Q (1982)

Simply A Masterpiece

Best movie ever!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Back in the early 1980's, the VHS market allowed my family to enjoy movies that never made it to Ellwood City, about an hour from Pittsburgh. Our hometown video store, Prime Time Video, was packed with films that fascinated me. I wish that someone had footage of all of the movies on shelf. I know we definitely rented Ruggero Deodato's Raiders of Atlantis and this bizarre piece of cinema about an Aztec god loose in Manhattan. What a time to be alive, when you could walk down the street and wander row after row of horror movie choices!Q The Winged Serpent has Boris Vallejo artwork on its poster and VHS box, which made it leap into my hands. As a kid, I hated the parts with humans. As a grown-up, I'm so intrigued by them.The Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, a feather winged dragon, has found its new pyramid on the Chrysler Building. The film starts by showing us how it finds and devours the heads of its victims in gory detail. Meanwhile, an Aztec cult is leaving sacrificed victims in its wake as Detective Shepard (David Carradine, Death Race 2000) and Sgt. Powell (Richard Roundtree, Shaft) try to keep up.The film cuts to a failed diamond heist that leads Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty, who owns this film with a manic Method performance) to the title monster's nest. He uses his new knowledge to move away from crime (and jazz piano playing) as he extorts the city for the location of the creature's egg.Shephard finds out the location on his own, ruining Quinn's plans. The cops conduct an attack that takes out a baby Q as the creature returns home, wiping out nearly everyone (don't take Shaft, Q!) until it's shot over and over, falling dead to the streets below. The cop also saves Quinn as a crazed Aztec priest almost sacrifices the crook to his gods.That said - the magic of the past in man's modern world is not gone. The film ends with one last egg hatching.Q is a great movie even without the monster. In Will Harris' great oral history of the film, David Caradine said: "I thought if he had left the monster out of it, between me and Michael Moriarty, there was a real great story there between the detectives and the sleazebag heroin addict/petty-thief character. That's where the power in the movie is. That's where the heart of it is... and not in the chicken that ate New York!"And this is a movie that rose from tragedy! Cohen had just been fired from I, the Jury and didn't want to waste the hotel room he had already paid for. He wrote the script, hired actors and was done with pre-production in just six days!Like all of Cohen's films this is a movie that outdoes its small budget and looks like a million bucks. It has heart - and plenty of other organs - and verve and panache and any other hyperbole you'd love to bestow upon it.

Q is your very typical 'B' movie, cheap thrills, cheap effects and corny, cheesy dialogue. If that is the sort of thing you enjoy than you will love this movie, if you don't then I think you should avoid this like the plague.The film begins when people are mysteriously killed and no one can fathom out how or why. Detective Shepard (David Carradine) is trying to work out how a window cleaner managed to be decapitated from forty stories high whilst his partner, Detective Powell (Richard Roundtree, better known as Shaft) is called to a murder where a man has been skinned alive, are they connected? After a while they work out that it is actually the work of a giant flying reptile that has been summoned to New York by a man who believes it is his God. He has been summoned by a hidden man offering human sacrifices. The decapitated man killed by the beast and the skinned man by the preacher. Meanwhile diamond thief Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty) tries to hide from the police in the top of the Chrysler Building, why and how he got there I have no idea. Whilst he is up there he stumbles across the beast's nest and holds the police at ransom for his knowledge of the location. Once they give in they go in search of this beast and ultimately after the man who summoned it to New York in the first place. Will they get there in time to stop it killing again? And if he is an immortal God how will they stop it?I'm going to throw it out there, this film is poor. When the creature is flying over the city it looks so fake it is unbelievable and when its talons come down, nipping prey off of roof tops, it looks like someone playing the claw in an arcade, with a human being the prize. When someone is decapitated it is so obvious it is a dummy and the nest just looks pathetic. The film is just pure awful.Of course there will be people out there who like this sort of thing but for me it is just bad filmmaking with some bad scripts. The acting however is not half bad with Moriarty actually doing a pretty damn good job, especially in the scene where he tries to bribe the police force into telling them the location of the nest. Shaft, or Richard Roundtree although people will remember him as Shaft, has a very easy role with not really enough meat given to him and Carradine is just very average, also having a simple role. The problem with Carradine, although it could be the script, is that he never seems to be under any real threat from the creature. He isn't set aside in panic, nor is any of the police force. They still have time to sit around in the police station which doesn't seem to show any urgency in the people trying to put a stop to this 'terror'. Also why are the police handling the situation? Surely it would be the army with direct orders from the President or his government. I don't understand how a creature kills people and the police are the ones to bring it down with little help it. The plot just makes very little sense and has so many plot holes. Looking at the actors you will see notice them from recent films so I am so surprised to see them in a film like this. It is just so cheap and tacky and really not my thing.Some areas of it aren't too dreadful, which means they are still worse than bad, and ironically this is when the creature isn't actually on the screen. Funny how a film about a giant, flying reptile actually kept me more entertained when people were bargaining money over information or even auditioning for a job as a pianist in a bar.It started awful, it finished awful and unless you are a 'B' movie type of person you will find everything in between awful as well. Avoid like you would a giant, flying reptile in New York.

Michael Moriarty plays a snivelling ex-junkie Jimmy Quinn,who hides in the Chrysler Building after a robbery and finds a giant egg in the rafters.A series of ritualistic murders that look like human sacrifice takes place in New York City.It seems that a fanatical cult has resurrected the ancient Aztec bird-god Quetzalcoatl,a huge winged serpent which demands human blood."Q" is a pretty clever horror film with effective monster effects by Dave Allen and decent acting.The aerial shots are impressive,unfortunately there is not enough gory monster mayhem.The film is talky and the action drags during its second half.However if you are a fan of eccentric Larry Cohen's horror movies like "God Told Me To" or "It's Alive" give "Q" a chance.6 out of 10.

This flick is a distinctive and haunting oddity , concerning about a winged serpent , a dragonlike , which carries out creepy killings , happening in N.Y. City . A pair of detectives (David Carradine , Richard Roundtree) are investigating the strange events . As the giant winged bird hungry for sunbathers and rooftop construction workers . Thanks help a delinquent (Michael Moriarty) who encounters the monster's hidden nest on the Chrisler building , detective Sheperd discovers that several murders committed in violent manner have been executed as bloody sacrifices to Aztec God named Quetzalcóatl , a feathered serpent whose two halves are a serpent and a bird .This is a rough-edged chiller and results to be an entertaining return to monster movies from the 50s . Simple and stop-motion monster special effects by recently deceased David Allen , usual to 'Full moon' and 'Empire' Factory . Good cast as an overacting Michael Moriarty and David Carradine , Richard Roundtree as Police Inspectors ; and nice support casting as Eddie Jones and Candy Clark as crooks'fiancée . The film is well produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff who along with James H. Nicholson financed numerous movies of various genres , including monster movies , during the 50s, 60s , and 70s for their production company called ¨American International Pictures¨ . Atmospheric photography by Fred Murphy who has a successful career as an expert cameraman . The picture was compelling and originally written/realized by Larry Cohen . He's a B series craftsman , such as : terror genre (Stuff , Return to Salem's Lot , It's alive I ,I and Island of the alive) , hard hitting crime films (FX , Ambulance) and Blaxploitation(Black Caesar , Hell up in Harlem , Original gangsters) ; plus , a prestigious screenwriter (Phone booth , The ex , Invasion of privacy) and usually writes all his own scripts . This is a cult movie to be liked for chillers and monster films admirers .