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Q the Winged Serpent is basically a cheesy low-budget '50s monster movie updated to the blood & nudity era, still low on budget and high on cheese. The story has the Aztec flying serpent god Quetzalcoatl coming to modern-day New York and biting off heads and such. It's a pretty creative film, effectively written and directed by Cohen, with a good cast and shot on location in New York City. Michael Moriarty shines as a petty thief who stumbles upon the monster's nest and tries to use it to his advantage. His eccentric performance is a delight to watch as he never sits still and seems to be making his lines up as he goes along. David Carradine and Richard Roundtree are also good, albeit in more traditional ways, as the two detectives investigating the killings. Candy Clark has a small role as Moriarty's girlfriend but she makes the most of it. Everyone who shares scenes with Moriarty seems to be either amused or frustrated by his acting. We don't see the monster much but, when we do, the special effects used are solid if not overly impressive. The King Kong climax is great fun. It's my favorite Larry Cohen movie, a solid horror flick but with quirky humor that sets it apart from being just another monster movie.

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 .

Q - The Winged Serpent is a trash movie classic, and it also represents one of the masters of that cinema niche's finest hours. Larry Cohen directs this movie, which follows the standard monster movie formula, and is blended well with a theme of mass hysteria and a gritty New York setting. The plot for the movie is, of course, very simple and it sees two sets of murders being investigated by David Carradine's police detective. One set of murders is made up of ritualistic killings - people being flayed, having their hearts cut out etc. The other bunch of murders is more mysterious, and it sees things such as people having their heads bitten off, or being lifted from high rooftops, as if by a giant bird. Maybe there is simply a giant bird on the loose; or maybe those ritualistic killings have reincarnated an Aztec god known as Quetzalcoatl (or just 'Q' for short), which is currently nesting in one of New York City's high buildings…

The special effects in 'Q' are definitely the film's main talking point. While they're not very 'special', they sum the movie's trash status up nicely, and the scenes that see the winged serpent swoop down and take people off rooftops are an absolute riot. The creature is also very well designed. Nowadays, special effects seem to want to be as far removed from convention as possible, so much so that it's getting to the extent that it's more of a cliché to change things than it is to leave them how they were. It is refreshing, therefore, to see that Larry Cohen has stuck the design to the classic dinosaur style. It's abundantly obvious what Cohen wanted to do with this movie, and that shows when it comes to the story surrounding the antics of the giant flying lizard. The story surrounding it has it's moments, but it's clearly just something to fill up the time between the snatch and grab killings. It doesn't matter, though, because the monster ensures that the film is always interesting and if you like your trash classics, you'll sure like this!

Writer/Director Larry Cohen is the genius that brought the world such classics as Hell Up in Harlem, Original Gangstas, Special Effects, and the It's Alive series. Nearly all of his movies are examples of low budget filmmaking at its best. Q (standing for Quetzecoatl, the flying Aztec god) is his giant monster movie in the tradition of King Kong and Godzilla. It's an excellent movie and succeeds best because of it's quirky qualities.

An excellent B-movie cast combined with Cohen's wonderfully realistic dialogue makes for some excellent characters. Micheal Moriarty (from "Law and Order" and Cohen's The Stuff) plays a loser who finds the nest of the beast, and Richard Roundtree (Shaft) and David Carradine (Death Race 2000 and Kung Fu: The Legend Continues) have excellent roles as two detectives trying to locate it before it devours more construction workers.

The plot has some great twists and turns and there's some great obligatory B -movie gore in this one, too. The monster plucks heads off of window washers and snatches sunbathers off of rooftops. Blood and body parts rain down on the unsuspecting citizens beneath. Meanwhile, some lunatic is busy skinning people alive. Is there a connection? The special effects are limited and not too spectacular, but effects don't make a movie (as is apparent in the 1998 remake of Godzilla), and everything else about this movie makes it a winner. The uneven effects actually add to the fun of this movie if you can appreciate low budget horror. Q constantly amazes me with its quirky attitude, great sense of humor (maybe the window washer's head "just fell off" says one of the detectives), creative characters, camp value, and energetic cast. This 1982 cult classic is further proof that Larry Cohen is nothing less than a god.

Final Review 98/100 (A+)

Cohen is pretty goddamned erratic for an auteur. I mean, I don't think I've ever seen a movie with worse continuity; I don't think the constant lapses in screen direction are an homage to Godard; the character motivation is a mess. The newspaper headlines even have spelling mistakes for crying out loud. And every gruesome effort is made to avoid showing the titular winged serpent on screen. So why is this movie so cool? First of all, because it doesn't give a sh*t; second of all, because its subject matter takes us on an unprecedented and mesmerizing tour of the rooftops of NYC. And third of all because of that cast! I can't fling my stock epithet of 'stupid detectives' at Richard freakin' Roundtree and David by-the-Jesus Carradine, now can I? And I've never seen anything like Michael Moriarty's lead performance as a born-to-lose ex-junkie loudmouth opportunist with ego to burn. He's so mesmerizing you don't care about all the nervous cutting away from the sub-Harryhausen goings-on upstairs. In fact when you realize that Moriarty in Q equals Haze in Little Shop equals Miller in Bucket of Blood, the accretion of glaring imperfections starts to look like another form of loving tribute.