I don’t feel like this letter necessarily needs an opening paragraph, but I have started enjoying doing them. So enjoy this brief and meaningless opening intro. Done. Ta-Da!

To be honest, while I knew I wanted to do this for Q from the get go, I wasn’t sure how it would go. And I was pleasantly surprised. This is a much better movie than I remember it being. The effects of the time (1982) give us the sort of Ray Harryhausen stop motion monster of the era. But this isn’t Harryhausen quality.

The fascinating thing here was that we had three different stories going on at the same time. A small time two-bit loser crook gets roped into a job that goes sideways. A murder mystery where someone is skinned alive. A monster epic in the heart of New York (that miraculously nobody notices.)

Quinn’s story is outside the horror world. It’s the sort of thing you would get from a Law and Order episode, which is funny as the actor Michael Moriarty would go on to star in the first 4 seasons of that series! As he goes about his daily life avoiding slightly better two-bit crooks (three-bit crooks? And what happens when we get to the eight-bit ones?), he stumbles into the nest of the titular creature. Q.

Short for Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god, the Feathered Serpent. Surprisingly the creature has no feathers, but perhaps that was done just because of the potential look. A monster with bright feathers is less creepy and scary. At least in the 80’s. Q is roaming the skies of New York plucking innocent New Yorkers up and dining on them. Sometimes taking them whole back to her nest and sometimes just biting off the head for a snack. Naturally the police become involved as headless bodies tend to draw that sort of attention. Enter David Carradine as a cop looking into things and he starts researching Aztec mythology (now I just watched it, but don’t recall what the catalyst was that made him go there, but it’s 80’s movie logic, just go with it.) He believes it is Quetzalcoatl and reflects that in his report, which doesn’t go over well with the higher ups (even though later they are all in on the monster hunt, just don’t want the paper trail, I guess. Even though it is becoming a media thing. Especially when it turns into a King Kong style assault on the nest.

And we know it’s a mama bird because there is an egg in the nest. We all know from horror movies, eggs mean potential sequels! But the cops kill the egg. (But what if there were two? Ehhh….)

Oh yeah, the murder mystery part. Turns out that is connected. That was the summoning ritual to bring Q to New York. The hunt for the killer is the sort of sub plot they return to when you’ve forgotten about it.

This is a light movie at times, but there are lots of deaths. Especially during the shootout, where Q plucks cops from the nest and tosses them to their death. Just a typical New York day where its raining cops!

A fun 90 minutes. And you will wonder “Wait, why is there a mime cop?” But the answer to that is “New York.”

This movie makes me want to watch more Indonesian horror in the same way that the Ring triggered my exploration into Japanese horror. So expect to see more of this in the future.

What starts as a reunion of sorts with three friends and their families going back to the orphanage they grew up in, takes a dark twist. Their time spent there was not as wholesome and positive in the formation of the men they came to be.

The man who ran the orphanage, Mr. Bandi, is dying. They came to say farewell. But the secret of Mr. Bandi isn’t quite one he manages to take to his grave. Supernatural things start occurring and people start dying. Or at least start being gravely injured.

I’m being cagey about this movie because there is a mystery at the heart of it that really pulls you in. The sort of thing that may have you standing in front of the tv watching tensely. And I don’t want to spoil that journey. Don’t get me wrong, I plan to watch it again and don’t feel it will be worse because I know.

If anyone has seen it, or watches it after reading this, I would love ideas on the end credits. Watch them. I think I know what they mean, but would love to discuss it.