Tony Lo Bianco – Missile Test

Movie fans might be surprised that besides being a former pro football player, 1970s blaxploitation film icon, and all-around b-movie legend, Fred Williamson has 21 producing and directing credits to his name as of this writing (sometimes it’s the same movie, sometimes it’s not). The movies in his producing and directing lists aren’t all that good, but his presence alone raises the cachet.

Williamson directed, produced, and starred in Down ’n Dirty, from a screenplay by Aubrey K. Rattan. It’s a throwback movie. Despite being released in 2000, the script could easily have been used for a film in the 1970s. The only things that would be anachronistic are the cars, fashions, and the use of cellphones. Other than that, the film fits right in with a decades-old model. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Down ’n Dirty”

God Told Me To movie poster Detective Peter Nicholas (Tony Lo Bianco) of the NYPD has himself a bear of a case. Massacres have been happening all over the city, all carried out by different people, and all at random. There’s only one thing each of these awful events has in common: each of the perpetrators has said that God told them to do it. How is he supposed to stop that?

God Told Me To comes to us via writer, director, and producer Larry Cohen. This isn’t Cohen’s first appearance in the Horrorshow, having helmed the execrable film The Stuff . Whereas that film felt rushed, this earlier effort, from 1976, feels much more meticulous.

As much cop flick as horror, the film follows Detective Nicholas as he tries to find the common thread, other than the bizarre pronouncements from the perpetrators, that connects such disparate killings. It turns out that these killers aren’t suffering from some hallucination. There really is someone telling them to kill. Why they become so convinced that this person is God is one of the mysteries that Nicholas must solve. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: God Told Me To”