September 25, 2018
Written by: Larry Cohen
Starring: Tony Lo Bianco, Deborah Raffin, Sandy Dennis
Budget: $300,000
Tagline: Was he a god - the Devil or even something more terrifying?
Trivia: According to Larry Cohen, during the St. Patrick's Day Parade scene, he was organizing the crew, only to see Andy Kaufman, dressed in his policeman's uniform, antagonizing and making faces at the crowd. Some of the crowd members then attempted to jump the barricades and beat Kaufman, and Cohen had to hold them back.
God Told Me To is another of those peculiarly 1970s films with that gritty and unpolished look to it and that dark cynicism that would come to represent the decade. For most people, I imagine, the movie just have started off just fine. Senseless mass murders. Violent, but nothing too extreme as to be too shocking. However, at an hour into the movie, the narrative takes a sharp turn towards science fiction and I think it is here that people began to have a problem with the film. However, when you look at writer/director Larry Cohen's inspiration for this film, the narrative makes perfect sense. Cohen stated that his first influence with the Old Testament biblical God which explains the violence. His other influence was a 1968 book called Chariots of the Gods, which attributes ancient religiosity and human development to aliens.
This idea has since then been picked up by others (Prometheus and Stargate are a couple of examples, but also The History Channel seems to have a weird obsession with it as well). Some other ideas claim that aliens and abductions are all part of demonic forces controlled by a mysterious group called the Men in Black (the Will Smith movies are very, very loosely based on this idea). The guys at The Last Podcast on the Left do a great three part episode on this story that I highly recommend if you're interested in aliens, demons, black magic, and alien abductions (Aleister Crowley and L. Ron Hubbard are also a significant part of the story. Check it out!) Either way, if you keep the director's influences in mind when watching the movie, the had turn in the narrative is not all that surprising.
The movie follows the story of veteran cop and devout Catholic Peter Nicholas who is trying to stop a wave of mass shootings in New York City. The first mass shooting opens the film as seemingly random people are shot from an assailant on top of a water tower. Nicholas eventually has the opportunity to talk with him and we learn that he is a twenty one year old college student, but was commanded to kill because "God told me to." There are several other people throughout the film that calmly commit acts of mass violence because also "God told them to." One of the mass shooters is played by none other than Andy Kaufman who begins to kill a bunch of police officers at the St. Patrick's Parade. Eventually, Nicholas is able to connect the mass shooters to a man named Bernard Phillips and a strange cult that he seems to lead.
Alright, get ready for the movie to go from violent crime drama (basically Dirty Harry) to scifi weirdness. Nicholas is finally able to talk to Phillips who lives in the boiler room at the bottom of some building. Later we learn that Phillips claims his birth was the result of an alien abduction his mother experienced in the 1940s. He actually does appear to have telepathic powers, and Phillips allows Nicholas to live because he too is "special." After digging into his own history, Nicholas finds his mother who claims after an alien abduction, she had a virgin birth and Nicholas begins to wonder who or what he is? Curious of this he goes out to a poolhall where a local gangster lives who killed his friend earlier in the movie. Using telepathic powers, Nicholas kills half a dozen guys, finally mind-forcing the main bad guy to slit his own throat. Nicholas once again confronts Phillips and learns that Phillips hopes that Nicholas will help him spawn a new race of humans that have the powers bestowed upon them by the aliens. After being denied, Phillips destroys the building he's staying in, thereby committing suicide, which will ultimately be blamed on Nicholas who will tell cops "God told me to." Full circle.
As I mentioned earlier, the film has a dark and gritty feel to it. Many of the directors in the 1970s learned from both the European art house films and from the documentarians how to create more realistic and low budget films. These directors and films, of which God Told Me To is an example, are a rejection of the big budget Hollywood films of the previous decades, the whitewashed and polished feel of those earlier films. God Told Me To has a documentary feel to it, at least at the beginning. The filmmakers utilized handheld camera and minimalistic editing. This really makes the film feel a lot darker. We see the characters, the city, and the movie how it truly is, with all its darkness and grime.
I also like how the filmmakers used religious imagery and sounds to heighten the religiosity of the film. Scattered throughout the film's score is the chanting of monks commonly used in film to add a holiness to moments. The first mass shooters suicide as he jumps from a building is accompanied by this chanting. There are also numerous moments where the detective Nicholas is struggling with is own religious issues. Deeply Catholic he is unable to divorce his estranged wife and racked with guilt for being with another woman while still legally and religiously married. This religious turmoil is alleviated after discovering that he is himself now essentially a god. Also, the filmmakers utilized the lighting of eyes to emphasize possession which will be a continuing staple of possession movies (both demonic and vampiric).
I understand why audiences would have been confused when the movie was initially released. It is a bizarre concept for sure. However, the fact that this idea has been picked up several times since then shows that there is something to people's interest in the topic. I personally loved the film. The grittiness of the beginning of the film, the cold calm conversations the mass murderers have about killing, and then the inclusion of science fiction elements into the narrative all made for a great and truly memorable film. Give the film a shot and go listen to The Last Podcast on the Left's three episodes on the "men in black."
...what's your thoughts?
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