User reviews

When the Empire State Building was being constructed, another high-rise skyscraper, the Chrysler Building was its rival. As far as I know, this is the only film to pay homage to the Chrysler Building.

The Q stands for Quetzacoatl, a winged serpent from Aztec mythology. Outside of that, the Aztec connection isn't that great. But the idea of a monster living in seclusion in New York, feeding on sunbathers and the like, is rather bemusing.

The film is a rarity: a police-procedural monster film. The only other that comes to mind is Them!, with the giant ants. This one is truer to form, though not as taut.

Entertaining. A good rainy-day film.

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.

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+)

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 is a fun film but the main problem with it is that monster in the title is rarely seen or is just a simple plot device and the end result is sorta unsatisfying. The story is more about the Aztec cult and their human sacrifices to their god, a Quetzalcoatl (hence Q), and the cops trying to figure what's going on than anything about the flying serpent. There is a lot of padded moments in this film. But like I said, it's fun nonetheless and is more enjoyable than Cohen's heavy handed GOD TOLD ME TO.

Q is an homage of the monster movies of the 1950s, with lower production values and even more questionable acting than their 1950s counterpart. If you don't like those movies, you'll certainly won't like this homage. But if you're like me and enjoy watching those classic genre films, Q will make you smile. I just wish there was less talk and more monster action.

Michael Moriarity is a small time crook and ex-junkie who - for a price - can lead the police to the nest of a huge prehistoric bird-like creature that is feeding off the residents of New York City. A lot of reviews rightly praise Moriarity's performance but for me having David Carradine (Kung Fu) and Richard Roundtree (Shaft) play the two leading cops was very cool. The creature is an ancient Aztec god called Quetzalcoatl, and has been revived by a man carrying out human sacrifices on willing victims (a good excuse for some fairly graphic gore). Although the special effects of the creature look dated for 1982 they add a certain charm and for me are preferable to the cheap looking CGI so often employed these days. The bird attacks are gory and fun, one involves a token scene of topless female nudity and there are some impressive aerial shots of the city. The film is occasionally let down by some poor script, the whole idea of the creature living at the top of the iconic Chrysler Building but only one man knowing this is pretty silly and I felt that the plot got bogged down at times with the police investigations. Overall Q is reasonably enjoyable, far better than most of the CGI trash that gets churned out nowadays.

The first half of this monster flick is actually quite promising. This is however, as good as it gets. Moriarty plays a pretty annoying character, and the others including Carradine are 2 dimensional. When the "monster" actually arrived you wish for Ray Harryhausen to have been in charge of the special effects. Thankfully quite a short movie.

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!

This would've been a fun movie to watch. Michael Moriarty's character is completely insufferable with little to no redeeming qualities. I did like David Carradine and think the movie could've been much better if it focused on him and his investigation into both the ritual killings and bizarre deaths. There are ways to film around the creature which the director tried to do early in the movie and save much of special effects budget towards to end. Then again I love watching sci-fi movies from the 70s and 80s. Lower the budget the better in some cases. I appreciate some of the movies and love watching others get skewered on MST3K.

A prehistoric serpent-type Aztec god soars high above New York attacking various people. Ex-con Jimmy Quinn (Micheal Moriarty) is the only living person who knows where it resides. And it's up to Detective Shepard (David Carradine) and Sergent Powell (Richard Roundtree) to find the creature in this cheese-fest. This is one of those films that you have to check your brain at the door for. Unlike most of Cohen's directorial efforts there's not even a hint of social commentary in here. Mindless entertainment B-movie fluff, but really GOOD mindless entertainment B-movie fluff.

My Grade: B

Blue Underground DVD extras: A humorous commentary by Larry Cohen; Teaser; Posters and Stills gallery; Larry Cohen bio DVD-ROM: Q Memorabilia

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.

Ouch! New York is menaced by a plasticine monster, a terrible script, and some dreadful acting from Michael Moriarty... and has only David Carradine (of Kung Fu fame) and Richard Roundtree (the original Shaft) doing dubious tough-guy acts to defend it. This is a seriously bad movie from the early 80's... and it's hard to see why it has been dug out and issued on DVD. Nostalgia...?

It was the best of films. It was the worst of films.

One day Screenwriter Larry Cohen came up with two interesting but totally different ideas. The first was a Science Fiction epic about two NYC detectives charged with stopping a modern day Aztec cult and the monsterous winged deity they have brought to life.

The second concerns the exploits of a small time hood trying to rise above his station in life. Both interesting concepts. Unfortunately, try though he might Cohen could not develop enough material to make either project viable. Then a thought struck him. A notion so radical he dare not give it utterance. What if he were to combine both projects into one??????

Sound impossible???? Well Cohen tried to pull it off with the convoluted epic Q.

Q stands for Quetzacoatl, the aforementioned winged deity worshipped by the aforementioned Aztec cultists. Needless to say Q is not a nice deity and decides to get its jollies noshing on penthouse dwelling Manhattanites. Investigating the crime are Richard Roundtree and David Carridine as the aforementioned detectives.

Meanwhile the aforementioned small time hood protrayed by Micheal Moriarty is making a half hearted attempt to reform. He fails and is soon involved in a jewel heist. When the heist goes sour Moriarty seeks a spot to lay low. As chance would have it his sanctuary happens to be the same location Q has chosen for its nest. When Roundtree and Carridine's investigation fails to turn up Q hiding spot Moriarty offers to lead them to the nest in exchange for criminal immunity and monetary considerations.

The blending of these two stories is far from seemless. Despite the critical praise he recieved for this role, Moriarty's charactor seems totally out of place. His low end gangster antics seem better suited for an episode sapranos.

Far more impressive, though sadly less seen is Q itself. Brought to life with the aid of some niffy bits of stop motion animation, the elephant sized beastie wings its way over the Manhattan skyline out performing the human actors as it goes.

The best thing Cohen could have done is to drop Moriarty's entire segment and replace it with something more in keeping with the films Sci-fi nature. It would have been a far far better thing to do than he had ever done before.

As two Manhattan detectives (David Carradine and Richard Roundtree) investigate deaths linked to Aztecan ritual a huge winged serpent begins preying on citizens. A piano-playing street thug (Michael Moriarty) claims to know where its nest is located and makes a deal with the authorities. Could the beast be Quetzalcoatl?

Larry Cohen's "Q" (1982), aka "Q: The Winged Serpent," is a Grade B creature feature with a wink of humor. Imagine "Wolfen" (1981) if it wasn't so artsy and didn't take itself so seriously, albeit with a different monster, and you'd have a good picture of "Q."

Moriarty cops a serious Bill Burr vibe as the two-bit hood while Carradine & Roundtree seem to be enjoying themselves as tough Big City investigators. Speaking of the city, this is a great way to view New York City in the early 80s. Unfortunately, Cohen drops the ball in the female department as he doesn't know how to take advantage of the feminine resources and opportunities (and I'm not tawkin' bout nudity or sleaze, just effective photography of women).

Nevertheless, the flick's entertaining and shouldn't be as obscure as it is.

It runs 1 hour, 33 minutes, and was shot in Manhattan with focus on the Chrysler Building.

GRADE: B/B-

"Q: THE WINGED SERPENT" (1982, Cohen) is possibly Larry Cohen's best film. David Carradine plays his character with that easy going coolness indicative of the Carradines and Michael Moriarty is his usual quirky self. James Dixon is always present, too, as is Richard Roundtree. And the beast? Pure class.

The mysterious aspects of the plot are very intriguing and the film grows to a crescendo finale. I definitely recommend this one.

Throw in David Carridine (one of the world's best bad actors) and a monster animated badly enough to make Ray Harryhausen blush and you have the recipe for one of the funniest monster movies I've ever seen.

For a film made in 1982 it has the look and feel of a 60's monster movie, or maybe even 50's. But I suspect that was the intent and if so, it worked very well. It's not a film you're going to watch over and over, but it makes a pretty good "beer-and-laughs" flick.

The concept of a giant-winged serpent flapping laboriously through the New York skies in broad daylight is somewhat comical, though. Even if people don't look up that often, you'd think it'd be a bit noticeable.

The movie has a disjointed feel to it, mainly due to the weird cuts and editing, I suspect. But then it has that shoestring budget feel to it and I suppose it can't be blamed for corner-cutting a little.

Not a great movie, but bad enough to be good.

On the face of it, Q appears to tick all the boxes for classic monster movie fans, with a stop-motion flying serpent terrorising the citizens of New York, biting off heads and plucking victims from rooftop swimming pools while cop Shepard (David Carradine) runs around trying to solve the mystery. However, the film isn't quite the faultless homage to B-movie creature features of the '50s that many would have you believe: first and foremost, there isn't anywhere near enough of the monster, and what we do see isn't that well executed (Harryhausen certainly had nothing to worry about); and, monster aside, the plot leaves unanswered questions, the biggest one being 'How does a massive flying serpent get in and out of the Chrysler Building without being noticed?'.

Resurrected by an Aztec cult through ritual sacrifices, the creature, Quetzalcoatl, resides in the roof of New York's famous art-deco landmark, where it has built itself a nest. Small-time crook Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty) discovers the whereabouts of the creature's hideaway and holds the city to ransom. Meanwhile, the cult continues with their grisly work, skinning and removing organs from willing victims.

With a fair amount of gore (spurting neck stumps, flayed bodies, gruesome remains) and some gratuitous nudity (a woman sunbathing on a roof rubs lotion into her breasts), director Larry Cohen is obviously aware of what is required in such fare, which makes it all the more of a shame that the bulk of his movie focuses not on the winged beastie, but instead on the activities of Moriarty's two-bit thief and all-round loser: he's simply not a character we can care about (in addition to his criminal activities, he smacks about his girlfriend and plays awful jazz piano).

The film picks up a bit towards the end, with the police launching an attack on Quetzalcoatl as it returns home: there's lots of frantic machine gun fire from marksmen in window cleaner cradles, some of whom are sent flying by the monster (badly animated figures thrown through the air). Richard Roundtree (the original Shaft) also gets carried away by Q and dropped from a height. The film is wrapped up with the monster dying of multiple bullet wounds, and Carradine's cop tracking down the murderous cultist and filling him full of lead.

As for those other unanswered questions: What happened to the jewellery from the heist? Why does Quinn go to the very top of the building in the first place? How has Q managed to lay fertile eggs without a mate? Wasn't it convenient of Q being at home when Quinn leads the gangsters to its nest? Who the hell is responsible for Carradine's hair?

5/10.

Old time horror flicks knew that the monster had to be hidden. The zipper up the back of the necks don't show as often that way, and besides, the movie was about more than the monster, right?

There are no less than 3 separate story lines in this Larry Cohen blue plate special. Any one of them would be enough for a half dozen current wannabe filmmakers, but Cohen weaves them all together, makes his point, and delivers up an amusing little cheezy entertainment.

If only more current horror films were as entertaining.

Watching Michael Moriarity and David Carradine is fun, too.

It's a creature movie with corny stop motion but also a spastic performance by Moriarty as an aspiring jazz musician in trouble with the law and mob. It can be funny despite the low budget vibe, but it's hardly a lost classic or anything.

As if New York doesn't have enough problems already, a flying serpent is on the loose picking people off as a feed.

Jimmy (Michael Moriarty) is a thief, and one day he discovers a giant bird's nest at the top of the Chrysler building. Around the same time, police is looking for who killed the window washer, a construction worker, a man in bed, and a woman on the rooftop. Shepard (David Carridine) is a cop who's on this case and starts to suspect that something flying is the culprit of all the killing. When Jimmy gets caught, he uses the information he has to spring a deal with the cops.

Unlikely story that a giant serpent can roam New York city and not get detected by thousands of people, but that's the plot. As far as giant monster flick is concerned this movie is crap, crap, crap because there's aren't much of a scene involving the Q itself, and all it does is fly around and pick people off of here and there. Otherwise, it's just one long boring sequence of nonsense that goes on between Jimmy and the police.

Stingy is what I'd categorize this film under. Unlike Steven Spielberg, director Larry Cohen lacks the spirit to entertain and excite its viewers with visuals of the main antagonist. Don't waste your time on this one, as there's no delivery, and lots of tease. The main character of this film seems to be the greedy thief (and not the Q) that the director seems to identify a lot with.