"I'm afraid of almost everything, but I've never been afraid of heights."
Q (1982)
directed by Larry Cohen
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Q begins beautifully, like a ride in the car with no particular destination. The opening half hour is a love letter to New York pedestrian culture, the Chrysler Building, and aerial shots of the city. Criminals audition at bars with pianos, David Carradine and Richard Roundtree talk shop at the station, and citizens (full of life) die creatively while washing windows, rubbing on suntan lotion, and swimming in rooftop pools. It's the kind of human feast that makes the mouth of a reborn god like Quetzacotal water: millions of soon-to-be sacrifices out and about on a pretty day, reveling in temporary pleasures.
But Cohen wants to say something about celebrity and second chances in America. His protagonist, Jimmy Quinn, is a former junkie and a getaway driver who can never catch a break. He knows a secret, though, that can put an end to the daily deaths-by-pterodactyl, and he wants a cut of the profits before he shares a thing with anyone. I'm guessing that Cohen saw Melvin and Howard two years prior, and ran with it one night while watching King Kong.
The horror genre is an acceptable outlet for social commentary, but I'll always prefer Night of the Living Dead to its sequel. In Romero's first feature, the metaphor is less explicit. Q isn't so much derailed in its second half as distracted. When Jimmy's fortune fails to materialize, the wind goes out of Cohen's sails. Even the capture of the Aztec priest feels like an afterthought, as if no one could figure out what something so fantastic as a man in mask and feathers was doing in a police procedural in the first place.
directed by Larry Cohen
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Q begins beautifully, like a ride in the car with no particular destination. The opening half hour is a love letter to New York pedestrian culture, the Chrysler Building, and aerial shots of the city. Criminals audition at bars with pianos, David Carradine and Richard Roundtree talk shop at the station, and citizens (full of life) die creatively while washing windows, rubbing on suntan lotion, and swimming in rooftop pools. It's the kind of human feast that makes the mouth of a reborn god like Quetzacotal water: millions of soon-to-be sacrifices out and about on a pretty day, reveling in temporary pleasures.
But Cohen wants to say something about celebrity and second chances in America. His protagonist, Jimmy Quinn, is a former junkie and a getaway driver who can never catch a break. He knows a secret, though, that can put an end to the daily deaths-by-pterodactyl, and he wants a cut of the profits before he shares a thing with anyone. I'm guessing that Cohen saw Melvin and Howard two years prior, and ran with it one night while watching King Kong.
The horror genre is an acceptable outlet for social commentary, but I'll always prefer Night of the Living Dead to its sequel. In Romero's first feature, the metaphor is less explicit. Q isn't so much derailed in its second half as distracted. When Jimmy's fortune fails to materialize, the wind goes out of Cohen's sails. Even the capture of the Aztec priest feels like an afterthought, as if no one could figure out what something so fantastic as a man in mask and feathers was doing in a police procedural in the first place.
posted by NPK at 12:01 AM
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