God Told Me To (released in some theatrical markets as Demon) is a 1976 science fiction horror film written, directed, and produced by Larry Cohen.

Like many of Cohen's films, it was shot on location in New York City and incorporates aspects of the police procedural.

In New York City, a gunman perched atop a water tower, opens fire with a .22 caliber rifle on the crowded streets below, randomly killing fifteen pedestrians.

Peter Nicholas, a devout Catholic NYPD detective, climbs the tower to talk to the sniper.

They have all been committed by a variety of unconnected, seemingly normal assailants who claim that God told them to kill.

Nicholas' superiors refuse to acknowledge a religious motivation for the murders and suspend him, so he leaks this story to the press, causing a panic.

She explains that she gave up her out-of-wedlock child after she was brutally impregnated by a strange ball of light while she walked home from the New York Worlds Fair in 1941.

Nicholas' human genes are dominant, which is why he is unaware of his true nature, while Phillips is more like their unseen progenitor.

[5] Frank Cordell composed the score heard in the released version of God Told Me To, and both it and Taxi Driver were dedicated to Herrmann.

The 'alien abduction' sequence, where a naked woman is drawn up into the cavernous interior of an extraterrestrial spacecraft, features (manipulated) generic stock model footage from Gerry Anderson's science fiction TV series Space: 1999.

Sylvia Sidney appears as Detective Nicholas's long-lost, traumatized mother in a nursing home.