God Told Me To *** (1976, Tony Lo Bianco, Deborah Raffin, Sandy Dennis, Sylvia Sidney) – Classic Movie Review 8298

Tony Lo Bianco stars as Manhattan police detective Peter Nicholas, who is on the case of a chain of sniper killers impelled by a demonic figure (‘God Told Me To’ they say after each of the killings) in writer-producer-director Larry Cohen’s peculiar, not always entirely coherent but well-cast and imaginative 1976 horror piece God Told Me To [Demon]. With an original screenplay by the admirable Larry Cohen, and Deborah Raffin, Sandy Dennis, Sylvia Sidney in the co-starring cast, this is a cultish item from the director of It’s Alive (1974).

Lo Bianco slips effortlessly into his part, there is a good, cheap B-movie atmosphere, plenty of tension and interest, an urgent quasi-realist look, and a superb old-time cast, and a young Andy Kaufman (in his debut) plays a possessed cop who fires on the St Patrick’s Day parade, in a scene Cohen did not have a permit to film.

Also in the cast are Sam Levene, Robert Drivas, Richard Lynch, Mike Kellin, Sammy Williams, Jo Flores Chase, William Roerick, Lester Rawlins, Harry Bellaver, George Patterson, Walter Steels, John Heffernan, Alan Cauldwell and Robert Nichols.

The title was changed to Demon in America when some TV stations would not accept ads for the film.

The film is dedicated to the memory of Bernard Herrmann, who wrote the score for It’s Alive (1974).

RIP Larry Cohen (July 15, 1941 – March 23, 2019), best known for It’s Alive (1974), God Told Me To (1976), It’s Alive II [It Lives Again] (1978), The Stuff (1985) and It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987) and his screenwriting works Maniac Cop (1988), Phone Booth (2002), Cellular (2004) and Captivity (2007).

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8298

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