God Told Me To... (1976)

Very strange film.

This film by Larry Cohen was very strange, I don't think I understood what was going on the first time I watched it so I had to watch it again. A series of brutal murders are happening all over New York city and when the murderers are questioned they all admit that god told them to. Larry Cohen is known to make some weird low budget films but sometimes they end up being crap like It's alive however this film turned out to be decent, it seems like the film mixes up alot of genres together like a detective thriller along with sci/fi and horror and I think that it really worked cause it has an interesting storyline. The detective in this film looks like he might be losing his mind since he cannot solve any of the murder cases including a case where a man who killed his entire family and then said god told me to, unfortunately the detective gets some bizzare leads that involve some alien abductions and some strange old woman who said that she has given birth to a child many years ago the only problem is that she was a virgin, like I said this film is very weird but somehow it does work even though some scenes just don't make any sense like when his partner who is a crooked cop gets killed by a black gangster and the detective ends up losing his faith with god cause he thinks that all the violent acts were a sign or something. The film was original but it also seems to be all over the place, if it had a proper explanation to it then maybe I would have liked it better but still the film was average. July 12, 2007

I don't get it.

Some guy in NYC gets up on a building and starts shooting people in the ketchup packets. A father kills his family (off camera). A policeman shoots a few people in a parade. Seemingly random acts of violence except that all the perpetrators said "God told me to." Shocking!

A detective who's chest hair shortens dramatically when he walks from the bedroom to the bathroom is assigned to the case and I have no idea what he figures out cause after 70 minutes of talk, talk, talk I started the 2x play until he came across some wacked out squealing dude in an abandoned building who has a p###y on his chest! The cop beats the guy down then says "God told me to."

I never want to see this movie again as long as I live.
September 19, 2005

Herrmann or von Däniken?

Promising start. A sniper kills people, seemingly randomly. When asked why, he says "God told me to". Other mass murders occur, and the murderers all claim that God told them to do it.

After 25 minutes the mystery slowly starts to unfold. There is a "sect" of middleaged and elderly men who have been gathered telepathically. They know what is going on. UFO:s in the past explain some mysterius births. And "God" turns out to be not too impressive. Why, oh why, did they try to explain it all so stupidly?

The movie is dedicated to the memory of Bernard Herrmann, the famous movie music composer (Vertigo, Psycho and much more), and the music often resembles the intense string music of Herrmann. There is some good choir music too. The acting is good all over. Good pictures. Slow tempo, but not too slow. And the script is good up until one third of the movie. So, what happened? I have three theories:

1. After writing script for the first part of the movie, the script writer died and the story was completed by someone else. (Since only Cohen is credited as writer I guess this theory won't hold up...)
2. They wanted to do a film with some cool music and dedicate it to Bernard Herrmann, so they wrote the music first and then wrote scenes that would fit the music, not minding if the story turned out to be rather strange (and stupid).
3. The script writer had read too much von Däniken ("God is a UFO, just look here in Ezechiel...").

Anyway, here is another example of a movie that has most thing going for it, but lacks a good story to back it up with. And a good story means something. At least, if you try to be clever, like this film does.

This movie is sometimes called "Demon". August 4, 2005

More Cohen weirdness

"God Told Me To" is in many ways Larry Cohen's best picture, which probably isn't saying all that much to people unaccustomed to the confines of schlock cinema. Viewers who never watch anything that doesn't play at the local Cineplex will look upon this picture with a sense of mounting dread over the low production values and haphazard plot lines. I, however, am the King of Bad Cinema, and my realm contains a round table where Sir Cohen sits with Lord Herschell Gordon Lewis, Baron William Castle, and Sir Roger Corman of New Concorde. I can take the offering that is "God Told Me To" and pronounce it good and godly. And I will because Michael Moriarty appears nowhere in this film. Cohen seems to have a thing for the squirrelly actor of "Law & Order" fame, casting him in at least three of his major works--"The Stuff," "Q: The Winged Serpent," and "It's Alive." After anxiously looking around for Moriarty's name anywhere near this film and not seeing it, I settled in for what I hoped would become a wonderful experience. Although far from perfect, "God Told Me To" is immensely entertaining. Did I mention I don't care much for Michael Moriarty?

Here's a movie any B-movie fan can really sink his or her teeth into. Imagine New York City in the 1970s (I know, it's unpleasant, but do it anyway). The streets bustle with activity as people drive, walk, and ride their bikes to various destinations. Why, look there! Here comes a chap peddling along without a care in the world! Then we hear a shot ring out and the poor guy does a header into the pavement. Do angels ride bicycles? Anyway, more shots ring out and more people tumble to the pavement, presumably incapable of ever rising again. It looks like some guy channeling Charles Whitman is up on a wooden water tower playing target practice. Fortunately, tough cop Peter Nicholas (Tony Lo Bianco) assumes the highly dangerous task of talking the hunter down. He fails spectacularly, but before he does the gunman tells Nicholas that "God told me to" murder all of these people. This cop will continue to hear this phrase in the coming days after a devoted father slaughters his family, after a police officer (Andy Kaufman!) goes off the deep end during a parade, and after a few other highly unpleasant incidents unfold in the Big Apple. In other words, what we see happening here is just a typical day in New York City. What's the big deal?

Well, Larry Cohen isn't content to merely let his movie founder in the degradation of the typical police thriller genre. No sir! What starts out as a series of seemingly unconnected crimes turns out to be something so sinister that the human mind boggles while attempting to conceive of it. Turns out Nicholas is a highly devote Catholic with a wife (Sandy Dennis) and a young girlfriend (Deborah Raffin) who feels as though he's different from everyone else. The whole "god told me to" thing finds the detective discovering exactly why he never seemed to fit in. His investigation into the crimes turns up reports of an immaculate conception years before, a shadowy cult that worships some nut named Bernard Phillips (Richard Lynch), and Mason Adams playing an obstetrician. Then things get really weird. Nicholas tracks down a woman who tells him a story he would rather not hear, complete with onscreen flashbacks, about an alien abduction that took place years ago. Again, this type of stuff is par for the course in New York City, but you wouldn't know it by watching Detective Peter Nicholas's reaction. He races out of the building on a quest to track down the enigmatic Bernard Phillips, with good reason. The very future of the human race could well depend on our hero putting a stop to the supernatural shenanigans going on in his beloved city. Wow!

I'm not quite sure what to make of "God Told Me To." The film doesn't fit in any single cinematic genre, so I'm not sure it would appeal to fans of pure cop dramas, or pure science fiction, or pure apocalyptic films. You sort of need to transcend boundaries with this movie or you'll only end up liking chunks of it. I do think that Tony Lo Bianco did a wonderful job as the conflicted and tormented Detective Peter Nicholas. As proof of this assertion, I ask that you view closely the scene where he listens to the father talk about butchering his family. The rage slowly building in every fiber of Lo Bianco's being as he digests this string of spoken atrocities appears so genuine that I thought he was really going to deck that guy when he finally blows. So I guess you can say the acting isn't too bad. The special effects, on the other hand, ain't that great. You get a cheesy showdown between Phillips and Nicholas at the end involving a lot of camera shaking, collapsing walls, and flashing lights--hardly the stuff of big budget effects teams working with state of the art equipment. But ultimately, "God Told Me To" is entertaining because it's creepy and offbeat.

Cohen's films are seeing a big resurgence on DVD thanks in large part to Blue Underground. Included as extras on the disc are a commentary with Cohen, a poster and stills gallery, a trailer, a Cohen biography, and seven television spots. I learned by watching these extras that "God Told Me To" also went by the name of "Demon," which often means that the movie tanked under its original title so the distribution company slapped a new moniker on it in order to release it somewhere else. If you want to explore the Larry Cohen canon, this picture is a great place to start.




October 23, 2004

Why? 'Cause God Told Me To!

New York police detective Lt. Peter Nicholas (Tony Lo Bianco)--a devout Catholic who is struggling with his faith in the midst of marital problems--is investigating a string of fatal shootings and is disturbed by the fact the killers, when questioned about their motivation, have each offered the exact same response: "God told me to." Is God really ordaining these angels of death? Ignoring the downward spiral his personal and professional life seems to be taking, Nicholas' deep faith compels him to seek the answer to that question. But when his investigations put him face-to-face with the bizarre androgynous extraterrestrial who instigated the killings, the detective finds more answers than he was seeking.

As with nearly all of his films, this 1976 outre opus from writer/director Larry Cohen is no ordinary low-budget genre film. Though the premise of GOD TOLD ME TO is undoubtedly outlandish, the characters that Cohen creates in the film are vivid and memorable, their dialog very realistic, and the situations in which Cohen places them are so authentically and convincingly drawn that an audience is quickly convinced to suspend their disbelief. In addition, Cohen is a master at creating subtle subtext, and GOD TOLD ME TO is riddled with it. As the primary narrative progresses, things go on ?below the surface" that force viewers to evaluate, even if only subconsciously, their concepts of things such as marriage, sex, gender, religion & faith, family & genetics, security, and authority. Most Cohen fans regard GOLD TOLD ME TO as the auteur's most cohesive, articulate, and thought-provoking work.

A number of genre fans and critics alike have cited GOD TOLD ME TO as the precursor to the television series THE X-FILES. Certainly all of the TV show's main elements are there--alien abductions, spiritual overtones, a troubled and obsessive detective with authority issues, a powerful cabal, and bizarre plot twists. So it's hard to deny that the film had at least some influence on the series? creators. But unlike a TV show, the creators of which must ultimately defer to studios and sponsors, GOD TOLD ME TO is an independent, non-studio produced film, and Cohen has therefore been able to pull all the stops necessary to get his points across. Of course, such an iconoclastic film has often been misinterpreted or misunderstood (or maybe understood too clearly by religious zealots?), and GOD TOLD ME TO has at times been banned, boycotted, or cut to ribbons by some distributor or other to make it "palatable" to a particular audience. So some X-FILES fans may be offended by this film and consequently may not want to claim it as the progenitor of their beloved series, while others may embrace it as an example of what the TV show might have been had the creators been able to do their work without any major creative or aesthetic fetters.

The DVD release of GOD TOLD ME TO from Blue Underground is a must-own for any fan of Cohen, any fan of B-movie sci-fi, or any lover of bizarre independent cinema. It offers a top-notch digital transfer of the film in anamorphic widescreen at the original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Bonus material includes an informative and entertaining feature commentary by Cohen and his protoge Bill Lustig, the theatrical trailer, and several TV spots. A cool DVD that is well worth the price of admission. July 22, 2004

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