Q

1982 monster movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A giant winged monster is terrorizing New York City, and some detectives try to figure out what's going on while a crookish loser stumbles upon answers.

Do I have any other movies that start with the letter Q? I don't know who I'm asking or why I can't just look this up on my own. Maybe I'll spend the rest of 2017 trying to watch all the movies that start with Q.

I wanted to watch this for my New York City Movie Fest a few years ago, but I couldn't get my hand on a copy. I expected it to be bad, maybe even finding its way into good-bad territories, but it's surprisingly not bad at all. It would haven been perfect for the New York City thing as there are all kinds of overhead shots of the city and shots from the top of the Chrysler Building that are really cool. This, by the way, was partially made because director Larry Cohen felt that the Chrysler Building deserved its own monster since the Empire State Building (and the World Trade Center buildings, I guess) had King Kong.

Don't get me wrong--there are some bad things about it. David Carradine gives a performance where it doesn't seem like he wants to be there or bother trying. There are also some terrible acting by extras as they react to blood falling from the sky or a giant winged monster or something else that the actors can't actually see. Some silly cuts and jarring transitions made it clear that Cohen needed a different editor, too, and some of the action scenes just didn't make any sense. Attempts to tie in Aztecs never really made much sense to me. I guess I don't need my monsters explained. What are Aztecs doing in New York City anyway?

You could argue that star Michael Moriarty's performance is also bad, but you'd be wrong. He plays an unhinged tweaker and seems to be the opposite of Carradine here as he pours everything he's got into the performance. He gets a chance to show off some piano and scatting skills, flails around like he's about to burst a blood vessel, and delivers most of his lines like he's in some sort of race. It might not be a good performance, but it's definitely a unique one. His best moment is when he's wailing, "Eat him! Eat him! Crunch! Crunch!" during one scene.

You can't write about a monster movie without writing about the monster. The more they showed of Q, a stop-animated winged serpent thing, the more ridiculous it seemed. And, of course, the more I loved the thing. I thought the stop-animation looked good even if it didn't quite feel realistic against the backdrop of the big city architecture. Now, during a scene where people are being dropped by the beast and turn into Gumby-like stop-motion humans, things do look a little too cheap. But just check out the shadow effects on the buildings as Q flies around in the beginning scenes. And if you enjoy gore, there are some effective gory effects for you here.

I also enjoyed the thrilling score for the most part. There is some strangeness, especially in one scene with a weird "I'm going to kill you" melody-free song that I actually thought was Moriarty crooning, probably because it also contained some weird scatting. It turned out to not be Moriarty's character though.

This isn't a classic monster movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it definitely does have enough imagination to make it worth checking out, especially if you're a fan of the Chrysler Building.