“Eat ‘Em, Eat ‘Em! Crunch! Crunch!”: Cult Classic Q: The Winged Serpent at the Schlafly Bottleworks

The films of B-movie director Larry Cohen are peculiar objects. On the one hand, they are unmistakably Bad Movies, and wholly comfortable with the lowbrow, ungainly character that delineates them as such. However, Cohen’s films are also studded with unexpected pleasures that seem beguilingly out-of-place alongside the usual exploitation terrain of unabashed sex and violence. His work as a director boasts oddly engaging performances, unconventional narrative fixations, and an unalloyed affection for the ugliness of the contemporary urban landscape.

Following an early career in television, Cohen established his schlock-craft credentials in the 1970s with works such as the mutant infant horror flick It’s Alive (1974) and the Fred Williamson blaxploitation vehicles Black Caesar and Hell Up in Harlem (both 1973). However, among B-movie aficionados, his most celebrated works are arguably Q: The Winged Serpent (1982) and The Stuff (1985). Both of these films were written, produced, and directed by Cohen, but their commonalities run deeper. Both blend ghastly physical horror with sharp-elbowed absurdity, and both boast a deep cast of superb character actors. Moreover, holding both films together is the presence of Michael Moriarty (Bang the Drum Slowly, Pale Rider), whose jittery, overpowering acting style will likely stun viewers who remember him primarily as Law & Order’s beleaguered ADA Ben Stone.

The Stuff is a nasty, funny film—how could a B-movie about a low-calorie dessert that turns people into zombies not be?—but Q is ultimately the more fascinating work. Cohen begins with a morsel of Aztec mythology, and stirs in crime drama tropes, an acidic character study, authentic New York City trashiness, and plenty of R-rated drive-in monster mayhem. Given that it was cobbled together under the eye of legendary exploitation producer Samuel Z. Arkoff, the result is necessarily and undeniably awful, but also curiously mesmerizing. It’s a window into a kitschy universe that lies parallel to those occupied by Dog Day Afternoon and Mean Streets.

Next Wednesday, the Webster University Film Series will present a screening of Q: The Winged Serpent at Schlafly Bottleworks, as a part of their ongoing monthly cult film series, Strange Brew. Whether you’re a B-movie cinephile or just morbidly curious, the chance to enjoy the film’s marvels and offenses on the big screen (with a beer or three near at hand) should not be missed.

Ultra-prolific cult mainstay David Carradine (Bound For Glory, The Serpent’s Egg) and blaxploitation icon Richard Roundtree (Shaft, Inchon) portray properly acerbic New York City police detectives who face not one but two strings of baffling, violent murders. On the one hand are the apparently willing victims of ritual suicide-murders, complete with head-to-toe skin peels and extracted hearts. On the other are the unfortunate window-washers, construction workers, and sunbathers who are being snatched off of rooftops and torn into bloody chunks. Would you believe the two sets of murders are related?

Carradine and Roundtree don’t make much progress, but that’s okay: The real star here is Moriarty, portraying agitated getaway driver (and part-time jazz pianist) Jimmy Quinn. By a sequence of luckless and seemingly arbitrary events, Quinn goes from botching a diamond store heist to stumbling into the lair of an enormous avian beast atop the Chrysler Building. With the city in a panic and blood literally raining from the sky, Quinn’s knowledge of the creature suddenly changes him from small-time hood to the most powerful man in New York. Meanwhile, Carradine talks to some professors and reads some books, and before you know it, he’s murmuring theories about awakened gods and pre-Columbian cults, to the predictable dismissal of his colleagues.

Cohen masks the ham-fistedness of his method with profanity, topless women, and gruesome violence, the latter perpetrated by a stop-motion reptilian creature from visual effects wizards Dave Allen, Randall Cook, and Peter Kuran. Unlike most monster movies, Q takes place almost entirely during the daylight hours, and the crude point-of-view shots from high above the Gotham skyline are astonishingly menacing when paired with the Robert O. Ragland’s score. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Q, however, is how much space Cohen’s script gives to Quinn’s travails, and how successfully the film exploits its human focus (which is usually a liability in a creature feature). Moriarty delivers a flamboyant, tormented performance that seems to exist in an entirely different movie from the one inhabited by the other actors. It’s the kind of spectacle—half poignant, half appalling—that doesn’t come along that often, and even less often in early 1980s monster movies.

Q screens at 8 p.m. on Wednesday October 5 at the Sclafly Bottleworks (7260 Southwest Avenue). Admission is $4 (cash only). For a complete schedule of the Webster University Film Series programming, visit the series’ website.

St. Louis native Andrew Wyatt is the founder of the film aficionado website Gateway Cinephiles, where he has been an editor and contributor since 2007, authoring reviews, essays, and coverage of the St. Louis International Film Festival and Webster Film Series. Wyatt has worked as a freelance writer and game designer since 2000. When not watching, thinking about, and writing about cinema, he assumes the mild-mannered secret identity of an environmental scientist. He completed a bachelor’s degree in biology at Hope College in Holland, Mich., but returned to St. Louis to attain a master’s degree in environmental science from Washington University. He has been happily married since 2001.