Sunday, March 8, 2009

Q: The Winged Serpent (1982)


As much as I liked Johnny Depp as Ed Wood, I'm not really a fan of B-Movies. That's why I was surprised by how much I enjoyed "Q: The Winged Serpent". I initially put it on because it was filmed in NYC and is a forgotten instance of the enormous-monsters-running-amok-in-NYC genre of NYC movies (e.g., "King Kong", "Ghostbusters", "Cloverfield", etc.). I assumed I would watch it for a few minutes to see where it was shot in NYC and then turn it off. But I watched it from beginning to end and enjoyed the whole thing. The special effects are ridiculously bad, and there's plenty of inane dialogue, but the plot is fun enough and the lead actor--some dude implausibly named "Michael Moriarty"--is amazing. There's a scene in which he plays the piano and scat-sings along with it that's totally unique. Also: animal rights activists will love the scene in which shots of a chef preparing Peking Duck fade into shots of a ritual human sacrifice in which a person is flayed alive.

Locations prominently featured include the actual interior of the very top of the Chrysler Building and tons and tons of aerial shots of Central Park and the rooftops of mid- and downtown. The ending features a building that's topped with a ziggurat, which I assume is a real building that I just didn't recognize.

1 comment:

Charles P. Everitt said...

I should have my students watch this the next time I teach "The Lives of Animals".