Along with the king of low-budget horror Roger Corman, Larry Cohen has made some of the cheesiest horror pictures imaginable. There is the absurdity of "It's Alive" and the pointlessness of "The Stuff," one of the worst films of the 1980's. "God Told Me To" (also known as "Demon") is one of those rarities, a crude but continually engaging thriller that remains original in conception, if silly in overall execution.
A series of unmotivated and unrelated killings have been occurring in New York City. The killings involve either a sniper randomly shooting people on the streets, a cop who suddenly smiles and starts shooting passerby in a parade, a family man who quietly shoots his entire family, and so on. The connection between all these killers is their motivation: God told them to do it. This raises the ire of Peter Nicholas (Tony Lo Bianco), a cop with religious beliefs who goes to church every Sunday. How could God tell these people to kill? Is this God's way of letting the world know He exists? Or did these sudden killers just snap?
Nicholas is convinced that something weird is going on in New York but the police force does not support his harebrained theory (though he is able to predict a killing in a parade from a tip). His wife (Sandy Dennis) fears for him, though they do not live together. His supportive girlfriend (Deborah Raffin) fears for Nicholas as well. And then Nicholas discovers that a blonde-haired, Christ-like figure had appeared to each of the killers prior to the actual murders. Is this mysterious figure the Son of God, or an alien force?
"God Told Me To" has lots of surprises in store, and its documentary-like staginess, a hand-held camera is used in almost every scene at street level, enhances the plausibility. Perhaps due to a meager budget, Larry Cohen does not show special-effects of any kind (though one FX sequence has been reportedly stolen from the television show "Space:1999"). Cohen's strength lies in the superb, formidable cast, including Sylvia Sydney as a formerly abducted woman who bore a child though she was a virgin, Richard Lynch as the soft-spoken Christ-like figure, Andy Kaufman brief turn as a smiling cop, Deborah Raffin's compassionate girlfriend of Nicholas, and finally, Lo Bianco's slow burn as a frazzled cop who is shaken by the religious implications of these murders.
There is a lot to admire in "God Told Me To" but it does conclude with a fire-and-brimstone finale, echoing "Carrie's" similar ending, that does little to stir the imagination. And some of the scenes where Lo Bianco seems to go nutty inside apartment corridors and noirish-lit pool rooms also jettisons the philosophical nature of the material. Often thrilling, funny, exciting and tense, "God Told Me To" is one hell of a ride for a B movie. It's just that its aspirations seemed to be emanating from an A movie.
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