Classic Movie Review: God Told Me To

God Told Me To is a 1976 horror-thriller from legendary B-movie director Larry Cohen and it’s a movie that deserves a chance for a remake. Inside of God Told Me To there is a very good religious based horror movie dying to get out. Sadly, Larry Cohen only found the seeds of that great horror movie and never fully cultivated those seeds into a satisfying final product. What we get instead is a half of an excellent movie and half of a bizarre, outlandish and outright terrible movie.

God Told Me To stars Tony Lo Bianca as New York Police Detective Peter Nicholas. Peter is about to have a very bad day. Just as a new day in New York City begins, shots ring out from somewhere in the distance and a man suddenly falls to the ground. Then another shot and another person falls, slowly it dawns on people that these shots are coming from somewhere far away yet close enough for the shooter to kill as people chaotically flee.

Once the shooter is located on top of a water tower on top of an apartment building, Detective Nicholas decides to take things into his own hands. Nicholas climbs the tower intent on talking the shooter down. However, once the detective gets the man talking he’s chilled to the bone by how calm the man is. Eventually, the shooter tells Detective Nicholas that God commanded him to the top of this water tower and told him to shoot, he says ‘God Told Me To’ before he jumps to his death.

This chilling confession becomes something more sinister after a peaceful and otherwise normal man goes on a stabbing spree. Stopped by Police, the man is shot and taken to the hospital. There the man is interviewed by Detective Nicholas and the same excuse is given, ‘God Told Me To,’ says the man, before passing away. Being that only Detective Nicholas has been nearby to hear these confessions, few of his fellow detectives are interested in hearing about the odd coincidence of mass murderers claiming they were commanded by God.

Even after a third incident, this involving a young beat cop, played by a pre-stardom, Andy Kaufman, Nicholas can get no one on the force to buy into his notion that these mass murderers are connected. A four and fifth incident occurs and this leads Detective Nicholas down a bizarre rabbit hole as he finds himself suspended for his crackpot theory and for leaking his theory to a reporter whose story sets off a city wide panic over the religion driven mass murders.

The early portions of God Told Me To are exceptionally well staged. The sniper shooting is filled with suspense and excitement as the camera whirls and pans from one victim to the next in a flurry of fear and chaos. Even the slightly calmer scene of Detective Nicholas climbing up to speak to the sniper carries a tense and frightening air from the clever staging to the chillingly effective dialogue and the ominously spoken ‘God Told Me To.’

My favorite scene features Nicholas investigating a father who murdered his entire family out of nowhere. Nicholas arrives in the aftermath of the murder and finds the killer sitting calmly and peacefully in his bed clothes in a living room chair, seemingly no emotion about what he’s done. As Detective Nicholas lays into him with questions and gives a detailed description of his crimes, the description and Lo Bianco’s passionate performance are more chilling and effective than if we’d actually witnessed the murders.

These scenes are so effective and exciting that it makes what happens next in God Told Me To infuriating and desperately frustrating. Instead of capitalizing on these tense early scenes, God Told Me To veers off in a bizarre and misguided sci-fi direction that is downright confounding. As Detective Nicholas investigates the murders he finds out about a man claiming to be a messiah (Richard Lynch), a group of wealthy men who worship this would be messiah, and somehow, alien abductions and virgin births are involved.

Why aliens? I have no idea. Nothing that happens in the final act of God Told Me To is nearly as effective as the earlier, grittier and down and dirty violent scenes of the first half of the movie. It’s such a shame as it appears Cohen just didn’t know how to tie everything together and make a cohesive story. The sci-fi stuff, the aliens and virgin births are intended to explain the origins of the Messiah character, and Detective Nicholas himself, but all it really does is squander the excitement, intrigue and tension of the first part of the movie.

The ending of God Told Me To is almost completely divorced from the murders that drove the first part of the movie. It’s a remarkable anti-climax that drags on for much of the second half and all of the final act of God Told Me To. I can’t begin to explain how a movie as good as God Told Me To is in the first 50 minutes becomes something so bizarre, outlandish and silly in the final 40 minutes.

Someone needs to remake God Told Me To. A great horror director with a willingness to explore the nature of religious fervor and devotion crossing over into madness could make an incredible movie out of the early portion of God Told Me To. It’s such a shame that what could have become a horror classic is now barely a footnote. I could almost recommend God Told Me To based on how strong the early portion of God Told Me To is but the ending is such a crushing disappointment by comparison that it ruins the whole of the movie.

Larry Cohen was never a great filmmaker, he’s a schlockmeister as demonstrated by the Maniac Cop movies and his all time B-movie classic The Stuff. But for a brief moment in God Told Me To, Larry Cohen appeared to be a great director. He has a mastery of mystery, suspense and a strong sense of controlled chaos. Scenes arrive quickly, the speed of the scene to scene transitions is exciting and the ominous ‘God Told Me To confessions are effective and mysterious. And then the whole thing is thrown in the trash in favor of an alien plot so convoluted and silly that it ruins all of the good things about God Told Me To.

God Told Me To is the classic on the newest episode of the Everyone’s a Critic Movie Review Podcast. We are spending the month of October leading up to Halloween searching for lost classic horror movies, hidden gems of recent and not so recent vintage that could be added to the all time great horror movie canon. In the coming weeks the A24 movie Saint Maud and Jeremy Saulnier's directorial debut, 2007's Murder Party.

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