Q – THE WINGED SERPENT

Michael Moriarty turns in a brilliant performance as Jimmy Quinn, a small-time hood looking to make one big score. After robbing a Manhattan diamond center, he hides out in the tower of the Chrysler Building and discovers a huge nest with an equally large egg and several partially devoured human corpses. Meanwhile, the police have been plagued by a bizarre string of deaths, and Detective Shepard and Sgt. Powell have been investigating reports of people being snatched off rooftops. They soon find out that the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, the winged serpent, is flying over Manhattan.
A few days after Q was screened at the Cannes Film Festival, the following conversation took place between Samuel Z. Arkoff, the film’s producer, and Rex Reed, the critic. Reed: “Sam! I just saw The Winged Serpent! What a surprise! All that dreck – and right in the middle of it, a great Method performance by Michael Moriarty!” Arkoff: “The dreck was my idea.” I believe him. Arkoff has been producing films for thirty years now, and even if he was honored with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, his heart still lies with shots of a giant flying lizard attacking a woman in a bikini on top of a Manhattan skyscraper. He’s just that kinda guy. (Roger Ebert)