Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

A Disappointing Continuation

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

...Hated how it finished. Actually, after the first pretty solid and interesting 20 minutes, it went off the rails for the duration. It jumped ahead with events and situations that should have taken weeks and condensed it into a few hours. I mean, what the F was up with the interrogation of the girlfriend halfway through by the cops who are about to suspend the main detective? Then, rioting. Then he is back on the force. Meets the alien eunuch, starts a building fire, then shows up in the next scene like nothing happened. wtf. It is definitely a mish mash of good and bad..... The acting by the main characters was quite good. Some cool supporting actors but most with nothing to do. The acting was better than this movie deserved. The story was original, but the script and directing, ugh. Poor execution. And the editors who spliced this thing together should never have worked again. It was a mess. It kind of reminded me of a David Cronenberg movie before he started making David Cronenberg movies. Don't believe me...check out the eunuch played by the always creepazoid Richard Lynch in the final reel exposing a vagina on his stomach and telling the main character to f#ck him. That wackiness was probably the highlight of the film.

Despite some bad acting and questionable editing, this certainly qualifies as a cult movie. As if the story, which turns the Christian religion on its head by updating it and tossing in an extraterrestrial angle for good measure, weren't enough to qualify it as an oddball treasure, it features the enigmatic Andy Kaufman in a small role as a police assassin. His scene is brief, but reminds me uncannily of the Joker/ mayoral assassination scene in "The Dark Knight." Anyway, not all of the story works, yet it needs to be seen in order to be appreciated for its "only in the seventies" allure. Check it out....

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.

"God Told Me To" is a typically offbeat and individualistic effort from the legendary independent filmmaker Larry Cohen. While its screenplay (by Cohen himself) is ultimately rather muddled, it's still utterly fascinating in its own loopy way. Tony Lo Bianco ("The Honeymoon Killers", "The French Connection") stars as Peter J. Nicholas, a NYPD detective who's also a repressed Catholic. Peter is on the case(s) of ordinary NYC citizens who are all of a sudden going insane and going on violent murder sprees. And they all end up saying the same thing: "God Told Me To". In his ensuing investigation, Peter discovers the existence of an extremely strange, Messiah type character named Bernard Phillips (the late, great screen heavy Richard Lynch), and ultimately the fact that his own story isn't far removed from Phillips's own.This may not be an entirely successful film, but give Cohen credit for being so ambitious. He incorporates religion, UFO abductions, and police thrillers into a highly provocative mixture. He populates the cast with some top notch players: Deborah Raffin, Sandy Dennis, Sylvia Sidney, Sam Levene, and Mike Kellin, with a role for his longtime collaborator, actor James Dixon. It's particularly fun to see the memorably quirky comedian Andy Kaufman in a straight role, as a uniformed officer who becomes unhinged at the St. Patrick's Day parade. Lo Bianco is remarkably sincere and effective in a role originally intended for Robert Forster. Lynch is spooky in a role confined to two major scenes, and these scenes are extremely atmospheric.The camera work is excellent (especially those overhead shots), and Frank Cordell supplies a wonderfully ominous music score. Cordell was brought in to replace Bernard Herrmann, who died after seeing a cut of the film without music; the film is dedicated to Herrmann.Those people who think they've seen everything are advised to give "God Told Me To" a try. Once it's over, its effect is not something one can easily shake.Eight out of 10.