|
 The first
time I heard the title of this movie, I was sure someone was putting me
on. Come on, “Q the Winged Serpent”? No way. I hadn't even heard of
Larry Cohen yet, let alone watched any of his movies, so I couldn't
believe that someone would actually make a movie about a giant flying
lizard living in modern-day
New York City and chowing down on the general populace. Now that
I'm older and wiser, I know better. Larry Cohen made his career by
taking ridiculous ideas that no one would ever take seriously and making
them into cheesy, two-bit horror movies that most people hate but some,
the degenerate few, love to hate. I find myself in the latter category,
though I do understand the first position (particularly when I'm halfway
through a
movie like “Q” and I'm fighting the urge to chuck my remote control at
the screen).
It's almost disingenuous to call a Larry Cohen movie a “grindhouse
flick” because Cohen took his skeezy little cheaply made monster epics
and put them in respectable theaters in the years after the grindhouse
wave was dying down. That's right folks, he tricked normal people into
watching his films (and I bet he pissed off a lot of people in the
process, making them think they were about to see some semi-reputable
piece of filmmaking, when instead, they were in for this awful little
romp of a monster movie). One can hardly sympathize with them, though,
I mean, after viewing the movie poster with the artist's rendering of a
big flying lizard on top of a modern skyscraper holding a semi-nude
woman in his talons, accompanied by the awesome tagline splashed across
the bottom of the movie poster, anyone who doesn't realize that this is
going to be a schlockfest really has their own lack of observational
skills to blame. That's right, people, as with most Grindhouse
classics, this movie has a great tagline: "Its name is Quetzalcoatl...
just call it Q, that's all you'll have time to say before it tears you
apart!" Um, ok. Got it. No, I am not making this up, I swear. You can
look up the original movie poster if you don't believe me. The monster
in this movie is pretty badass, to be sure. Some dumbass cult has
decided to resurrect the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl in modern New York city,
and the serpent makes its lair in the city and dines on the local
citizens.
|
You've gotta admit, a big,
flying lizard isn't something you see every day, and the
poor, hapless victims are rightfully terrified and confused
in the seconds before Q gobbles them up. The movie was shot
on location in and around the Chrysler building, and the
actual inside of the building's cone serves as a movie set
(it looks suspiciously like a run-down attic, so people
probably thought that Larry Cohen was lurking around in
someone's attic while shooting his movie, but no, that's
really what the inside of the cone looked like...although
the image of Larry Cohen lurking in the bushes near
someone's house and using their attic as a movie set rings
pretty true just the same). |
|
 |
Part of what makes this movie so damn
entertaining is that Michael Moriarty decides to deliver his
quintessential method actor performance, playing the events of the movie
totally straight, which
throws a wrench into the works of what would otherwise be a ridiculous
throwaway monster flick that no one, even the rest of the cast and crew,
would ever take Seriously. Moriarty does that kind of thing. Here, he
plays a criminal on the run from the cops after a botched robbery
attempt who stumbles upon the lair of the serpent and then decides to
blackmail the city in order to get money for the information about where
the lair is located. Shame shame, Michael Moriarty. How evil of you.
Of course, the cops are skeptical about the existence of the monster,
and then when they realize their mistake (way too late in the game)
they're racing against time to stop the creature before it kills anyone
else, so they don't have a lot of options left, and they're desperate.
Of course, Moriarty's nefarious plot has disastrous consequences and he
finds himself in the midst of
a grisly battle by the end of the movie (that's what you get for trying
to fuck with Q) and fans of silly, icky monster mayhem cheer while
everyone else hangs their head and weeps. Don't blame us. We didn't
tell you to watch it.
It feels kind of counterintuitive to complain about bad things in a
grindhouse flick, since obviously the bad elements are part of what
makes these movies so much fun, but honestly, any Larry Cohen movie
is going to be full of enough crap to make me want to turn it of on
numerous occasions during its running time, so here we are. Larry
Cohen thinks he's funny. I can almost hear him laughing at his own
jokes while he's writing his script, saying, “This will kill 'em!”
And it almost does kill us, but not in a good way. For example,
when a detective is musing about the mysterious death of a window
cleaner, trying to think of an alternate explanation to the “monster
killed him” theory, he says "maybe his head got loose and fell
off.” Yes indeed, maybe that happened. Another time, someone in
the story comments that the monster probably came to
New York to kill because "New York is famous for good
eating.” Ugh. You're killing me. Stop. No really, please stop.
Wisecracks aren't necessarily out of place in a horror movie, but
the problem here is that Michael Moriarty is playing this absolutely
straight, the script is laughing at itself, and the audience doesn't
know what to think. My biggest issue with Larry Cohen movies
(particularly when they contain Michael Moriarty) isn't that they're
cheesy or that they have over-the-top performances or that most of
the actors aren't taking the movie seriously (it's about a big
flying monster eating people in New York city, do you blame them?)
it's that his actors can't seem to agree about how to play things,
so some people are bored and sleepwalking through their
performances, Michael Moriarty is chewing the scenery and taking
himself totally seriously, the monster is flying around chomping on
extras, and the script is full of yuks like a prime time sitcom.
What the hell is going on here? No one knows, and it doesn't
totally ruin the movie watching experience, but it does tend to give
me a stabbing pain right over my left eye while I'm watching the
proceedings.
Legend has it that when famous movie reviewer Rex Reed discussed “Q”
with its producer, Samuel Arkoff, Reed said "What a surprise! All that
dreck--and right in the middle of it, a great Method performance by
Michael Moriarty!" To which Arkoff replied, “The dreck was my idea.” I
think that safely sums up everything you'd ever need to know about this
movie. I can't really stand here and recommend this film with a
straight face, but I will say that I enjoyed the hell out of it, so take
that for what it is.
|
