Q (1982) United Film Distribution Company/Horror RT: 93 minutes Rated R (language, graphic violence, nudity, frightening moments) Director: Larry Cohen Screenplay: Larry Cohen Music: Robert O. Ragland Cinematography: Fred Murphy Release date: October 29, 1982 Starring: Michael Moriarty, Candy Clark, Richard Roundtree, David Carradine, James Dixon, Malachy McCourt, Fred J. Scollay, Peter Hock, Ron Cey, Mary Louise Weller, Bruce Carradine, John Capodice, Tony Page, Larkin Ford, Larry Pine. Box Office: $255,000 (US)
Rating: ***
Now this is what I call a monster movie! Q, written, produced and directed by schlock-meister Larry Cohen (It’s Alive, The Stuff), has a giant lizard flying around New York City, grabbing victims from rooftops and scaffolds. Come on, who wouldn’t want to see a flick with this neat premise?
It all starts when a window washer at the Empire State Building (literally) loses his head. The cops assigned to the case, Sgt Powell (Roundtree, Shaft) and Detective Shepard (Carradine, Lone Wolf McQuade), have no idea how to explain it especially since they can’t find the man’s head anywhere. A hotel maid discovers a body in one of the rooms. The victim has been skinned from head to toe. A woman sunbathing (topless, of course) on her building’s rooftop is snatched and taken away by something. Blood rains on the people down below on the streets. Everybody panics. The cops have no explanation.
A man’s body is found by the river with his heart surgically removed. It looks like a ritual murder so Shepard starts asking questions at museums and universities hoping to find some answers. After much research, he reaches one conclusion, one that illustrates the famous quote by Arthur Conan Doyle “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” He figures out that an Aztec god called Quetzalcoatl (Q, for short) is alive and well and living in New York having been resurrected by a cult practicing human sacrifice.
Meanwhile, small time crook and full time loser Jimmy Quinn (Moriarty, Pale Rider) accepts a job as a getaway driver for a jewel robbery. Even though he makes it clear he’s only the driver and nothing more, his colleagues force him to take part. Things go wrong and Jimmy takes off with a briefcase containing the stolen gems. He runs to the Chrysler Building and makes his way to the very top to the building’s cone where he finds a giant nest with an egg in it. He also finds a body with all of the flesh eaten away. Jimmy doesn’t know what to make of all this, but when his two colleagues come to collect their purloined property, he leads them right to the nest. This time, its occupant is there and makes a meal of the two hoods.
Shortly thereafter, Jimmy is arrested for his part in the robbery and decides to use what he knows about the monster to his advantage. He tells the cops he will reveal the location of the monster if all charges against him are dismissed and the city pays him $1 million tax free. His faithful and good-hearted girlfriend Joan (Clark, The Man Who Fell to Earth) tries to convince him to just tell the cops what they need to know because it’s the right thing to do. He won’t do this because it’s the first time in his life he’s been important.
Meanwhile, Q claims more victims including a construction worker (whose foot lands right in the street!) and a woman (with her top on!) swimming in a rooftop swimming pool. The cops’ commanding officer Lt. Murray (Dixon, It’s Alive) thinks the whole idea of an ancient god flying around the city is preposterous. After all, where would something that big hide? Somebody suggests that he flies in from New Jersey each day. How could nobody notice something this major until now? Easy, it’s New York; they’re accustomed to ignoring things, strange or not.
The special effects are pretty cheesy. On a budget of just $1.2 million, there’s only so much that can be done. Q relies on the use of stop-motion effects and miniature models and it works. It certainly looks more convincing than anything that CGI could come up with. The creature is well designed and shows up at just the right moments. The climax brings back memories of the original King Kong swatting away those pesky planes while standing atop the Empire State building. It’s actually funny watching Q grab cops out of work buckets and sending them falling to their deaths 50 stories below. It looks fake yet you don’t mind because you know that this movie is high camp and isn’t meant to be taken seriously, not even for a minute.
Somebody should have told Moriarty this. He delivers a perfect Method performance. His character, a manic, twitchy nervous wreck of a low-level criminal, resembles somebody from a Martin Scorsese movie. He’s a recovering drug addict and ex-con involved with a woman who’s obviously too good for him. Jimmy Quinn is the consummate loser who, given an iota of power, becomes an insufferable ass. You would think that Moriarty was going for an Oscar nomination but the chances of Q being nominated for any Academy Award are zero-to-none.
Carradine also gives a good performance as the bemused detective investigating the case. He’s so cool and casual when he explains his theory to his disbelieving superior officers. Clark is very good as Joan, the too-patient girlfriend who stays by Jimmy’s side no matter how badly he screws up. After a while, you wonder why she doesn’t just kick this loser to the curb. It’s always great seeing Roundtree in a movie. His very presence is a big point in the movie’s favor.
Q is a good campy movie. It would have been better if there were more scenes of the creature flying around the city and snatching up victims. The subplot about the ritual murders, even though it’s connected to the main plot, does seem to slow things down a bit. I also wish that there had been more splatter, more scenes where fake blood squirts everywhere. The opening scene where the window washer gets his head eaten off by Q is awesome. You see the neck spurting blood all over the clean window.
Except for Moriarty, everybody seems to know that they’re making schlock. The movie has a knowing sense of humor about itself. When Powell and Shepard are discussing what happened to the window washer, Carradine says that maybe his head just came loose and fell off. Somebody else says that the head didn’t just float away like a balloon and the very next shot is a balloon floating in the sky. There’s also a great “BOO!” moment involving a kite.
Q is the type of film that doesn’t get made anymore, a straight-up B-movie that’s meant to be caught on the big screen in some crappy little theater. It’s much better than what we get today- e.g. the 1998 remake of Godzilla. It brings back memories of the campy horror movies released by American International Pictures. This shouldn’t come as a surprise since Samuel Z. Arkoff, one of the founders of AIP, is one of Q‘s executive producers. This is a man who knew how to put together a great B-movie. He had a formula for making a successful B-movie, “The ARKOFF Formula”. His theory was that a good movie should include Action (excitement and drama), Revolution (controversial or revolutionary ideas), Killing (a degree of violence), Oratory (memorable speeches and dialogue), Fantasy (popular dreams and wishes acted out) and Fornication (sex appeal to both sides).
Q contains all of these elements including the “R” part about controversial ideas. It has something to say about religion and the extremes that some believers will go to in the name of their deity. Director Larry Cohen also touched upon this subject in his 1976 camp mini-classic God Told Me To. I didn’t intend to analyze Q so deeply, but once I read about the “ARKOFF Formula”, I had to. Aside from that, the movie is just a damn good monster movie perfect for Saturday matinee viewing. It’s cinematic junk and makes no apologies for it. That, my friends, is great B-movie making!
