. Like Blow Out (1981), and Body Double (1984), it’s a sharply-written and handsomely-shot piece that benefits from a cruelly playful central performance from Bogosian. It isn’t the most remarkable or memorable thriller to come out of ’80s New York, being far more straightforward and restrained than it could be – the film’s bombastic final kill sequence being the exception. It nonetheless makes for easy, enjoyable psycho-thriller viewing, and ends on a curious and effective note which few other filmmakers from the time would have dared to include.
As is typical for Radiance Films, the high-definition transfer on this new release is exquisite, and I’d even go so far as to call it one of the cleanest restorations I’ve seen on any Blu-Ray release, period – all while not detracting from the grain and grime of Cohen’s underground New York filmmaking. Extras include a couple of newly-filmed interviews, the highlight of which is with Eric Bogosian, whose enlightening stories about the perils and struggles of low-budget, non-union filmmaking in ’80s New York City further blur the line between fiction and reality in Special Effects’ narrative of on-set disturbances. Also of note is a featurette hosted by critic Christina Newland that explores the role of cult screen icon Zoë Lund, and approaches the themes of Special Effects through a feminist lens. The most notable archival extra included on this release is Cohen on Cohen, a feature-length 2017 discussion with the late director, which is sure to delight any die-hard fans of the late Master of Horror.
SPECIAL EFFECTS IS OUT NOW ON TRANSMISSION FILMS BLU-RAY / A RADIANCE FILMS BRAND
