Q: The Winged Serpent (1982) (Blu-ray Review)
Directed By: Larry Cohen
Starring: Michael Moriarty, Candy Clark, David Carradine
Rated: R/Region A/1:85/1080p/Number of Discs 1
Available from Shout Factory
New York police are bemused by a spate of reports of a giant flying lizard that has been spotted around the rooftops of New York, which they assume to be bogus until the lizard starts to eat people. An out-of-work, ex-con piano player is the only person who knows the location of the monster’s nest and is determined to turn the knowledge to his advantage, but will his gamble pay off or will he end up as lizard food?
To say a movie like this wasn’t a throwback to a creature feature of an even later time might be an understatement. The story here is very well written and it packs some very interesting characters. I can’t stress enough about how well the performance from David Carradine is here in this film. As someone who mostly has seen David Carradine in Kung-Fu, it was pretty cool seeing him play a wise cracking officer of the law, all the while going after this flying nightmare from above. A flying nightmare that while doing most its damage during daytime in the big city is rarely even seen. That is just the type of film we are dealing with.
The time period of the film leads to a lot of claymation style dragon flying and people tossing. I won’t talk too badly about that because had this been done today the people tossing might be better, but the dragon would be all CGI. The snark in me wants to say I’d take clay over CGI any time, but that might just be me being crude. Either way, the movie is a bit slow in areas and while it is very well written does seem to slow down a bit when you’d have hoped it wouldn’t. Toss in a satanic element and you’ve got a movie that is entertaining overall. Also, given the era of the film the movie doesn’t look as great as we might have hoped in HD. Still, I don’t expect many complaints on that front.
– Audio Commentary with Larry Cohen
– Theatrical Trailer
