Message #266591

[Phantasm]

'God Told Me To' (1976)




Easily the best 1970s New York noir-horror-alien-abduction-Catholic-guilt-love-triangle thriller ever made, this unfairly forgotten gem from Larry Cohen (It's Alive) turns a concise justification tactic — "because God told me to" — into a street-smart prophesy of the perverse moral clarity behind 21st century extremism. Ace character actor Tony Lo Bianco plays a veteran detective whose hunt for a yellow-haired messiah urging people to arbitrarily murder fellow New Yorkers leads him to question his own faith and, surprisingly, a supernatural past. Yes, the narrative starts to get progressively nuttier (virgin births! alien vaginas!), but there's a things-fall-apart vibe in the film's scenes of random violence that's genuinely unsettling — a fear of being snuffed out simply because you're there. EH