Blue Underground, with sales and distribution support provided by MVD Entertainment Group, has a new 4K film restoration (from the original camera negative) of auteur filmmaker Larry Cohen’s 1976 New York City slaughter-in-the-streets thriller, God Told Me To, ready for delivery as a 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack edition on July 19.
For film fans, Larry Cohen was one of the best indie filmmakers of the 1970s and 1980s. He could do blaxploitation with the best of them, but it was his genre films that set him apart … It's Alive (1974, plus sequels), Q: The Winged Serpent (1982), The Stuff (1985) and of course Gold Told Me To, which combines elements of sci-fi, horror and New York City detective work (much like Q: The Winged Serpent).
A sniper mows down over a dozen people, and when cornered by Lieutenant Detective Peter Nicholas (Tony Lo Bianco — The French Connection, The Seven-Ups, The Honeymoon Killers), he seems calms, almost unaware of the carnage he has created. Why? “God told me to” … and then he leaps to his death from his rooftop perch.
Soon Nicholas is interviewing a man in a hospital who went on a stabbing spree. He’s in bad shape. Why? “God told me to” … and then he flatlines.
What the hell is going on. Nicholas is mystified, but being a New York City police detective he is going to figure it out, it’s his job.
It happens again, this time at the famed St. Patrick's Day Parade, but it’s not some stranger, it is one of their own. A cop, pulls his gun and just starts shooting people … and once again Nicholas is there in time to hear the final works of the killer, “God told me to.”
Once, strange. Twice, a coincidence. A third time, this isn’t random, something evil is a work.
As mentioned, filmmaker Larry Cohen combined sci-fi, horror and police work in Gold Told Me To, which sets Det. Nicholas on a mission; an obsession to solve this bizarre mystery. It is an investigation that will lead him down a rabbit hole that is totally unexpected … what is going on comes right back to him. Whoa!
Bonus features include a vintage commentary option with the late Larry Cohen, plus a newly-prepared commentary with film historians Steve Mitch and Troy Howarth, a vintage Lincoln Center Q&A session with Larry Cohen (2002) and three featurettes — “Heaven & Hell on Earth,” “Bloody Good Times,” and “God Told Me to Bone.”
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