It was the best of films. It was the worst of films.
One day Screenwriter Larry Cohen came up with two interesting but totally different ideas. The first was a Science Fiction epic about two NYC detectives charged with stopping a modern day Aztec cult and the monsterous winged deity they have brought to life.
The second concerns the exploits of a small time hood trying to rise above his station in life. Both interesting concepts. Unfortunately, try though he might Cohen could not develop enough material to make either project viable. Then a thought struck him. A notion so radical he dare not give it utterance. What if he were to combine both projects into one??????
Sound impossible???? Well Cohen tried to pull it off with the convoluted epic Q.
Q stands for Quetzacoatl, the aforementioned winged deity worshipped by the aforementioned Aztec cultists. Needless to say Q is not a nice deity and decides to get its jollies noshing on penthouse dwelling Manhattanites. Investigating the crime are Richard Roundtree and David Carridine as the aforementioned detectives.
Meanwhile the aforementioned small time hood protrayed by Micheal Moriarty is making a half hearted attempt to reform. He fails and is soon involved in a jewel heist. When the heist goes sour Moriarty seeks a spot to lay low. As chance would have it his sanctuary happens to be the same location Q has chosen for its nest. When Roundtree and Carridine's investigation fails to turn up Q hiding spot Moriarty offers to lead them to the nest in exchange for criminal immunity and monetary considerations.
The blending of these two stories is far from seemless. Despite the critical praise he recieved for this role, Moriarty's charactor seems totally out of place. His low end gangster antics seem better suited for an episode sapranos.
Far more impressive, though sadly less seen is Q itself. Brought to life with the aid of some niffy bits of stop motion animation, the elephant sized beastie wings its way over the Manhattan skyline out performing the human actors as it goes.
The best thing Cohen could have done is to drop Moriarty's entire segment and replace it with something more in keeping with the films Sci-fi nature. It would have been a far far better thing to do than he had ever done before.
