Q: The Winged Serpent (1982): B+

Larry Cohen’s maverick impulses were undiminished by the mainstream confines of Q: The Winged Serpent, a freewheeling homage to both King Kong and producer Samuel Z. Arkoff’s 1950s creature features that’s slyly infected with marrow-deep societal tensions. Small-time hood and recovering dope addict Jimmy (Michael Moriarty) flees from a diamond heist and into Manhattan’s Chrysler Building, where he accidentally stumbles upon the penthouse nest of Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl, a winged, feathered serpent that’s been resurrected by a serial killer via sacrificial human flayings. Filled with fury towards his nagging girlfriend (Candy Clark), the cops who locked him away as a kid, and the crooks who turned on him, self-loathing Jimmy views his discovery – once the beast becomes tabloid headline news for eating (or at least beheading) rooftop sunbathers and construction workers – as an opportunity to cash in and “be somebody.” Moriarty’s seemingly improvisatory, off-the-cuff performance is a mesmerizing mix of frazzled insecurity and jittery bluster, and he regularly upstages not only his castmates (including David Carradine and Richard Roundtree as cops hot on Q’s tail, er, trail) but the titular stop-motion monster as well. And while sneaking all manner of racial, socioeconomic, and male-female friction into his gory, goofy sci-fi extravaganza, Cohen – bless his B-movie heart – nonetheless never abandons his cartoonish sense of humor, epitomized by the sight of a machine gun-wielding cop, having just taken a good look at his gigantic airborne target, calming his nerves with a swig of beer.