Larry Cohen’s God Told Me To (1976) is one of the most audacious and thematically combustible films to emerge from the 1970s horror landscape- a feverish blend of police procedural, religious horror, and science fiction that channels the urban paranoia and spiritual unease of its era. Written, directed, and produced by Cohen, the film unfolds with the raw, guerrilla energy that defines his best work, using the gritty streets of New York City as both a backdrop and a character in its own right.
Larry Cohen was a prolific and innovative, and often subversive, writer-director for both feature film and television, whose career spanned genres and decades, leaving an indelible mark on cult and genre cinema. He first gained attention with the gritty blaxploitation classics Black Caesar (1973) and Hell Up in Harlem (1973), before making his name in horror and science fiction with the It’s Alive trilogy (beginning in 1974), which blended family drama with ecological and mutant-monster terror.
With Cohen’s God Told Me To (1976), he pushed boundaries with its fusion of detective drama, supernatural thriller, and speculative, imaginative science fantasy, earning cult status for its audacious themes and urban paranoia. He continued to innovate with films like Q: The Winged Serpent (1982), a unique black comedy monster movie set in New York City, and The Stuff (1985), a satirical horror film about a deadly, addictive dessert.
God Told Me To opens with a jarring act of violence: a sniper perched atop a water tower calmly picks off pedestrians below, killing fifteen people in the span of minutes. When NYPD detective Peter Nicholas (Tony Lo Bianco) confronts the shooter, the man, almost serene, explains his motive with chilling simplicity: “God told me to,” before leaping to his death.
This phrase becomes the haunting refrain of the film, echoed by a series of seemingly ordinary New Yorkers who, in rapid succession, commit brutal murders, each claiming divine instruction as their reason. As Nicholas investigates, the case spirals from urban crime drama into metaphysical nightmare: mass stabbings, a police officer opening fire at a parade (in a memorable early screen appearance by Andy Kaufman), and a family annihilation linked by the same cryptic justification.
Cohen’s script is a wild, genre-mashing ride, propelling Nicholas through a labyrinth of clues that lead from the city’s underbelly to the heights of cosmic horror. The detective’s journey is as much internal as external: a devout Catholic, Nicholas finds his faith and identity unraveling as he discovers that the murders are orchestrated by Bernard Phillips (Richard Lynch), a mysterious, androgynous cult leader with psychic powers and a messianic aura. Phillips, it emerges, is the product of a “virgin birth” after his mother’s alien abduction – a revelation that not only reframes the film’s religious overtones as extraterrestrial intervention, but also implicates Nicholas himself as another hybrid, caught between human and alien ancestry.
The film’s most striking set pieces- the opening massacre, the parade shooting, the chillingly calm confession of a family murderer- are shot with a documentary immediacy. Cohen and cinematographer Paul Glickman employ handheld cameras, natural lighting, and real New York locations, giving the film a vérité authenticity that makes its supernatural turns all the more jarring.
The city itself is rendered as a living organism: chaotic, dangerous, and indifferent, its steam vents and neon-lit streets amplifying the film’s sense of urban malaise and existential dread. That gritty feel of New York City in the 1970s permeated and captured cinema in the decade. When the narrative veers into the surreal-alien abduction flashbacks, glowing messiahs, and the infamous “alien vagina” reveal-the effect is both disorienting and hypnotic, a collision of grindhouse exploitation and philosophical provocation.
Tony Lo Bianco anchors the film with a performance of haunted intensity, his stoic exterior slowly eroded by the mounting horror and personal revelations. He’s ably supported by a cast of genre stalwarts and character actors, including Sandy Dennis as Nicholas’s estranged wife, Sylvia Sidney as a doomed mother, and Richard Lynch, whose ethereal menace as Phillips is unforgettable, as is all of Lynch’s other work.
Sandy Dennis was renowned for her utterly distinctive acting style, marked by a nervous, fragile energy, a fluttering vulnerability, and a method-trained authenticity that made her performances feel raw and unpredictable.
Critics often described her as “neurotic and mannered,” with a signature delivery that included sudden shifts in pitch, staccato phrasing, and expressive, almost twitchy gestures, all of which lent her characters a sense of emotional volatility and depth. Dennis excelled in both stage and screen roles, earning two Tony Awards and an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress as the vulnerable Honey in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).
Other notable roles include the idealistic teacher in Up the Down Staircase (1967), the quietly obsessed Frances in That Cold Day in the Park (1969), and the eccentric Mona in Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982). Her performances, whether in drama or comedy, were transformative, imbuing even supporting roles with a haunting, unforgettable presence. And she was crazy about her cats, like me!
Richard Lynch, meanwhile, was instantly recognizable for his striking, angular features and intense, almost spectral screen presence- often attributed to the burn scars he sustained early in life, which gave him a uniquely menacing, otherworldly look. Lynch’s acting style was chillingly understated yet magnetic, exuding a quiet, simmering menace that made him a natural fit for villains and enigmatic figures, becaming a cult icon in horror and genre cinema, Richard Lynch delivers one of his most haunting performances in The Premonition (1976), embodying the carnival clown Jude with a strange, unnerving charisma-in that film, his portrayal is both profoundly unsettling and unexpectedly sympathetic, imbuing the character with a deranged innocence and a sense of alienation that lingers long after the film ends.
Other of his genre films include God Told Me To (1976), where his ethereal, messianic antagonist left an indelible mark; The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982); Bad Dreams (1988); and Halloween (2007). Lynch’s legacy is that of a performer who could command the screen with a glance, embodying both supernatural evil and tragic complexity.
Even in fleeting roles in Cohen’s film, such as Andy Kaufman’s deranged police officer, the ensemble brings a lived-in authenticity that grounds the film’s wildest conceits.
Frank Cordell’s score, originally intended to be composed by Bernard Herrmann before his untimely death, adds a layer of somber unease, while Cohen’s script laces the narrative with biting social commentary on faith, fanaticism, and the thin line between religious devotion and madness.
The film’s willingness to question the benevolence of higher powers and to conflate religious ecstasy with alien manipulation was controversial in its day and remains provocative today.
Critically, God Told Me To was met with confusion and some derision upon release. Roger Ebert called it “the most confused feature-length film I’ve ever seen,” but its reputation has only grown with time. Modern critics and horror historians now recognize it as a cult classic, a film whose “messy” structure and tonal shifts are part of its singular charm and lasting impact. Its influence can be traced in later works that blend urban realism with cosmic horror and religious paranoia, from The X-Files and beyond.
In the context of 1970s horror, God Told Me To stands out for its fearless genre-blending, its willingness to confront taboo subjects, and its portrait of a city- and a society- on the brink of spiritual and existential crisis. Cohen’s film is as unsettling as it is original: a work that refuses easy answers, leaving audiences with the chilling possibility that the most terrifying commands might come not from monsters or madmen, but from the voices we trust most.
