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

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

I am 33 years old and I think this is the first time in my life that I have ever watched a movie twice in a row on the same night. As I watched the film for the first time, each scene had me thrown off and confused, but fully intrigued. The movie continuously stepped into territory I could never have expected it to, once past the first 20 minutes. I had a hard time keeping up with how each of the characters were relevant to what was happening, and often to what was happening in general, but never to the film's error - the progression of the plot is just that far out there that it's a lot for anyone to take in the first time. I knew immediately as I reached the second half of the movie that I would need to give it another viewing. Everything about this movie is...mystical - what begins as a very simple reality-based concept blossoms into an eerie flower so bonkers it must be experienced to be explained.I expected this to play like most of Cohen's movies I've seen: a rather serious concept but full of laughs induced by witty satire, but this movie is different...there's not much to laugh about here! What it does offer is seriously ambitious, daring filmmaking. It's a slow-creeping disease that you'll want to get. The film eventually offers some visually stylistic choices that I feel are unlike anything else I have ever seen. I'm largely a fan of the cast as it is very versatile and unique. Most every actor in the film has the ability to take the absurd and keep it anchored in the realm of believability for the viewer. Psychologically, the movie has so many layers - there are so many different elements to think about!Looking at the movie as a whole, the ONLY movie that I could say it is even REMOTELY similar to in any way is Nicolas Roeg's DON'T LOOK NOW from 1973, another film I am a huge fan of. Mix in elements of early Cronenberg, at times Dario Argento's "Mother trilogy", and all the elements that make Larry Cohen films his own - and you start to get a loose idea of what kind of film you are dealing with here.It's completely one of a kind, completely insane, and after watching this and Bone (his debut film from 1972) for the first time I am officially ushering Larry Cohen into my personal category of the great film directors of our time. I grew up loving b-horror masterpiece THE STUFF (1985) but had no idea what else his catalogue would have to offer! I am so excited to explore the rest! Black Caeser, It's Alive, Q, etc...

I detested this film. I admit that the idea of people with no criminal records suddenly committing random murders and a supernatural force deceiving them was intriguing. But after beginning as an OK police procedure film, it becomes muddled, illogical, and finally completely unpleasant and even gross. Guest stars come and go, the plot twists become more and more unbelievable, and at the center of it all is a barefoot actor with a tunic and bad wig. The ending is completely lame and the closing line will be seen by astute viewers long before the film actually ends. This film was such a letdown, I threw it in the trash after it was over.

So Moses and Christ were aliens, and they lead the Jews because...? Granted that the story is all over the place, that there are dozens of loose ends in the script, and that the acting by some of the people playing side-characters is semi-amateurish. And granted that the ending is a predictable let-down, a yucky finish which includes perhaps the most bizarre offer of gay sex in a movie.However, what cannot be denied - and it's no small thing - is that GTMT is interesting from start to finish. Many saw the rapid succession of scenes as clumsily put together, but I'd rather have fast-but-imperfect editing in a fun movie than "proper" editing in a dull film (such as an overrated Bergman turd, for example).The ending not only shocks (and amuses) the viewers by offering us Richard Lynch - of all people! - as a HERMAPHRODITIC half-alien, but when Lynch offers his abdomenal vagina (you read that right) for Biancop to insert his penis into, that's when a vomit bag might come into play. We were told that Philips was neither male nor female, so wouldn't it have made bloody sense to cast someone like Justin Timberlake or Leonardo Di Caprio for the role? OK, fine, these two didn't exist back then, being only very effeminate toddlers or not even born yet, but surely casting one of the ugliest actors in America could not possibly have been the answer. I'm surprised they didn't get Sly Stallone for the role of the effeminate Christ-like she-male! It wouldn't have been any sillier though, trust me.Had GTMT been made today, there would have been a plethora of girly actors for the role of the effeminate alien-Christ, but the 70s were still an age dominated by the likes of Bronson and Eastwood. Unlike today. Now it's Tom Cruise and Zac Ephron. Don't forget to shave your legs, girls! Lynch plays a half-alien who is neither male nor female (but carries a sloppy-looking vagina above his belly). So embarrassed was Cohen perhaps by the crappy casting that he never let us see his face properly. After all, this is the same actor who, only 3 years earlier, tried to rape Pacino in "Scarecrow". And now this. Many years later he had to play in the worst werewolf movie of all time, aptly called "Werewolf". What a career.The suggestion that Moses and Jesus are half-aliens presents a lot of logic problems, aside from the intrinsic cheesiness of the idea itself. Why would the aliens only inseminate random women here and there? Why not just take over properly? What did the Catholic Church know about Biancop and Lynch? What did they think about all this? Why does Biancop waste his new-found power, time and energy with a fairly irrelevant pimp, when he's got bigger fish to fry? Why would Lynch initiate a series of asinine random killings? To attract attention to himself? But he's hiding, isn't he? Did the aliens who fathered him expect this kind of nonsense from him, or was he simply bloodthirsty and bored out of his own free will? You can ask a hundred more questions but only end up getting even more bogged down in the zany world of GTMT's undisciplined script. Cohen tried to cover too much ground, not just the obvious point about religious fanaticism, but what ultimately matters was whether the movie is fun or not, and it is.

God Told Me To (1975) Directed by: Larry Cohen Starring: Tony De Bianco Yes! I've been trying to track this one down for a long long time, and immediately upon spotting it coupled with some film called Pranks on the usual Vipco rip-off label I snatched it up and ran home and watched The Case of The Bloody Iris (review soon).Then I watched this film, which doesn't really belong in the horror genre as such. It's almost like a David Cronenberg, David Lynch type affair, although I think God Told Me To was around before both of those directors had made their mark.God Told Me To was made by Larry Cohen, who appears on this site in the form of two inferior, later flicks: Q The Winged Serpent and The Stuff. Both those films are a laugh, and suitably trashy, but God Told Me To has an extra sense of weirdness and general lunacy which makes it, for me, his best film.A lone gunman on top of a water tower in New York starts wasting people with a rifle. After killing fourteen people, cop Tony De Bianco manages to get near enough to try and talk him down. Upon being asked why he's killing folk, the young man cheerily replies 'God Told Me To' and throws himself off the building.This isn't an isolated case, however. Someone else goes crazy in a supermarket, whereas a cop (played by Andy Kaufman!) starts shooting people during the St Patrick's parade. One guy picks up a shotgun and wastes him family, pleasantly describing what he's done to Bianco in what makes for quite a chilling scene. When asked why they did it, every one of them answers 'God Told Me To'.Bianco begins investigating and finds that indeed all these people had been in contact with someone God-like, but no on can remember his face. Has God returned to Earth? Who is the businessman who warned the cops of the impending attacks? And what's Bianco really got to do with it all? There's no need to go on with the plot, because it would just waste things. Most of the appeal of God Told Me To is sitting on the couch scratching your head, wondering where the film is going to head to next. It's by turns a thriller, a horror, and bit of sci-fi. The ending for me was pretty satisfying, and I can't wait to watch it again (something I rarely say on this site).Some people might have a problem with Cohen's direction, however. He seems to a lot of stuff in one take, and his editing is a bit shaky at times. As this is a low budget flick the special effects are awful too, but none of these points made the film any worse for me. It could for some people, however.Strange that Cohen would go on to direct one of the worst films ever in the late eighties. Anyone else watched Return to Salem's Lot? He wrote Maniac Cop around the same time though. Which was good.But he also wrote Phone Booth, which was a bit dodgy.