God Told Me To

Double yikes! Larry Cohen’s 1976 shocker is a rare and hard to see B movie that, for reasons impossible to fathom, has a welcome home-streaming revival thanks to the chaos agents at Amazon Prime in the UK. There’s are plenty of reasons why this occult thriller has been out of circulation for decades; much like the same era’s equally notorious, Blue Sunshine, it’s absolutely hoaching with outrageous, if not dangerous ideas which don’t pop up in normal movies. I previously bought a DVD copy from a furtive-looking man with a suitcase and raincoat combo lurking under a collapsible trestle table in a farmers market in NYC’s Lincoln Square, but even that illegal dupe looks pretty scuzzy compared to this cleaned-up print that finally lays bare a dank worldview that’s crazier than George Santos’ first draft resume. God would probably prefer not be be named or involved in Cohen’s bonkers film, but there are no winners in a disreputable movie like this…

So let’s take a deep dive into the murk…a truly great supporting actor, Tony Lo Bianco takes centre stage as Lieutenant Peter Nicholas, a hard-boiled Catholic cop fighting a tide of Noo Yoyk scumbags on a daily basis. When a sniper starts shooting unsuspecting citizens from the heights of a city water-tower, Nicholas is first on the scene, and hears the gunman’s explanation before he falls to his death. ‘God Told Me To,’ is the killer’s mantra, and soon Nicholas starts hearing the same phrase again and again; another cop, played by Taxi’s Andy Kaufman of all people, starts gunning down his fellow officers during a St Patrick’s Day parade, and offers the same explanation. Nicolas develops a lead, tracing a mysterious man called Bernard Phillips, and uncovers a secret elite sect who may or may not be developing some kind of mind control, but all that might prove to be a red herring; the solution is far, far crazier than this synopsis is about to let on…

As a writer, director, producer and occasional actor, Larry Cohen was something of a whizz with weird concepts, but God Told Me To mixes horror, demonology, science fiction, conspiracy theories and much, much more in the headiest soup he ever concocted, and that’s saying something. This film, like Stefan’s nightclub on SNL, has absolutely everything; pin sharp NYC location photography shot on the fly around real happenings and events, religious crowd violence, veteran star Sylvia Sydney is a striking cameo as Nicholas’s mother, virgin births, noir flashbacks to the 1951 World’s Fair, vulvic clefts in demonic abdomens, Richard Lynch as a hermaphrodite antagonist who glows in the dark, Sandy Dennis, that thing where stock footage of Eagle lander spaceships is imported from the Space 1999 tv show, and a wonderfully wrought Frank Cordell score that pays tribute to the great Bernard Hermann. And if you enjoy the stunt deaths in the Omen films, Cohen tops them all as a cult follower ingeniously decapitates himself with a lift in an unforgettable scene. There’s a horrendous toll of on-screen fatalities, roughly one a minute for the first twenty, making for a gruelling watch.

Cohen’s legendary prowess with dialogue infuses every scene; as the shattered Nicholas lurches towards a hell-fire and brimstone conclusion that features Cronenbergian body horror in a highly disquieting way, we get theological chat like the quotes below; what other film-makers beside Cohen would even think of going to places like this in terms of religious debate? ‘Insane people have extraordinary powers ‘ …‘It’s as if the sexual gender was not developed, not male nor female but something else entirely…’ ‘You don’t love God the way I do…’ ‘If God ever shows up the churches will be on their asses …’’ ‘Together, WE can start a new species…’  What are they talking about? You’ll have to see for yourself to find out, but if anyone asks you why you’re watching this film, just tell them… ‘God Told Me To…’