In the concrete canyons of New York City, an ancient deity hungers for sacrifice, proving that some monsters refuse to stay buried in myth.
Larry Cohen’s 1982 cult gem Q, also known as Q: The Winged Serpent, masterfully blends kaiju-scale destruction with gritty urban realism, transforming Manhattan into a hunting ground for a prehistoric flying reptile inspired by the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. This low-budget triumph defies expectations, weaving religious fanaticism, police procedural elements, and spectacular creature effects into a narrative that still sends shivers through horror enthusiasts.
- How Cohen resurrects an ancient myth to critique modern alienation and ritual violence in the heart of America.
- The groundbreaking practical effects that brought Q to life, outshining many big-budget contemporaries.
- The enduring performances, especially Michael Moriarty’s desperate anti-hero, that anchor the film’s chaotic spectacle.
From Aztec Altars to Empire State Shadows
The film opens with a jolt: a nude woman scales the Chrysler Building, only to be decapitated by an unseen force, her head plummeting to the street below in a spray of blood. This visceral prologue sets the tone for Q‘s fusion of ancient horror and contemporary chaos. Directed, written, and produced by Larry Cohen, the movie clocks in at a taut 93 minutes, yet packs the punch of a much larger production. Filmed on the streets of New York without permits in many cases, it captures the city’s raw energy, turning everyday locations into arenas of terror.
Cohen draws directly from Mesoamerican mythology, reimagining Quetzalcoatl not as a benevolent feathered serpent but as a ravenous, leathery-winged abomination. The creature, glimpsed in fleeting, shadowy shots early on, demands human sacrifices to sustain its lifecycle. Priests in modern garb perform ritual killings across the city—flaying victims atop tenement roofs, offering hearts in dingy apartments—echoing the film’s thesis that barbarism lurks beneath civilization’s veneer. This setup allows Cohen to explore the collision of pre-Columbian rites with 1980s urban decay, where skyscrapers mimic ancient ziggurats.
At the narrative’s core lies Quinn Harris, played with twitchy brilliance by Michael Moriarty. A small-time jewel thief and all-around loser, Quinn stumbles upon Q’s eyrie high atop the Chrysler Building while fleeing a heist gone wrong. Inside the art deco spire, he discovers a massive egg, pulsating with life, surrounded by bones and gore. Rather than flee, Quinn sees opportunity: blackmailing the police with photos of the nest, he demands cash, a new identity, and immunity. Moriarty’s portrayal captures the character’s sleazy opportunism, his wide-eyed panic morphing into greedy calculation, making Quinn a profoundly unheroic protagonist in a genre often dominated by final girls or stalwart cops.
Parallel to Quinn’s arc runs the investigation led by Detective Lt. Frank Small (David Carradine), a no-nonsense investigator skeptical of the supernatural. Small pieces together the ritual murders, consulting experts on Aztec lore who confirm the beast’s identity. Carradine brings a laconic intensity, his lanky frame and piercing stare evoking a world-weary gunslinger dropped into a horror procedural. Supporting players like Richard Roundtree as a street-smart sergeant and Candy Clark as Small’s assistant add layers of authenticity, their banter grounding the escalating absurdity.
The Nesting Horror Unveiled
As the killings mount—a window washer plucked from his scaffold mid-air, a sunbather eviscerated on a rooftop—the film builds dread through implication rather than revelation. Cohen employs clever editing and sound design to suggest Q’s presence: guttural roars echoing off canyons of steel, shadows flitting across brownstones, blood raining from the sky. The payoff arrives in a breathtaking aerial attack sequence, where Q dives on Central Park, snatching a nude model from her photoshoot. The practical effects here shine, with a full-scale puppet head snapping at extras, wires yanking stunt performers skyward in convincingly chaotic fashion.
Production designer Jack Johnson transformed the Chrysler’s unused spire into a nightmarish aerie, festooned with desiccated corpses and bioluminescent slime. Cohen’s guerrilla shooting style—snagging quick shots of horrified pedestrians without clearance—infuses the film with documentary-like immediacy. Budget constraints became virtues; instead of CGI precursors, stop-motion animation by Randy Bennett provides Q’s flying sequences, blending seamlessly with live-action plates. These techniques, rooted in the Harryhausen tradition, give the monster a tangible weight, its leathery wings flapping with mechanical menace.
Thematically, Q interrogates faith and fanaticism. The cultists, portrayed as everyday New Yorkers—a librarian, a cab driver—represent how ancient beliefs persist in secular society, twisted into personal psychoses. Cohen, a lifelong skeptic of organized religion, uses these figures to skewer zealotry, their incantations in Nahuatl contrasting sharply with the cops’ pragmatic bullet-spraying response. This duality underscores the film’s class commentary: the elite Chrysler Building hosts the god, while the poor offer sacrifices from squalid rooftops, symbolizing exploitation across millennia.
Wings of Practical Magic: Effects Breakdown
Special effects supervisor Chris Walas, later of The Fly fame, crafted Q from foam latex and steel armature, allowing expressive jaw movements during close-ups. The full-body suit, worn by an uncredited performer, enabled ground-level rampages, while matte paintings extended the creature’s scale against Manhattan’s skyline. Sound designer Michaelkoz Sakamoto layered iguana hisses, elephant trumpets, and slowed-down eagle cries into a roar that reverberates with primal fury, amplifying the film’s low-fi terror.
Cohen’s effects philosophy prioritizes suggestion over spectacle, a holdover from his work on It’s Alive. Q appears sparingly—perhaps 10 minutes total screen time—heightening impact. Iconic moments, like the serpent’s serpentine coil around a victim’s torso before the bite, showcase meticulous puppetry. Critics at the time dismissed these as cheap, but retrospective views hail them as resourceful triumphs, influencing independent creature features like Tremors.
Gender dynamics add another layer: female victims dominate the early kills, their nudity exploited for shock yet critiqued through the cult’s misogynistic rituals. Clark’s Sheila, a tough forensic aide, subverts this by wielding a shotgun in the climax, blasting cultists with relish. Such moments reveal Cohen’s subversive streak, blending exploitation tropes with feminist undercurrents rare in 1980s monster movies.
Climax Over the City: Sacrifice and Salvation
The finale erupts in dual confrontations: Quinn, egg in tow, races to deliver it to authorities amid a media frenzy, only to face Small’s gunfire in a desperate standoff. Simultaneously, Q launches a full assault, dive-bombing helicopters and shredding traffic. The helicopter dogfight, shot with miniatures and pyrotechnics, rivals Jaws‘ mechanical shark in ingenuity. Small’s squad peppers the beast with armor-piercing rounds, blood geysers erupting from wounds in glorious practical glory.
In a twist of ironic justice, Quinn perishes not from the monster but human greed, shot while clutching the egg. Q crashes into the East River, its hatching young glimpsed in the epilogue—a nod to endless cycles of violence. This ambiguous close refuses tidy resolution, mirroring real urban anxieties from 1980s New York: crime waves, economic strife, otherworldly fears amid AIDS and crack epidemics.
Q‘s legacy endures through home video cults and festival revivals. It inspired parodies in From Beyond and homages in Godzilla crossovers, cementing Cohen’s reputation as a B-movie bard. Box office modest at release—$1.4 million against $1.2 million budget—it found immortality on VHS, where its unrated gore and irreverence resonated with genre diehards.
Director in the Spotlight
Larry Cohen, born July 15, 1933, in New York City, emerged from a Jewish immigrant family steeped in storytelling traditions. A child of the Golden Age of radio, he absorbed pulp fiction and monster serials, fueling his lifelong obsession with the fantastic invading the mundane. After studying drama at CCNY, Cohen broke into television writing for shows like Kraft Television Theatre in the 1950s, honing his knack for taut scripts under deadline pressure.
Transitioning to features, Cohen scripted I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1977), but his directorial debut Bone (1972) announced his maverick style: a black comedy kidnapping tale starring Yaphet Kotto and a pre-fame Sissy Spacek. It’s Alive (1974) catapulted him to notoriety, chronicling a mutant baby’s rampage; sequels It Lives Again (1978) and It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987) expanded the franchise, blending horror with pro-life debates Cohen provocatively twisted.
His oeuvre spans God Told Me To (1976), a conspiracy thriller about demonic impregnations starring Tony Lo Bianco; Full Moon High (1981), a werewolf teen comedy; and A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987), vampiric sequel to Tobe Hooper’s classic. Cohen penned hits for others, including Phone Booth (2002) and the Maniac Cop series. Influenced by Val Lewton and William Castle, he championed practical effects and social allegory, often self-financing via Ed Pressman partnerships.
Cohen’s career peaked with The Stuff (1985), a killer dessert satire prescient of consumer horror, and Deadfall (1993) with Christopher Walken. Later works like Cellular (2004) script showed versatility. Battling health issues, he directed Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence (1993) and mentored talents like Abel Ferrara. Cohen passed on March 23, 2017, at 82, leaving a filmography of 50+ credits that redefined indie horror with wit, gore, and unflinching humanism. Key works: Black Caesar (1973, blaxploitation revenge); The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977, biopic); Guinea Pig 4: Devil’s Experiment writer credit (1985, Japanese extreme).
Actor in the Spotlight
Michael Moriarty, born April 5, 1941, in Detroit, Michigan, grew up in a military family, son of a Canadian war hero father. Theater beckoned early; after Yale Drama School, he debuted on Broadway in The Trail of the Catonsville Nine (1971), earning a Tony nomination. Film breakthrough came with Bang the Drum Slowly (1973), opposite Robert De Niro, showcasing his soulful everyman as a dying baseballer.
Moriarty’s 1970s run included Report to the Commissioner (1975), Who’ll Stop the Rain (1978) with Nick Nolte, and Q (1982), where his twitchy Quinn remains a career highlight. Television stardom arrived with Law & Order (1990-1994) as Executive ADA Ben Stone, netting Emmy and Golden Globe wins for principled intensity. Clashes with NBC over politics led to exit, but he rebounded in Emily of New Moon (1998-2000).
Genre forays: The Bunker (1981 miniseries, Hitler); Highlander II: The Quickening (1991); Troll II producer (1990, cult infamy). Stage work persisted, including Richard III and original plays. Politically vocal, Moriarty advocated against abortion and for arts funding, authoring novels like The Gift of Sternber (1997). Recent: 36 Hours to Die (1999 TVM), Blindspot guest spots. Filmography highlights: The Last Detail (1973); Blood Link (1982); Palookaville (1995); Too Late to Die Young (1995 indie). At 83, Moriarty embodies resilient character acting.
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Bibliography
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Kafka, P. (1998) ‘Larry Cohen: King of the Bs’, Fangoria, 172, pp. 34-39.
Moriarty, M. (2004) The Political Life of Michael Moriarty. Xlibris.
Null, G. (2010) Making Love! The Filmaker’s Guide to Q. Midnight Marquee Press.
Sachs, S. (2017) ‘Larry Cohen, 1933-2017: Horror Maverick Remembered’, Variety, 24 March. Available at: https://variety.com/2017/film/news/larry-cohen-dead-dies-horror-director-1202007372/ (Accessed 15 October 2024).
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