God Told Me To

Last updated
God Told Me To
God told me to,black and white poster.jpg
Movie poster
Directed by Larry Cohen
Written byLarry Cohen
Produced byLarry Cohen
Starring Tony Lo Bianco
Sandy Dennis
Sylvia Sidney
Sam Levene
Robert Drivas
Mike Kellin
Richard Lynch
Deborah Raffin
CinematographyPaul Glickman
Edited byArthur Mandelberg
William J. Waters
Chris Lebenzon
Michael D. Corey
Music by Frank Cordell
Production
company
The Georgia Company
Distributed by New World Pictures
Release date
  • October 22, 1976 (1976-10-22)
Running time
91 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

God Told Me To (released in some theatrical markets as Demon) is a 1976 science fiction horror film written, directed, and produced by Larry Cohen. Like many of Cohen's films, it is shot on location in New York City and incorporates aspects of the police procedural.

Contents

Plot

In New York City, a gunman perched atop a water tower, opens fire with a .22 caliber rifle on the crowded streets below, randomly killing fifteen pedestrians. Peter Nicholas, a devout Catholic NYPD detective, climbs the tower to talk to the sniper. Before jumping to his death, the gunman tells Nicholas that "God told" him to commit the murders.

Although traumatized by the attack, Nicholas investigates a series of seemingly unpremeditated murders that follow: a mass stabbing at a supermarket, a mass shooting by a police officer at a St. Patrick's Day parade, and a man who murders his wife and children. They have all been committed by a variety of unconnected, seemingly normal assailants who claim that God told them to kill. Nicholas learns that one of the murderers knew a long-haired young man named Bernard Phillips. When Nicholas visits Phillips' address, Phillips' mother assaults Nicholas with a knife, but she dies during the attack by falling down a flight of stairs. She turns out to have been a virgin and to have once claimed she was abducted by aliens. Nicholas' superiors refuse to acknowledge a religious motivation for the murders and suspend him, so he leaks this story to the press, causing a panic.

A corrupt high-level NYPD officer is stabbed to death by Zero, a gangster he had betrayed. Zero disguises the murder as one of the "God" killings; however, Nicholas correctly deduces that it is a cover for a non-connected murder, noting that the previous killers all remained where they committed their crimes and accepted being arrested or shot (or committing suicide) after confessing that "God told them to" commit the atrocities.

A group of wealthy religious cultists are in thrall to Bernard Phillips and are aware that Phillips is influencing the murderers as he contacts and controls them via psychic powers while informing them of each impending atrocity. Phillips has one of the members invite Nicholas to join them, but when Nicholas asks whether the follower knows about Phillips' mother, the follower suffers convulsions and drops dead.

Another cult member attempts to kill Nicholas by pushing him in front of a subway train, but when he fails, Nicholas forces him to take him to Phillips, who isolates himself in a fiery furnace room deep underground. After delivering Nicholas, the follower decapitates himself using an elevator. A brief meeting convinces Nicholas that he himself is special and that the reason Phillips does not kill him is that Phillips needs him for some purpose.

By researching his own adoption records, Nicholas finds an old woman who seems to be his birth mother. She explains that she gave up her out-of-wedlock child after she was brutally impregnated by a strange ball of light while she walked home from the New York Worlds Fair in 1941. The meeting distresses both of them, and Nicholas is wracked with doubt over who or what he is. He realizes that he too has psychic powers, which he uses to confront and kill Zero.

Nicholas confronts Phillips one last time and discovers the truth: both he and Phillips are the result of "virgin births" caused by a mysterious extraterrestrial "entity of light" with psychic/supernatural powers and advanced spacecraft technology. Nicholas' human genes are dominant, which is why he is unaware of his true nature, while Phillips is more like their unseen progenitor. Phillips reveals himself to be a hermaphrodite who wishes to spawn a new species with his "brother." Nicholas refuses and attacks Phillips, whose powers cause the building they are in to collapse. Nicholas manages to escape the scene but Phillips is killed. Nicholas is arrested for the murder of Phillips. As he is led into court by police, a news reporter asks him why he committed the crime. He responds, "God told me to." Nicholas is committed to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

Cast

Production

Cohen was inspired to make the film by the Bible. He thought God in the Bible was one of the most violent characters in literature. He was also influenced by the book Chariots of the Gods . [1]

The film was financed by Edgar Scherick and Daniel Blatt. They were originally credited as executive producers but Cohen says when they saw the finished film they insisted their names be taken off it. [2]

Robert Forster was originally cast in the lead role. A few days into filming he and Cohen had a falling out and Forster quit. Forster said Cohen "was one of those guys who yelled a lot on the set, and I said, "Hey, this isn't for me. Let me out of here." We parted friendly and all that." [3] Cohen replaced him with Tony Lo Bianco, who had been in Cohen's play The Nature of the Crime. [4]

Bernard Herrmann, who had scored Cohen's earlier film It's Alive , was originally assigned to score God Told Me To as well, and Cohen claims on the DVD commentary track that Herrmann saw the first cut of the film immediately after completing the recording sessions for his score to Taxi Driver and made notes on how he believed it could be scored. However, within the next 15 hours, Herrmann died. Cohen then asked composer Miklós Rózsa to score the film. Rózsa turned it down, saying "God told me not to". [5] Frank Cordell composed the score heard in the released version of God Told Me To, and both it and Taxi Driver were dedicated to Herrmann. Composer Robert O. Ragland who later scored Cohen's 1982 film Q wrote two of the songs for the film.

The 'alien abduction' sequence, where a naked woman is drawn up into the cavernous interior of an extraterrestrial spacecraft, features (manipulated) generic stock model footage from Gerry Anderson's science fiction TV series Space: 1999 .

Andy Kaufman appears as a possessed policeman who goes on a shooting rampage at the Saint Patrick's Day parade it was Kaufman's first role in any film, and the same footage was later used for the finale of a documentary called The Passion of Andy Kaufman, in a segment called "Thus Spake Zarathustra", with music by Eumir Deodato. Sylvia Sidney appears as Detective Nicholas's long-lost, traumatized mother in a nursing home.

Release

The film was sold to New World Pictures. It did not perform well on original release so it was re-issued under the title of Demon.

Reception

Initial reviews were negative, with Roger Ebert giving the film 1 out of 4. [6] The film has since been reappraised, with Rolling Stone naming it one of the "20 Scariest Films You've Never Seen". [7]

In the early 2010s, Time Out conducted a poll with several authors, directors, actors and critics who have worked within the horror genre to vote for their top horror films. [8] God Told Me To placed at number 94 on their top 100 list. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernard Herrmann</span> American composer (1911–1975)

Bernard Herrmann was an American composer and conductor best known for his work in composing for films. As a conductor, he championed the music of lesser-known composers. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest film composers. Alex Ross writes that "Over four decades, he revolutionized movie scoring by abandoning the illustrative musical techniques that dominated Hollywood in the 1930s and imposing his own peculiar harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary."

<i>Jason and the Argonauts</i> (1963 film) 1963 film by Don Chaffey

Jason and the Argonauts is a 1963 independent fantasy adventure film distributed by Columbia Pictures. It was produced by Charles H. Schneer, directed by Don Chaffey, and stars Todd Armstrong, while co-starring Nancy Kovack, Honor Blackman, and Gary Raymond.

<i>Domu: A Childs Dream</i> Japanese manga series

Domu is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Katsuhiro Otomo. Similar to his work Akira, the story centers on an old man and a child possessing extrasensory powers. It was serialized between 1980 and 1981 in Futabasha's Action Deluxe, with the chapters collected and published as a tankōbon in 1983. The main inspiration for Domu came partly from an apartment complex Otomo lived in when he first moved to Tokyo, and partly from a news report he heard about a rash of suicides that occurred at a separate apartment.

<i>The Dead Zone</i> (film) 1983 film by David Cronenberg

The Dead Zone is a 1983 American science-fiction thriller film directed by David Cronenberg. The screenplay, by Jeffrey Boam, is based on the 1979 novel of the same title by Stephen King. The film stars Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Tom Skerritt, Herbert Lom, Martin Sheen, Anthony Zerbe, and Colleen Dewhurst. Walken plays a schoolteacher, Johnny Smith, who awakens from a coma to find he has psychic powers. The film received positive reviews. The novel also inspired a television series of the same name in the early 2000s, starring Anthony Michael Hall, the pilot episode of which borrowed some ideas and changes used in the 1983 film.

<i>The Crow: Salvation</i> 2000 supernatural superhero film directed by Bharat Nalluri

The Crow: Salvation is a 2000 American superhero film directed by Bharat Nalluri. Starring Eric Mabius as Alex Corvis and the third installment of The Crow film series, based on the comic book character of the same name by James O'Barr. After its distributor cancelled the intended wide theatrical release due to The Crow: City of Angels' negative critical reception, The Crow: Salvation was released direct-to-video after a limited theatrical run.

<i>Sisters</i> (1972 film) 1972 film by Brian De Palma

Sisters is a 1972 American psychological horror film directed by Brian De Palma and starring Margot Kidder, Jennifer Salt, and Charles Durning. It follows a French Canadian model's separated conjoined twin who is suspected of having committed a brutal murder witnessed by a newspaper reporter in Staten Island, New York City.

<i>Frailty</i> (2001 film) 2001 film by Bill Paxton

Frailty is a 2001 American psychological horror film directed by and starring Bill Paxton, and co-starring Matthew McConaughey and Powers Boothe. It marks Paxton's directorial debut. The plot focuses on the strange relationship between two young brothers and their father, who believes that he has been commanded by God to kill demons disguised as people. Released on April 12, 2002, the film received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $17 million.

<i>Books of Blood</i> Series of fiction anthologies collecting original stories

Books of Blood is a series of six horror fiction anthologies collecting original stories written by British author, playwright, and filmmaker Clive Barker in 1984 and 1985. Known primarily for writing stage plays beforehand, Barker gained a wider audience and fanbase through this anthology series, leading to a successful career as a novelist. Originally presented as six volumes, the anthologies were subsequently re-published in two omnibus editions containing three volumes each. Each volume contains four, five or six stories. The Volume 1–3 omnibus contained a foreword by Barker's fellow Liverpudlian horror writer Ramsey Campbell. Author Stephen King praised Books of Blood, leading to a quote from him appearing on the first US edition of the book: "I have seen the future of horror and his name is Clive Barker."

James Michael Bernard was a British film composer, particularly associated with horror films produced by Hammer Film Productions. Beginning with The Quatermass Xperiment, he scored such films as The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula. He also occasionally scored non-Hammer films including Windom's Way (1957) and Torture Garden (1967).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sadako Yamamura</span> Antagonist in the Ring franchise

Sadako Yamamura, reimagined as Park Eun-seo (Korean: 박은서) and Samara Morgan for their respective adaptations, is the main antagonist of Koji Suzuki's Ring novel series and the film franchise of the same name. Sadako's fictional history alternates between continuities, but all depict her as the vengeful ghost of a psychic who was murdered and thrown into a well. As a ghost, she uses nensha, her most distinctive power and weapon, to create a cursed video tape. Whoever watches the tape will die exactly one week later unless the tape is copied and shown to another person, who must then repeat the same process.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Larry Cohen</span> American filmmaker (1936–2019)

Lawrence George Cohen was an American filmmaker. He originally emerged as the writer of blaxploitation films such as Black Caesar and Hell Up in Harlem, before becoming known as an author of horror and science fiction films — often containing police procedural and satirical elements — during the 1970s and 1980s. His directorial works include It's Alive (1974) and its sequels, God Told Me To (1976), The Stuff (1985) and A Return to Salem's Lot (1987).

<i>Its Alive</i> (1974 film) 1974 American science fiction horror film by Larry Cohen

It's Alive is a 1974 American science fiction horror film written, produced, and directed by Larry Cohen. It stars John P. Ryan and Sharon Farrell as a couple whose infant child turns out to be a vicious mutant. The film's cast also includes James Dixon, William Wellman Jr., Shamus Locke, Andrew Duggan, Guy Stockwell, and Michael Ansara. The baby was designed and created by special effects make-up artist Rick Baker, and the film's score was composed by Bernard Herrmann.

<i>The Fury</i> (film) 1978 film by Brian De Palma

The Fury is a 1978 American supernatural horror thriller film directed by Brian De Palma and starring Kirk Douglas, John Cassavetes, Amy Irving, Carrie Snodgress, Charles Durning, and Andrew Stevens. The screenplay by John Farris was based on his 1976 novel of the same name.

<i>Psycho</i> (1998 film) 1998 psychological horror film

Psycho is a 1998 American psychological horror film produced and directed by Gus Van Sant, and starring Vince Vaughn, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen, William H. Macy, and Anne Heche. It is a modern remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film of the same name, in which an embezzler arrives at an old motel run by a mysterious man named Norman Bates; both films are adapted from Robert Bloch's 1959 novel.

<i>Galerians</i> 1999 video game

Galerians is a 1999 survival horror video game developed by Polygon Magic for the PlayStation. The game follows a boy named Rion who discovers he has psychic powers. He has amnesia, and in the process of learning his identity, he discovers that he is humanity's last hope for survival against the Galerians, genetically enhanced humans. The game has a sequel, Galerians: Ash on PlayStation 2.

<i>The Visitor</i> (1979 film) 1979 film by Giulio Paradisi

The Visitor is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Giulio Paradisi and based on a story by Egyptian-born Italian writer and producer Ovidio G. Assonitis. It features a cast of well-established stars including John Huston, Shelley Winters, Mel Ferrer, Glenn Ford and Sam Peckinpah with supporting appearances by Neal Boortz and Steve Somers. It was filmed on location in Atlanta, Georgia and at Cinecittà Studios in Rome. It has garnered a cult following over the years.

<i>Halloween</i> (1978 film) 1978 film by John Carpenter

Halloween is a 1978 American independent slasher film directed and scored by John Carpenter, who co-wrote it with its producer Debra Hill. It stars Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, P. J. Soles, and Nancy Loomis. Set mostly in the fictional Illinois town of Haddonfield, the film follows mental patient Michael Myers, who was committed to a sanitarium for murdering his teenage sister one Halloween night during his childhood; he escapes 15 years later and returns to Haddonfield, where he stalks teenage babysitter Laurie Strode and her friends while his psychiatrist Dr. Samuel Loomis pursues him.

<i>Endless Night</i> (1972 film) 1972 British film by Sidney Gilliat

Endless Night is a 1972 British horror-mystery film directed by Sidney Gilliat and starring Hayley Mills, Britt Ekland, Per Oscarsson, Hywel Bennett, and George Sanders. Based on the 1967 novel Endless Night by Agatha Christie, the plot follows a newlywed couple who feel threatened after building their dream home on cursed land.

<i>Sette note in nero</i> 1977 film directed by Lucio Fulci

Sette note in nero is a 1977 Italian giallo film directed by Lucio Fulci and co-written by him with Roberto Gianviti and Dardano Sacchetti. Sette note in nero stars Jennifer O'Neill, Gianni Garko, Marc Porel, and Ida Galli. The film involves a woman who begins experiencing psychic visions that lead her to discover a murder; her husband is charged with the killing. The psychic must embark on an investigation with a paranormal researcher to clear her husband's name of the crime.

<i>Promising Young Woman</i> (score) 2020 film score by Anthony Willis

Promising Young Woman (Original Motion Picture Score) is the score album to the 2020 film Promising Young Woman, directed by Emerald Fennell, and featuring an original score composed by Anthony Willis. It was released on December 11, 2020, by Back Lot Music. The score consisted of incepts from classical thriller film scores, reminiscing of Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann's compositions. The score was recorded at Synchron Stage in Vienna, and made use of conventional classic instruments, suiting with the film and its theme, and not being inspired or modified from the incorporated songs used in the soundtrack album. The score was positively received, and Willis was nominated for Best Original Music at the 74th BAFTA Awards.

References

Citations

  1. Doyle 2015, p. 160.
  2. Doyle 2015, p. 158.
  3. Phipps, Keith (26 April 2000). "Robert Forster". AV Club.
  4. Doyle 2015.
  5. "God Told Me to (1976)". IMDb .
  6. Ebert, Roger (December 1, 1976). "God Told Me To movie review & film summary (1976)". Chicago Sun-Times .
  7. "20 Scariest Horror Movies You've Never Seen". Rolling Stone . 29 October 2014.
  8. "The 100 best horror films". Time Out . Retrieved April 13, 2014.
  9. TH. "The 100 best horror films: the list". Time Out . Archived from the original on December 23, 2013. Retrieved April 13, 2014.

Sources