Why so much hype?

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Like Jaws, you barely see the monster. Unlike Jaws, the characters are uninteresting. There are boobs in the beginning, then the entertainment value drops sharply. Skip to the last 20 minutes, when you actually see the monster in a King Kong-esque skyscraper showdown.

In 1933, King Kong was the champion on the Empire State Building. In 1976, he was champion again, this time on the World Trade Center. In 1982, another monster took up residence on the Chrysler Building! This monster's name is Quetzalcoatl, but you should just call it Q because that's all you'll have time to say before it rips you apart...A very strong script, an anti-hero you hate so much you love him. and a strong cast; Michael Moriarty, Richard Roundtree, and David Carradine!!Not to mention the title monster, Quetzalcoatl! This was before CGI and the creature was too complex to be successfully pulled off with a rubber so what do we get? We get good old-fashioned King Kong-style, Ray Harryhausen-worthy stop motion animation for our title monster!! The stop-motion here is better that most other stop motion monsters, lacking the choppy movement of King Kong!Another welcome change is our main character, Jimmy Quinn who is played by Michael Moriarty. He's not a cliche monster movie main character who's a scientist or military personnel, no, no.... he is a small-time crook who is essentially just an average Joe like you and me, trying to make his way through life. The character has hardly any redeeming qualities but Moriarty's portrayal of him makes him a very likable character but you hate him first. He has some very hammy dialogue.So if you're looking for a break from the kaiju films from Japan and the cheesy black-and-white giant monster movies of the '50s, give this one a watch!

As I've said before, I'm a sucker for a monster movie, especially a giant monster movie! "Q: TheWinged Serpent," is such a giant monster movie, & a classic too! A Mexican Aztec winged serpent god is brought to life through ritual killings by an Aztec high priest, but the death count rises as people in New York City start getting decapitated, & are swept up in thin air. No one knows why, except Michael Moriarty, a small time con man who has seen the serpents nest & extorts NYC for $1,000,000 for it's hiding place, at the top of one of NYC's tallest buildings. A nod to "King Kong." Moriarty plays his part with the same offbeat manner he is famous for, & is quite enjoyable as the bumbling would be millionaire bum. David Carradine plays a good off beat role as a none traditional cop detective, who is going to outwit Moriarty in divulging the location of the serpent.What follows is a great little cat & mouse game between Moriarty & Carradine. Great flying sequences as the winged serpent attacks & kills it victims off of skyscrapers. The stop motion effects are superior for 1982, as the winged Serpent looks great! A foreboding reptilian bird like giant, that makes its victims know how it feels to be a worm plucked out of the ground by that pesky Robin, after a rainstorm in the morning.All this & more, make "Q: The Winged Serpent," a very enjoyable monster romp, for us giant monster fans! A cult classic!

Q is your very typical 'B' movie, cheap thrills, cheap effects and corny, cheesy dialogue. If that is the sort of thing you enjoy than you will love this movie, if you don't then I think you should avoid this like the plague.The film begins when people are mysteriously killed and no one can fathom out how or why. Detective Shepard (David Carradine) is trying to work out how a window cleaner managed to be decapitated from forty stories high whilst his partner, Detective Powell (Richard Roundtree, better known as Shaft) is called to a murder where a man has been skinned alive, are they connected? After a while they work out that it is actually the work of a giant flying reptile that has been summoned to New York by a man who believes it is his God. He has been summoned by a hidden man offering human sacrifices. The decapitated man killed by the beast and the skinned man by the preacher. Meanwhile diamond thief Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty) tries to hide from the police in the top of the Chrysler Building, why and how he got there I have no idea. Whilst he is up there he stumbles across the beast's nest and holds the police at ransom for his knowledge of the location. Once they give in they go in search of this beast and ultimately after the man who summoned it to New York in the first place. Will they get there in time to stop it killing again? And if he is an immortal God how will they stop it?I'm going to throw it out there, this film is poor. When the creature is flying over the city it looks so fake it is unbelievable and when its talons come down, nipping prey off of roof tops, it looks like someone playing the claw in an arcade, with a human being the prize. When someone is decapitated it is so obvious it is a dummy and the nest just looks pathetic. The film is just pure awful.Of course there will be people out there who like this sort of thing but for me it is just bad filmmaking with some bad scripts. The acting however is not half bad with Moriarty actually doing a pretty damn good job, especially in the scene where he tries to bribe the police force into telling them the location of the nest. Shaft, or Richard Roundtree although people will remember him as Shaft, has a very easy role with not really enough meat given to him and Carradine is just very average, also having a simple role. The problem with Carradine, although it could be the script, is that he never seems to be under any real threat from the creature. He isn't set aside in panic, nor is any of the police force. They still have time to sit around in the police station which doesn't seem to show any urgency in the people trying to put a stop to this 'terror'. Also why are the police handling the situation? Surely it would be the army with direct orders from the President or his government. I don't understand how a creature kills people and the police are the ones to bring it down with little help it. The plot just makes very little sense and has so many plot holes. Looking at the actors you will see notice them from recent films so I am so surprised to see them in a film like this. It is just so cheap and tacky and really not my thing.Some areas of it aren't too dreadful, which means they are still worse than bad, and ironically this is when the creature isn't actually on the screen. Funny how a film about a giant, flying reptile actually kept me more entertained when people were bargaining money over information or even auditioning for a job as a pianist in a bar.It started awful, it finished awful and unless you are a 'B' movie type of person you will find everything in between awful as well. Avoid like you would a giant, flying reptile in New York.