Prime Time: God Told Me To (1976)

A film that has long been a major omission in my journey through cinema, considering how much praise I have seen heaped upon it over the years, God Told Me To is, as I am sure you are already aware, another excellent film from writer-director Larry Cohen. Sometimes I might use a movie review to highlight some other work from people involved, either behind the camera or in front of it, and to contextualise different stages of their career, but Cohen is someone that I just encourage everyone to check out for themselves. His ideas were often brilliant, and his creativity and daring helped elevate his material into genuinely great movies that were able to overcome fairly limited budgets.

Things begin here with a man sniping random people. He will kill others and then kill himself. Before he completes that last task, however, he explains himself to Detective Peter J. Nicholas (Tony Lo Bianco) by saying “god told me to.” More people start to commit random murders, and they often offer the same explanation, which leads Detective Nicholas down a strange rabbit hole that has him encountering the enigmatic Bernard Phillips (Richard Lynch), as well as his own past.

Considering the many ways in which God Told Me To could have gone, the film that we ended up getting is one of the most brilliantly bonkers ‘70s American horror movies you will ever see. And I implore people not to leave it as long as I did to get around to this. I watched this film a few days ago and am still processing various moments, plot points that now feel like a fever dream. Whether it’s Andy Kaufman appearing as a killer in the middle of the St. Patrick’s Day parade, tales of alien abduction and virgin births, or the many moments that somehow retain a small ounce of ambiguity, despite what viewers are told and shown about the power of the figure at the heart of the film, God Told Me To is many different things, but dull is not one of them.

Lo Bianco is very good in the lead role, a very typical New York cop who ends up on a most extraordinary journey. It helps that he is cast in front of many familiar faces making up groups of his colleagues and peers, all adding that grounded realism that Cohen often used to underpin even his most fanciful stories. Lynch is as strange and riveting as usual (and so good in this kind of role, which he played on a few different occasions), and the scenes between him and Lo Bianco have enough intrigue and energy to distract from elements that would seem more preposterous if not handled by actors committed to playing the whole thing straight. Deborah Raffin and Sandy Dennis both do well in their small roles, and both Sylvia Sidney and Jo Flores Chase portray women who may have greatly influenced the lives of the two main characters.

Maybe not a film I would recommend to people looking to check out their first film from Cohen, thanks to a potent mix of heady ideas that may leave unprepared viewers feeling a bit blindsided by the whole experience, this is definitely one that everyone should get to once they have dipped their toes into other highlights from his filmography. It’s a crudely-assembled masterpiece, underlining how great Cohen was at playing to the strength of his writing, and I could happily sit down and rewatch it right now.

9/10

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Shudder Saturday: Uncle Sam (1996)

Although it is completely ridiculous, never delivers an ounce of tension, and suffers from a cast of actors who deliver wildly varying quality with their performances, Uncle Sam, a satirical slasher movie directed by William Lustig and written by Larry Cohen, is still something I would recommend to people. Mainly because of those two names behind the camera.

David Fralick is Master Sergeant Sam Harper, a soldier killed in Kuwait when the helicopter he is in is brought down by "friendly fire" (quotation marks used because that is a stupid and paradoxical phrase). His body is delivered home just as everyone is preparing for their 4th July celebrations, but Sam's not as unanimated as he should be. And there are plenty of unpatriotic people he decides to punish once he gets his hands on them. One person who seems very safe is Sam's young nephew, Jody Baker (Christopher Ogden),  a young man who values patriotism as one of the best qualities that someone can have.

This wouldn't have taken much to turn into something a lot better than what we end up with. Basically, throw some more blood and gore around onscreen and you'd have a gloriously daft slasher to sit alongside the best of the subgenre. Sadly, it doesn't have an inventive enough selection of deaths, nor does it feel like it has a decent enough bodycount (although there are about ten deaths shown onscreen, few of them have any real impact). Maybe Lustig, who did such great work with limited resources to give audiences the likes of Maniac and the Maniac Cop movies, just couldn't manage to get quite the budget required for his final vision, but he's partially saved by a Cohen script that is sharp and merciless.

While the bodies start to pile up and the threat eventually becomes clear to those who are left alive, Uncle Sam is ultimately about three main things. It's about patriotism, what that means to different people and how it is used (wielded) by some. It's about war, about training someone up to kill in a certain environment and then expecting them to just go back to a normal life when they are no longer of service. And it's about looking beyond the uniform. I have always insisted that I cannot go along with the kind of blanket praise that some people love to give to certain groups of people (mainly soldiers and police officers). I like to praise individuals, and it's because they are the ones doing the good work, which they may have found a way to do without the relevant uniform on. To be perfectly blunt, a piece of shit can still be a piece of shit while wearing combat gear. Critics may say this is just a copy of Maniac Cop, which had some very similar themes running through it, but it feels like a very different beast, perhaps because Cohen has decided that hammering home the point he is making is more important than being subtle. It's definitely not subtle.

Ogden is okay as the annoying child at the centre of this, acting in many scenes with his mother (played by Leslie Neale) and his aunt (played by Anne Tremko). Neale and Tremko are both better than the child they are acting alongside, as you might expect, but Ogden overdoes things in a way that helps to underline the heavy-handed script. Fralick is fun in the role of zombie Sam, and Isaac Hayes is wonderful in the role of a fellow veteran, Sgt. Jed Crowley. Other familiar faces in the cast include P. J. Soles, Timothy Bottoms, and Robert Forster, with the latter being a very welcome highlight in his small role.

I can see why people wouldn't like this, and I can easily understand anyone hating it, but I liked this more than I expected to. The rough 'n' ready feel of the whole thing adds to the charm, and I think the way in which the commentary weaves from underpinning the material to being pushed front and centre is a pleasingly ballsy move from Cohen and Lustig. Feel free to like or loathe it at your leisure, but I think it's a nice little slice of . . . independence cinema.

6/10

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A Return To Salem's Lot (1987)

A sequel to the classic Stephen King vampire tale, made into a memorable TV movie by Tobe Hooper (and remade a few decades later), I had avoided A Return To Salem’s Lot for many years, having heard it was a real stinker. It isn’t. As imperfect as it is, and it seriously lacks actual scares, director Larry Cohen (who also co-wrote the script with James Dixon) used a tale of vampirism to explore some very interesting ideas.

Michael Moriarty plays Joe Weber, an anthropologist always willing to go that one step further to document tribal behaviour without interfering. Unexpectedly having his teenage son returned to his care, Joe heads back to Salem’s Lot, a small town he grew up in. Salem’s Lot is full of vampires though, which is bad news. The good news is that the vampires want Joe to tell their story to the world. The bad news is that Joe doesn’t want to tell their story, but he may be forced to do so if he wants to stop his son being offered eternal life as a teenager.

Although it is never subtle at any point, things are really hammered home here when the lead character ends up planning his fight back alongside an elderly Nazi hunter (played by Samuel Fuller). The script is pointedly showing how evil needs complicit helpers to thrive, whether they are people “just following orders” or human vampire helpers who work during the daylight hours while their masters sleep safely.

Cohen directs in a rather perfunctory manner, seemingly assuming that it would also just end up on TV, but that still cannot completely outweigh the quality of the ideas at the heart of the script.

Moriarty is a decent lead, as ever, and it’s a delight to see Fuller join in for most of the second half of the film. Ricky Addison Reed is just fine as the moody teen son, Andrew Duggan is a decent patriarch of the vampire community, although he never feels as menacing as he should, and there’s a small role for a very young Tara Reid, if you keep your eyes peeled.

Perhaps even more deserving of your time now than when it was first released, A Return To Salem’s Lot is one of the more interesting vampire movies I have seen from the crowded subgenre. It is weakest when trying to deliver standard horror moments, but you will get more from it if you don’t go seeking genre thrills. It’s striving more to be a study of the insidious and seductive nature of darkness, and the people who will do anything to assist those that they view as being able to help them maintain a comfortable life.

6/10

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Shudder Saturday: In Search Of Darkness (2019)

I watched this ridiculously long '80s horror doc on Shudder, despite being warned by people who had already seen it. It's all too familiar stuff, and ultimately unsatisfying, sadly, but here's a way to review it without really reviewing it. It's overlong, at almost four and a half hours, and there are no real insights into the genre that you can't find in other, better, documentaries. I'd also have to say that the people picked to comment range from the wonderful to the absolutely awful (but I'll name no names). What it did, however, was spur me to think back on my own relationship with horror films, and films in general.

The babysitter who would let me watch the late-night Hammer horrors while he taped all of the vinyl albums that my parents owned. The Star Wars action figures that my cousins had, that I conspicuously did NOT have (although I don't think I had even seen the movies at that point). Afternoons spent with grandparents while the TV schedule was filled with old Westerns that put me to sleep, with the occasional Cary Grant movie appearing to cheer me up no end. These elements all helped to keep movies in my young mind, but it was the VHS years that set me on a path to obsession and adoration, both with movies and with the horror genre.

My parents rented their first VHS player. It was quite common when they were new. Big chunky TV, and those could also be rented (some even had a coin-slot at the side where you could put 50p in for a few hours, that change paying for the rental and any extra being paid back to customers), and a big top-loader video player. I remember pretending to sleep while uncles and cousins came to visit and watch horror movies. Because horror really sold the format. That seems to be all my parents watched, well horror movies and films like Who Will Love My Children? and Melanie (1982).
So I was excited when I heard they were going to rent the likes of Scanners and Creepshow.
I watched both of those films through eyes squeezed tight to pretend that I was sleeping. Both intensely terrified me. Both gave me nightmares. Both also helped me move from the classic double-bills of Hammer horrors to more modern fare.

I'd already also been freaked out by TV movies such as Don't Go To Sleep and the Salem's Lot epic, but neither of those had the real show-stopping moments that were in the even more recent theatrical releases.

Move forward a few years and I get used to just trying to sit there and be quiet while adults plan their horror viewings for the evening. I saw John Carpenter's The Thing in black and white, on a weird little combo TV/radio device, and I saw George A. Romero's Dawn Of The Dead, and that had tension I had never experienced before. Funnily enough, I caught Night Of The Living Dead on TV a few years later, and I was still slightly shaken by the intensity and power of it.

I loved Halloween, was bemused by the lack of Michael Myers in Halloween III: Season Of The Witch, and first encountered Jason in Friday The 13th Part 2 (a series I didn't see again until we rented Part 7). Then I met Freddy, thanks to an uncle who had "copies" of every movie ever. Or so it seemed.

A Nightmare On Elm Street freaked me out. I went to bed. I sneakily put my lamp on, thinking I would get up early to put it off again. Yeah, right.
Mum came in and was very angry in the morning.
No more horror movies for me, she said.
"Nooooooooooooo, I'll be fine," I replied.

There was the video van, an old ice cream van converted (I believe) so you could wander into the back and browse a limited selection of titles. I rented the original Freaky Friday many times (crush on Barbara Harris helped) and kept mistakenly renting The Ghost Busters (a video with 2 episodes from the 1970s TV show, NOT the movie Ghostbusters). I also rented Children's Film Foundation movies, but wanted the genre-based stuff. The Glitterball was a favourite.

I saw The Company Of Wolves, wasn't sure of what it was doing, but absolutely loved it (still do, wrote about it in a book and everything).

The Amityville Horror was a "family favourite", and Amityville II: The Possession was wild, especially to a kid who didn't realise the third act was ripping off The Exorcist.
And both An American Werewolf In London and The Howling were shown some love. As well as The Omen movies, but those were relatively glossy and "acceptable" mainstream hits, for the most part.

And I think back on the films that terrified me, that I now can't view as anything other than wonderful horror comedies. Films that I was allowed to rent just by nipping along to a local video store and using the card held in the name of my mother.
Evil Dead II, Re-Animator, The Return Of The Living Dead. Hell, even Creepshow has that E.C. humour all through it. Child's Play may seem ridiculous to many modern horror fans. I was thirteen when I first saw it (night in with a mate, and we figured we could handle it). It was, as we described it to others, "the scariest thing ever!"

I thought I was becoming a trusted teen when we hooked up a cable that meant I could finally watch a video in my own room, as the VCR signal was threaded through to my own little portable TV. It was going to be the next step in my cinematic journey, due to begin with Night Screams.
Night Screams (1987) is a terrible film, but my memory of it is just gratuitous sex and violence. Result.
Except all the sex was fast forwarded by my mum, who was overseeing the film as it also played in the living room.
Fun denied. Dammit.

Is there a point to this ramble? Not really, but maybe there is. Instead of watching all of these documentaries that regurgitate the same information, just reach back into your own memory and recapture that feeling. Whenever you need to. You grew to love the horror genre as you.
Don't start having the impact of it dictated to you by others (not that anyone means it that way as they discuss their love/favourites). And never let anyone tell you what you should like in order to be a "true fan", or how, and how often, you should watch your movies. Gatekeepers aren't necessary. The fact you find the gateways is the main thing. Unless it comes to Jaws. Because, y'know, nobody should dislike Jaws.

There will always be good and bad movies coming out. But nothing changes how you became the film fan you are today, whatever your fave genre.

3/10

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Shudder Saturday: King Cohen: The Wild World Of Filmmaker Larry Cohen (2017)

There was one obvious choice for this blog selection this week, due to the death of celebrated filmmaker Larry Cohen. Cohen is one of those people I have always admired, yet haven't actually seen as much from as I should have. That included this very documentary, one that has been on my radar for some time.

Of course, watching a documentary and then figuring out how to review a documentary are two completely different things. This has a pretty standard format, various talking heads in between clips from most of Cohen's movies, and it does it well, providing a sense of respect and love for Cohen that will be immediately obvious, even to those unfamiliar with his work before seeing this.

You get a lot of the usual suspects for this kind of thing. Joe Dante can talk about these movies until your ears fall off, and John Landis never met a spoken sentence that he couldn't then follow up with a dozen more sentences. They're as good value as ever, but the joy comes more from those who haven't been seen in so many of these kinds of things. Fred Williamson and Yaphet Kotto are both enjoyable to listen to, Eric Roberts once again reminds people that he seems to enjoy working with as many people on as many different filming experiences as possible, Barbara Carrera has some good stuff to share, and Michael Moriarty is, fittingly, the star of the show when it comes to delivering a mix of information, anecdotes, and good-natured disagreement over individual recollections.

Although he may initially seem like someone in the same mould as Corman, this documentary does a great job of reminding you of how different he is from that other celebrated figure. Cohen was always a writer who could impress people with his creativity and his prolific output. His journey to being a director stems from the fact that he could then work on his scripts, without seeing them warped and altered too much from their original form, and that's an attitude that he has passed along to others over the years.

If you're new to Cohen then this serves as a decent highlight reel without actually spoiling too many of his "greatest hits", although you will see some key scenes. I have yet to check out the likes of Bone, The Ambulance, and, the one I feel I should have checked off the list a long time ago, God Told Me To. I've seen It's Alive but have still to check out any of the sequels. Now I know I need to bump them back to the top of my "to watch" pile because this documentary reminded me of how much I love Cohen's work. He may not always be delivering absolute classics but he's always interested in trying to say something interesting while never forgetting that movies should also entertain.

A bittersweet experience to watch now, especially when you see how energetic and enthusiasm Cohen remained throughout his life, it's also one that all genre fans should check out. Either get to know the man for the first time or get to spend some quality time with someone who has probably already given you a couple of your favourite movies over the years.

7/10

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Shudder Saturday: The Stuff (1985)

This is the second film in as many days that I have revisited with a very different "head on my shoulders". I first saw The Stuff when I was about 12 years old. It was a horror (apparently) that I'd already heard plenty about, with most people being interested in it due to one fun scene occurring during the final act, and I wasn't disappointed when I finally got to see it. It had the strangeness, it had the gloopy moments, and it had that fun scene as a highlight. AND I wasn't too scared by the time the end credits rolled. In fact, I don't think I was scared at all.

What I can see nowadays is that The Stuff is a damn fine satire, something that would be obvious to many viewers but wasn't obvious to 12-year-old me. It's a film about whatever makes the special sauce so special. The trademarked recipes of Coca Cola and those KFC flavours? The Stuff highlights the dangers of not knowing exactly what we're eating . . . especially when it is something that could also be eating us.

Things get started quite quickly, when a group of workers discover a white substance seeping out of the ground. It's sweet, it's addictive, it's soon packaged up and being sold to every consumer as The Stuff, a fine new product with no artificial ingredients and no calories. But it's not as good as it might first appear. It might even be alive, which alarms a young boy (Jason, played by Scott Bloom) when he sees it move. He's not the only one who becomes aware of the sentient nature of The Stuff. There's also David 'Mo' Rutherford (Michael Moriarty), an ex-FBI agent now working on his own, and currently hired by businessmen who want to know more about the sensation that is affecting their own businesses.

Written and directed by the talented Larry Cohen, The Stuff has just the right mix of comedy and thrills to hold up as a fun bit of entertainment. It might not be as scary or gross as it could be, with the horror coming more from the idea than the effects on display, but it has a couple of really good set-pieces (one involving Jason hiding inside a tanker) and is a lot smarter than some might expect, although fans of Cohen should always know that he likes to deliver a decent amount of subtext and thought-provocation with his thrills.

Moriarty is great in the role of Mo, especially in the times when he explains why he goes by that name (altering it slightly, depending on who he is speaking to), and Bloom is very good as the teenager lashing out at something without any idea of how to properly deal with the situation. Andrea Marcovicci is the main female, an advertising executive who sees the error of her ways, and she does equally good work, and you get Garrett Morris giving a memorable turn as 'Chocolate Chip' Charlie, as well as small roles for Danny Aiello and Paul Sorvino.

Time has been kind to The Stuff, perhaps because viewers can now approach it as the satire it is rather than the horror it was marketed as, and I think it's one well worth revisiting, or checking out for the first time. It may even become one you go back to often. Because, as the advert says, enough is never enough.

7/10

You can try to get enough of The Stuff here.
Americans can have their fill here.

Q (1982)

AKA Q: The Winged Serpent.

Writer/director Larry Cohen has given fans a lot of great little movies over the years. Films with no delusions of grandeur that often just manage to punch above their weight thanks, usually, to Cohen's ability to knock out fun scripts that are peppered with cool dialogue.

Q is one of his best, a film all about a giant bird winged serpent that terrorises the good people of New York. Yet it's not really all about the giant, winged beastie because Q is equally a character study, focusing on a small time crook named Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty). Jimmy bemoans his lot in life but it's really all his own fault, as is shown by how unappreciative he is of the love of a good woman (Joan, played by the wonderful Candy Clark). When he's involved in a robbery that doesn't go according to plan, Jimmy has to scarper and he stumbles upon the nest of the titular serpent. When the police (David Carradine and Richard Roundtree, amongst others) get a hold of him and take him in for questioning, Jimmy starts to think that his luck may have finally changed. He hears talk of some flying creature that's been killing people and he knows that he has information that could save the day. At a price.

The main character of this movie is not a nice guy. No, Jimmy Quinn is an ungrateful, cocky, cowardly, crude, pathetic excuse for a human being. Thankfully, the script and Michael Moriarty's performance also make him into someone that you want to keep watching, even if it's only to see if he'll get his comeuppance. The support from Clark, Carradine, Roundtree, James Dixon, Malachy McCourt, Larry Pine, John Capodice, Tony Page and a few others also keeps this movie being watchable and very entertaining from start to finish.

Q himself isn't fully shown very often, for obvious reasons. Thankfully, there's enough aerial photography and trickery with shadows to ensure that viewers never feel shortchanged. Even for the many moments when the beast isn't directly involved, it always seems to be hovering over everything. Which is most appropriate, of course. To be fair, when it does finally come to the "money shots" then it's not all that bad either.

As already mentioned, Cohen crafted another winner with this one - that great character study mixed in with part monster movie and part serial killer film (the beast may have been summoned by someone flaying people alive) - but he really lucked out when he snagged Michael Moriarty for the lead role. The man gives, perhaps, a career-best performance.

I easily recommend this film to lovers of smart b-movie fare. Grab a beverage, put up your feet and spend some time up in the clouds with Quetzalcoatl.

8/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Q-The-Winged-Serpent-DVD/dp/B0009JJY40/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352672133&sr=8-1

Captivity (2007)

The beautiful Elisha Cuthbert stars in this disappointing movie, one of many to try and make some money after the success of movies like Saw and Hostel. It's basically a thriller but there are enough moments of nastiness to edge it over into horror territory, albeit light horror territory (hardcore gorehounds should look elsewhere for their fix).

Elisha Cuthbert plays Jennifer, a beautiful young model who is kidnapped and awakens to find herself in a pretty secure holding "pen". Her kidnapper seems delighted to torture her in a variety of psychological ways and things only start to look ever so slightly brighter when Jennifer realises that she is not the only person being held against her will. There's a young man (Daniel Gillies) being kept in a room beside her and the two of them work together to try and make good their escape.

I didn't hate Captivity and I could, if I had to, watch it again but let me be clear about something - that's only because of the presence of Elisha Cuthbert, a gorgeous woman who would I would marry today if it wasn't for the fact that a) I'm already happily married, b) I'm probably not her type and c) the restraining order forbids such a joining together, as well as stopping me from ever walking along her street again.

Captivity is just lame. There are a couple of decent moments throughout but barely enough to keep the average viewer alert and interested. The script by Larry Cohen and Joseph Tura is pretty weak, for the most part, and things only pick up in a third act that throws in a couple of twists and turns that don't really surprise as they should. It's a shame because I like Larry Cohen, as do many other horror and thriller fans, but this is far from his best work.

Director Roland Joffe isn't particularly well-suited to the material and it shows. He fails to create any tension, the few fake-out moments cause groans as opposed to gasps and everything feels safe and slick as opposed to full of potential danger. It's watchable but it's a thriller with no real thrills.

Elisha Cuthbert is lovely in the lead, absolutely convincing as a young, attractive woman who makes money from looking young and attractive. Daniel Gillies is okay in his role though he proves to be quite disappointing as things unfold. Pruitt Taylor Vince is pretty good, as he so often is, and Laz Alonso and Michael Harney do just fine with their small amount of screentime.

There are, of course, a lot of movies out there that are a lot worse than this one. There are certainly a lot worse movies that have been "inspired" by the Saw franchise (*cough* Nine Dead *cough*). That doesn't change the fact, however, that this one is simply average at best.

5/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Captivity-Blu-ray/dp/B002BD9DN4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1346921917&sr=8-2