This was picked because of it’s title and enigmatic premise. After watching it I found out it was made by Larry Cohen, and then I found it he had directed, written, and produced such genre classics as Q: The Winged Serpent, Maniac Cop, and Black Caesar. He also did The Stuff, which I love but I get why others find a bit tedious. So it’s nice to see where he came from, and how far he had improved.


The first thing to note is that this film is a very serious 70s film, trying to take on lots of big ideas with a bold and challenging style. This means the camera never stays still, few of the characters are likable, and you have to fill in chunks of the plot by yourself. It does give it a certain gritty realism, not least because Mike Kellin simply refuses to act through any of his scenes.

Assuming you can handle that: it starts bold with a mass shooting in New York, and then the guy who did it confessing to detective Peter Nicholas that “God Told Me To” before jumping off the roof. We then discover Nicolas is a devout Catholic who’s having an affair whilst being married. Ooooh, heavy stuff. You can just feel the tense contradictions and theology whiffery.

A bunch more killings happen, including Andy Kaufman offing a dignitary at a police parade like it was one of his gags and Robert Drivas being utterly chilling as a father whole kills his whole family, with all of them saying “God told me to”. Nicholas decides it’s some kind of sinister plot, his superiors are utter bastards for asking him to provide any kind of evidence to support his theory, and a corrupt cop gets knifed in a B-Plot that was left on the cutting room floor.

Away from all that, Deborah Raffin does a great job as The Lover and Sandy Dennis is incredible as The Wife. Dennis deserves special mention as she exudes “I could stab that philandering bastard” from every pour in her being and, because Nicholas is never presented as especially likable, you are completely on her side. Sylvia Sidney also does a grand turn as Nicholas’s mum, proving she can spin anything into gold.

Tensions rise, Nicholas leaks to the press that god is quite possibly doing it (which the public react to as well as you’d expect) and then we find out aliens did it. We also find out that Richard Lynch is the hermaphrodite human/alien hybrid behind all the killing (I forget why, but mostly “because they can”) and Nicholas enters mind combat with them because it’s cheap to have two actors looked constipated at each other with spooky music in the background. Lynch does a fine job of the role, but the character is very much coded as being un-passing trans so that hasn’t aged well.

The ending comes, and there is somewhat of a decent twist if you squint. This sums up most of the overall effect, as whilst there are indisputably great moments the whole is less then parts. It asks big, open, and badly put questions about not as much as it thinks it does, and leaves you responding with “yes, and?”. There is nothing wrong with the audience having to put in the work, but when a film expects that to include caring about the characters and having to retcon their motivations it’s just a bit much. For the contemporary viewer it’s of passing interest, and the burning sense that the only people who’ll love it will be atheist bores send it into the Trash.

The Raggedyman