I’d be lying to you if I said I’ve been dying to watch Q: The Winged Serpent. Fact is, I’m going through the alphabet watching horror movies and there aren’t a whole of them that start with the letter Q.

The plot of Q: The Winged Serpent (such as it is) is pretty straight forward. In the film, Larry Cohen (It’s Alive, The Stuff, Maniac Cop 1-3) perches the titular winged serpent on top of the Chrysler building in New York City, where it occasionally descends from to feast on the heads of New York citizens. When Jimmy Quinn (played by long time Cohen collaborator Michael Moriarty) discovers the location of the serpent’s nest while hiding out after a failed robbery, instead of turning the information over to the police he instead attempts to sell it to them for one million dollars.

The film co-stars David Carradine and Richard Roundtree as cops in search of Quetzalcoatl, aka “Q”. Before long we learn that an Aztec cult performing ritualistic murders is responsible for Q’s arrival and it’s up to the cops to stop both the cult and Q itself.

According to legend, Q: The Winged Serpent was conceived and written in a single week after Larry Cohen was let go from another low budget film and found himself already in New York City. Along for the ride was David Allen, the stop-motion animator of Q (Allen’s credits include Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Caveman, Ghostbusters II, and the Puppet Master films.) I’ve always been a fan of guerrilla film making and Cohen’s commentary track (available on the Blu-Ray release) is amazing to listen to.

Also amazing is the fact that Q: The Winged Serpent was released on Blu-Ray. But I digress…

I miss the days of stop-motion monsters. Q: The Winged Serpent has a charm about it that makes it fun to watch. Don’t get me wrong: this is a horrible movie and should not be mistaken for good cinema, but parts of the movie feel like some of the people were trying which is about as positive as I can get. Q is a fun but terrible monster movie.

(This review is a part of my month-long October 2014 A-Z Horror Reviews.)

Tags: October 2014 Horror Reviews

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