The genesis for the film could be said to have started with Larry Cohen finding out that he was fired from directing a remake of Mickey Spillane's I, The Jury and deciding to make his own movie on the fly (literally, as he boarded a helicopter and began shooting aerial shots of N.Y.C.). The impressive cast he managed to assemble at the last minute included Michael Moriarty, David Carridine, Candy Clark, and Richard Roundtree. The story would fuse crime and fantasy by pirouetting around a small-time thug (played by Moriarty) who discovers the nest of a giant predatory and flying serpent that may have been unleashed by a series of ritual sacrifices meant to awaken Quetzalcoatl, an ancient Aztec God. Ironically, Q The Winged Serpent would find release at about the same time as I, The Jury, and ended up raking in four times as much business.
Q The Winged Serpent would be shot in 18 days over three six-day weeks and it delivers a fun ride for anybody in the mood for a good monster movie or an especially memorable and improvisational performance by Michael Moriarty. On the audio commentary, Larry Cohen lets the viewer know that although Moriarty has a reputation for being difficult to work with, he attributes this to the fact that the actor was often stuck with projects that were not interesting or challenging, whereas Q The Winged Serpent allowed both the director and actor to improvise dialogue and character bits and the director has nothing but praise for his lead star. For example, when Cohen found out that Moriarty had a talent for playing jazz piano, he added that to his character (and Moriarty even gets a credit for his own song, "Evil Dream," which he plays near the beginning of the film).
Blue Underground's dvd of Q The Winged Serpent presents the film in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and includes a variety of extras ranging from an audio commentary with Cohen, a teaser trailer, poster and still gallery, a director's bio, and some memorabilia accessible via dvd-rom. Among some of the insights available via Cohen's audio commentary are how the film came close to starring Bruce Willis and Eddie Murphy, how the film terrorized the city - twice, making front page news once for the giant nest it left in an abandoned facility that was later assumed to be real, and then again for the film's climactic machine-gun fight in the Chrysler Building that was mistaken as a terrorist attack on the U.N. (The stills gallery even affords one a look at full page ads taken out by the director with the headline "Dear New York, Sorry If We Scared You!") Cohen obviously loves N.Y.C. even more than his flying monster, and alongside artist Mathew Barney's recent fever-dream use of the Chrysler Building in his Cremaster series, Q The Winged Serpent can lay claim to being hugely influenced by the art-deco grandeur and temple-like beauty of the recognizable skyscraper.
For more information about Q The Winged Serpent, visit Blue Underground. To order Q The Winged Serpent, go to TCM Shopping.
by Pablo Kjolseth
