GOD TOLD ME TO
Dir. Larry Cohen, 1976
USA, 91 min.
In English.
16mm

Part of BEST OF SPECTACLE 2025

TUESDAY, JANUARY 13 - 7:30 PM
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In the outrageously radical GOD TOLD ME TO, NYPD Detective Peter J. Nicholas (Tony Lo Bianco) has to deal with some heavy shit when a series of ordinary New Yorkers go on senseless killing sprees, claiming that God told them to. His corrupt fellow cops are skeptical, but Nicholas, a shame-ridden closet Catholic who sneaks off to church every morning behind his girlfriend’s back, has a bad feeling that the violence is, in fact, divine in nature.

Who else but Larry Cohen could make a film that posits God as a murderous bastard who wreaks havoc on a turbulent New York City, and features a messiah of sorts with a stigmata-vagina on his side who talks about his “ancestahs”? God or whatever it is communicates through a cadre of twelve Wall Street types, suggesting that he’s learned a thing or two since the last time he came around to earth and got himself killed. The film’s climax takes place in a burned-out Bronx tenement and involves a variation on sex between men that would make many a Catholic tremble with sacrilegious excitement.

Presented on 16mm.