FANTASIA OBSCURA: A Religious Cult Leader in 1970s New York City? No Way!
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, if you can make it there, it’s one hell of a ride…
God Told Me To (1976)
(Dist.: New World Pictures; Dir.: Larry Cohen)
Larry Cohen is probably one of the most under-appreciated writer/directors working in genre productions. His name may not come to the top of everyone’s lists, but his work is indispensable not only for what he’s done but what he made possible. Without him, we might not have had genre procedurals on television like The X-Files, much of the Blaxsploitation genre, and the entire urban fantasy subgenre.
An overview of his work places him in the 1960s as creator for Quinn-Martin Productions of The Invaders, a show about an alien infiltration of Earth where its two-season run used more elements of his writing from The Defenders and The Fugitive than it did the usual space invasion tropes. His films Black Caesar and Hell Up in Harlem made a star of Fred Williamson and became serious entries in the canon of the genre. And his urban set fantasies Q and The Stuff became horror fixtures in the VCR Age, buttressed with more mundane urban-set horrors as Maniac Cop and Phone Booth.
And the film that bridged his TV and Grindhouse years with his later output was a perfect alchemy that brought everything together in a New York that nearly dropped dead for reasons other than those in the screenplay.
Our story opens with pedestrians and a bicyclist in front of Bloomingdale’s being shot with a high powered rifle from a nearby water tower on a building roof. Among the responding officers is Detective Peter Nicholas (Tony Lo Bianco) who has a few words with the shooter to try and talk him down, before he explains himself, saying “God told me to” right before putting down the rifle and doing a header onto the roof.
For Nicholas, it’s one more complication in an already chaotic life. Nicholas is already struggling with questions of faith, as a devoted Catholic who won’t divorce his wife Martha (Sandy Dennis) even though he lives with his girlfriend Casey (Deborah Raffin), from whom he hides from her the fact that he goes to Mass every morning before reporting for duty. This odd case with a shooter claiming divine command gets under his skin almost immediately, before things get crazier.
Soon, a tip comes in to Detective Nicolas that one of the police officers marching in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade is going to go on a shooting rampage. While the rest of the department considers it a crank call, Nicolas tries to get to the scene to prevent it; unfortunately, just as he was warned, there is mass shooting carried out by a rogue cop (Andy Kaufman, in his first film role) whose last words after being taken down were, “God told me to.”
The pressure’s on Nicholas to get to the bottom of this, as his shooter becomes the first instance of a growing number of bloody instances, including a father dispatching his family with serene detachment, all explaining their actions with the title of the film. The pressure to solve the case becomes intense…
…and far less important once Nicholas discovers the truth: That each crime was inspired by a cult leader, Bernard Philips (Richard Lynch), able to drive these people to sin in his name through bending their will, an ability he has thanks to his being the product of an alien mating with a human. And to Nicholas’ horror, finding Philips not only solves the murders, but answers his own questions about his personal faith and place in the universe, especially who his birth mother was.
The revelation (no pun intended) that the answer to everything is the love child of William Peter Blatty and Erich Von Daniken is a grand, heady idea that almost doesn’t get a chance to resonate with the audience, thanks to the asides and dangling plot lines the film leaves in its wake. There’s a lot the film crams into its running time, which confused many reviewers on release, such as Roger Ebert; you can argue that with some judicious editing and dropping a fifth of the cast, the film might have been better remembered.
However, that would have diminished from the maniacal energy, the vibe that the film embraces and immerses you in, a chaos with dangerous overtones that reflected the spirit of the city Cohen shot in. His use of locations throughout the city (often shot gruella style as he never bothered to get filming permits) were as carefully treated and lovingly framed as those shot at the same time by Martin Scorsese in Taxi Driver; in fact, after he finished working for Scorsese, composer Bernard Hermann had accepted the gig to score God Told Me To, but passed away literally hours into the task. Only a few studio interior shots were done outside of New York; with Kaufman Astoria a year away from reopening for work on The Wiz and Silvercup Studios still a bakery for a few more years, there was no chance to further allow the city even more time to make its presence felt as a major supporting character.
Lo Bianco’s Peter Nicholas is the perfect costar to work with New York in the film. His beaten-down-but-still-proceeding-forward police detective keeps us watching as the anchor keeping everything in place, even when the plot requires major leaps of faith (again, no pun intended) from its audience. And when the reveals come as the movie wraps up, despite all that’s asked of him, he maintains Nicholas’ steady character core, allowing us to more easily flow with what we’re witnessing.
And that’s Cohen’s genius right there, to do in genre work what both Scorsese was doing at the time and Woody Allen would soon start to do in earnest with Annie Hall: He took a story that reflected its environment, shot in that place while infusing its spirit in the work, and made the location a character in its own right. When Cohen embraced New York, she embraced him back, and for treating her right, the city rewarded him well.
And no, God Told Me To is no Taxi Driver or Annie Hall, but would we have had as many good projects shot in New York if only two directors had tried it? It couldn’t have hurt, you know?
NEXT TIME: What, we’re getting leftovers? Aw, man…
