Watch God Told Me To For Free

good back-story, and good acting

Fresh and Exciting

Excellent adaptation.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I am 33 years old and I think this is the first time in my life that I have ever watched a movie twice in a row on the same night. As I watched the film for the first time, each scene had me thrown off and confused, but fully intrigued. The movie continuously stepped into territory I could never have expected it to, once past the first 20 minutes. I had a hard time keeping up with how each of the characters were relevant to what was happening, and often to what was happening in general, but never to the film's error - the progression of the plot is just that far out there that it's a lot for anyone to take in the first time. I knew immediately as I reached the second half of the movie that I would need to give it another viewing. Everything about this movie is...mystical - what begins as a very simple reality-based concept blossoms into an eerie flower so bonkers it must be experienced to be explained.I expected this to play like most of Cohen's movies I've seen: a rather serious concept but full of laughs induced by witty satire, but this movie is different...there's not much to laugh about here! What it does offer is seriously ambitious, daring filmmaking. It's a slow-creeping disease that you'll want to get. The film eventually offers some visually stylistic choices that I feel are unlike anything else I have ever seen. I'm largely a fan of the cast as it is very versatile and unique. Most every actor in the film has the ability to take the absurd and keep it anchored in the realm of believability for the viewer. Psychologically, the movie has so many layers - there are so many different elements to think about!Looking at the movie as a whole, the ONLY movie that I could say it is even REMOTELY similar to in any way is Nicolas Roeg's DON'T LOOK NOW from 1973, another film I am a huge fan of. Mix in elements of early Cronenberg, at times Dario Argento's "Mother trilogy", and all the elements that make Larry Cohen films his own - and you start to get a loose idea of what kind of film you are dealing with here.It's completely one of a kind, completely insane, and after watching this and Bone (his debut film from 1972) for the first time I am officially ushering Larry Cohen into my personal category of the great film directors of our time. I grew up loving b-horror masterpiece THE STUFF (1985) but had no idea what else his catalogue would have to offer! I am so excited to explore the rest! Black Caeser, It's Alive, Q, etc...

Some extraordinary talent, actors and director and producers, have worked mostly very well together to present a strange story.However, there are some script holes that detract from what is a strange combination of science fiction and murder and pseudo-religious fantasy.Ultimately it is rather disappointing, the ante-climax and ending just not well fitting into the rest of the story.Director Larry Cohen showed mastery, in camera angles, and variations of shots, and in getting superb and superior performances from some of the finest actors ever assembled into one cast.Writer Larry Cohen ... well, he's not so good as director Larry Cohen. His plot just had too many elements that did not hold together.I recommend this film for people with enough curiosity to put up with the incompatibility of those elements and with an interest in superior production values and magnificent acting.

A New York detective investigates a series of murders committed by random New Yorkers who claim that "God told them to." I have seen most of what Larry Cohen has done, but this title escaped me. I was aware of it, but tracking down a copy seemed unusually hard. Not sure why. But thank you, Blue Underground, for releasing a great disc with some great features.The very concept is fascinating. It makes for a good action thriller or horror film, but it also raises an interesting ethical dilemma. If God truly told people to commit acts of violence, could we say those people were wrong? Do our laws outweigh the laws or commands of God? Instinctively, we would say no... until he asks the worst of us.

God Told Me To (1975) Directed by: Larry Cohen Starring: Tony De Bianco Yes! I've been trying to track this one down for a long long time, and immediately upon spotting it coupled with some film called Pranks on the usual Vipco rip-off label I snatched it up and ran home and watched The Case of The Bloody Iris (review soon).Then I watched this film, which doesn't really belong in the horror genre as such. It's almost like a David Cronenberg, David Lynch type affair, although I think God Told Me To was around before both of those directors had made their mark.God Told Me To was made by Larry Cohen, who appears on this site in the form of two inferior, later flicks: Q The Winged Serpent and The Stuff. Both those films are a laugh, and suitably trashy, but God Told Me To has an extra sense of weirdness and general lunacy which makes it, for me, his best film.A lone gunman on top of a water tower in New York starts wasting people with a rifle. After killing fourteen people, cop Tony De Bianco manages to get near enough to try and talk him down. Upon being asked why he's killing folk, the young man cheerily replies 'God Told Me To' and throws himself off the building.This isn't an isolated case, however. Someone else goes crazy in a supermarket, whereas a cop (played by Andy Kaufman!) starts shooting people during the St Patrick's parade. One guy picks up a shotgun and wastes him family, pleasantly describing what he's done to Bianco in what makes for quite a chilling scene. When asked why they did it, every one of them answers 'God Told Me To'.Bianco begins investigating and finds that indeed all these people had been in contact with someone God-like, but no on can remember his face. Has God returned to Earth? Who is the businessman who warned the cops of the impending attacks? And what's Bianco really got to do with it all? There's no need to go on with the plot, because it would just waste things. Most of the appeal of God Told Me To is sitting on the couch scratching your head, wondering where the film is going to head to next. It's by turns a thriller, a horror, and bit of sci-fi. The ending for me was pretty satisfying, and I can't wait to watch it again (something I rarely say on this site).Some people might have a problem with Cohen's direction, however. He seems to a lot of stuff in one take, and his editing is a bit shaky at times. As this is a low budget flick the special effects are awful too, but none of these points made the film any worse for me. It could for some people, however.Strange that Cohen would go on to direct one of the worst films ever in the late eighties. Anyone else watched Return to Salem's Lot? He wrote Maniac Cop around the same time though. Which was good.But he also wrote Phone Booth, which was a bit dodgy.