Q – The Winged Serpent [Q] **** (1982, Michael Moriarty, Candy Clark, David Carradine, Richard Roundtree) – Classic Movie Review 8071

Writer-director Larry Cohen’s 1982 Q – The Winged Serpent [or just plain Q] is a hugely enjoyable, if raggedly made, cult horror thriller, often imaginatively written and directed. It is by turns scary, funny and impressive, and always richly entertaining.

Q is the Aztec god Quetzlcoatl, reincarnated as a huge flying serpent that gobbles up New Yorkers until small-time crook Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty), on the run from both the cops and robbers, finds the beast’s lair in the spire of the Chrysler Building (405 Lexington Avenue, Manhattan).

Moriarty’s exquisitely ripe performance is an engagingly hammy tour-de-force, while Candy Clark as his girlfriend Joan and David Carradine and Richard Roundtree as the cops on the case, NYPD detectives Shepard and Powell, provide a measure of humanity and sanity.

The lack of logic in the script and obvious lack of cash for special effects only add to the fun in this ideal late-night beer and pizza movie, with oodles of drive, pace and tongue-in-cheek humour.

Also in the cast are James Dixon, John Capodice, Malachy McCourt, Fred J Scollay, Ron Cey, Mary Louise Weller, Bruce Carradine, Tony Page, Larkin Ford, Larry Pine, Eddie Jones, Shelly Desai, Lee Louis, Fred Morsell, Ed Kovens, Richard Duggan, Jennifer Howard, David Snell, Larry Silvestri, Perry Genovese, Gabriel Wohl, Nancy Stafford and Bobbi Burns.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8071

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com