Larry Cohen likes to say this movie influenced The X Files - I'm inclined to think that show came more from All the President's Men and The Parallax View. But he could argue it influenced Law and Order. It's very New York police procedural, with Tony Lo Bianco as a detective investigating why a sniper went beserk from a tower. He says it's because "God To Me To" which is a reason used by various other killers - including one man who, in a very effective sequence, describes how he killed his wife and children.
I was really looking forward to seeing this and did enjoy it but it didn't quite work for me. Maybe because I knew what the reveal was... Maybe this is a better film "discovered" than anticipated.
Maybe also because I found Tony Lo Bianco was a little cold. I would've preferred Robert Forster, who started off in the role but left the film a few days into shooting.
Also I think story wise a problem for me was so much of the film is spent tracking down the mystery that a lot of the time it felt like a TV show, with Lo Bianco interviewing people. The stuff about him being the spawn of an alien is amazing... I guess I wanted to see that play out more (the relationship to Richard Lynch, etc) instead of it all being wrapped up.
Still, it's a bold, unconventional movie and Cohen uses New York wonderfully.
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