“Just an old-fashioned monster.”
Kai-June ended with a whimper, as the day job overwhelmed my writing time. Sorry about that, folks – I hope to get that last Gamera movie written up sometime soon. I want to finish things out with an obscure giant monster film that I happen to like a lot, even though it’s not June anymore. Kai-July? Nah. Just a stinger after the credits, I guess.
I like a good Larry Cohen movie (like The Stuff or It’s Alive). At his best he takes a unique and interesting idea and runs as far as he can with whatever budget he’s managed to scrape up. Sometimes that’s not very far (like God Told Me To), but he’s almost always got something interesting to say or show us. In the 1990s and 2000s he transitioned mostly to screenwriting, finding success with films like Phone Booth and Cellular, but it’s his low-budget horror films I think of the most often.
Q: The Winged Serpent (also known as just Q) may not be the best of those films, but I’ve always enjoyed it since stumbling across it at a video store in the 1990s. It was not at ALL what I expected, given the cool-ass Boris Vellejo cover showing a snake-like, bat-winged monster hovering over the Chrysler building. I thought I was going to get people chomping, building crashing, crowds running and screaming – and I guess you do get SOME of that – but I did not expect a weird character study/police procedural with a giant monster as the impetus. I should have realized – it’s a Larry Cohen film. Just go with it.
The Medium
I have the 2013 Shout Factory Blu-ray release of Q, which remains the most recent one. The 40th anniversary of the film passed without much fanfare, so I don’t see an updated release coming any time soon. (And do we really need to see the flaws of the stop motion in 4k?) It’s pretty bare bones – with a commentary by Cohen being the standout on the extras side – but still serviceable. It’s out of print, but can still be purchased for under $10 on Amazon.
There are a ton of streaming options – it’s available for subs on Amazon Prime, Peacock, AMC+ and Shudder and for free-with-ads on Vudu, Tubi, Crackle, Shout, Plex and FreeVee. It can be purchased or rented at Amazon, Apple TV and Fandango at Home.
The Movie
Something is stalking the high places of New York City – a window washer loses his head and a sun-bathing beauty is taken bodily off a rooftop. Blood drips down on New Yorkers like rain from a cloudless sky. At the same time there’s a series of gruesome murders plaguing the city, baffling the cops.
Meanwhile, small time crook Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty) tries to get a job as a jazz pianist, hoping to avoid getting involved in a jewel heist. His audition fails miserably (a customer plugs a quarter in the jukebox rather than listen to Jimmy’s playing), and he’s forced to join the crew at the jewelry store. Things go bad, and Jimmy is the only one to escape. On the run, he ends up trying to hide in the upper reaches of the Chrysler building, where he finds a nest – and an enormous egg.
“I’m almost afraid of everything, but I’ve never been afraid of heights.”
Q is one of Cohen’s better efforts, and that’s not due to the effects, I’m afraid. (Randall William Cook and David Allen often do good work – on films like Ghostbusters and Willow – so it’s probably a budgetary issue.) What he does have is a couple of really good actors in major roles – David Carradine as the laconic detective Shepard and Michael Moriarty as the small-time hood, Jimmy Quinn. Moriarty, in particular, brings his singular talent – and a little of his jazz improvisation – to a role that could have been thankless and one dimensional. In his hands, however, Quinn (no coincidence his last name has the same initial as the title monster) becomes a spectacle of fear, ego, talent, desperation and a sort of weaselly charm. He’s just so much fun to watch that you get the sense that the other actors, Carradine included, are just as entertained by him as we are.
The bare bones of the film are typical monster movie fare, with a giant, winged monster menacing New York City, but in Cohen’s hands it becomes something a little bit more: a 50s monster movie with a 70s exploitation film feel. You get plenty of gore (“Did you find the guy’s head yet?” “It’ll turn up.”), beautiful aerial shots of the city in all its not-quite-out-of-the-recession, early 80s glory, a bunch of crazy characters, an Aztec cult engaged in ritual murders, and, of course, the ‘Ray Harryhausen on a shoestring’ monster. The real meat of the piece, however, is Moriarty’s Quinn, who stumbles on to a chance to be a big deal and squeezes that moment for all he can get.
Once the city grasps that there really IS a giant monster to deal with, Quinn realizes he’s got important information – he knows where the monster is nesting – and decides to use that information to blackmail the city for a million dollars. What could go wrong? With Quinn’s luck, pretty much everything.
What I love about Cohen is that he’s got no shame about the level on which he’s working. He’s trying to make the best film he can with the money he has, but he knows he’s not Spielberg. So when he finally shows us the monster – after a lot of suggestions and pieces – he just gives it to us straight, with the stop motion animation occurring in full daylight, warts and all. I love the monster, but it was never going to take an academy award for special effects. For once, he also got permission to shoot on location (not something he got around to in God Told Me To), and the scenes in and around the Chrysler building are pretty fun.
There will be shootouts, giant monster attacks, gory body parts all over the place, and of course there’s a secret Aztec cult that’s responsible for the monster. You see, it’s the great god Quetzalcoatl made flesh. And the cult is not too keen on Jimmy’s deal to lead the cops to Q.
The Bottom Line
At 93 minutes Q: The Winged Serpent never drags. It’s a fun ride, and one of those rough gems you come across from time to time. It’s an everything bagel of a movie, with Moriarity’s method acting providing an oddly endearing schmuck to center the stop-motion monster, police procedural and sneaky satire around. You even get a chance to see Richard Roundtree, Shaft himself, playing Carradine’s partner! The commentary track by Cohen is also fun to listen to (available as an option on Tubi, if you don’t have the physical media) – he’s a man with a lot of stories and a lot of self- awareness when it comes to his own work. It’s low budget schlock with a sprinkling of black humor and a heaping dose of Michael Moriarty. Just what I’m looking for, but your mileage may vary.
