The Scream Factory Sets Free Q The Winged Serpent onto Blu-ray!

Steve Barton   |  

May 2, 2013

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“Q is Coming” was the simple tagline used to tease the release of Larry Cohen’s cult classic 1982 Aztec monster terrorizes New York City Q: The Winged Serpent. Q is coming once again; this time to Blu-ray thanks to the fine folks at Shout Factory.

There’s a famous anecdote about how after the Cannes Film Festival screening of Q film critic Rex Reed complimented legendary producer Samuel Z. Arkoff for the wonderful character performance by Michael Moriarty amid all the dreck. Arkoff took a big drag on his cigar and replied, “The dreck was my idea.”

Actually, the dreck was Larry Cohen’s idea and I’d be hard-pressed to call it dreck. I’d call Q: The Winged Serpent one of the most criminally underrated genre movies of the Eighties.

When a number of New Yorkers are brutally decapitated while sunbathing on their tenement building roof, two NYPD detectives are assigned to solve the case. Meanwhile, paranoid jewel thief Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty) flees a botched heist and hides out on the roof of the Chrysler Building, where he unwittingly discovers the nest of the huge dragon-like creature that has been responsible for the deaths. As Quinn bargains with the police for a financial reward for his information about the creature’s nest, a mysterious Aztec cult in the city start making human sacrifices to call on the creature they believe is Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent. Can the police get the location of the nest before more people are killed? And, once there, can they destroy the monstrous creature?

So when can we expect to see Michael Moriarty, David Carradine, and Richard Roundtree running around New York City doing battle with low-life criminals, an Aztec ritual serial killer, and a giant winged monster god brought to life by some wonderfully old fashioned stop-motion effects work in glorious high definition?

August 2012 is the only date Shout Factory has announced thus far. No specifics regarding disc extras as of yet, either. If the Blu-ray is due in August those details should be getting announced very shortly. Stay tuned!

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