Q: The Winged Serpent (Cohen, 1982) & God Told Me To (Cohen, 1976):
Roxy Bar & Screen, London Bridge, 7pm
This is screening as part of the Scala Beyond, a six-week season
celebrating all forms of cinema exhibition across the UK, from film
clubs to film festivals, picture palaces to pop-up venues. You can find
more details here at the website.
Welcome back to the much-missed Exploding Head Film Club.
The Exploding Head Film Club's introduction to tonight's entertainment: Larry Cohen’s work as a writer-director – from blaxploitation
classics like ‘Hell Up in Harlem’ to his groundbreaking ’70s-’80s horror
movies – combines the satirical wit of George Romero, the genre nous of
John Carpenter and the madcap thrills of the Corman school. Tonight’s event pairs two Cohen classics, both shot on the sleaziest
streets No-wave era New York had to offer. ‘Q’ (aka Q: The Winged
Serpent, 1982) explores what happens when an Aztec God returns to wreak
havoc on the city, and stars Cohen regular Michael Moriarty as a
scat-singing hoodlum. ‘God Told Me To’ (1976) is Cohen’s masterpiece, a
gender-bending religious freakout in which Jesus comes to Manhattan to
commit a series of bloody murders. There’ll also be a prime selection of era-defining NYC sounds and an intro by Time Out film writer Tom Huddleston.
Time Out review of Q - The Winged Serpent:'A plumed serpent ('Whaddya mean? That fuckin'
bird?') is nesting in the top of the Chrysler Building, from where it
swoops and gobbles up hapless New Yorkers. Cop Carradine and robber
Moriarty form an uneasy alliance to flush out the beast. This is the
kind of movie that used to be indispensable to the market: an
imaginative, popular, low-budget picture that makes the most and more of
its limited resources, and in which people get on with the job instead
of standing around talking about it. Cohen knows there isn't the time or
money to question the logic of anything, so he keeps his assembly so
fast and deft that we're prepared to swallow whatever he tells us; and
his script has much droll fun with a plot that keeps losing things
('Maybe his head just got loose and fell off'). He also gets great
performances from Carradine as the cop who treats it all as part of a
day's work, and (especially) Moriarty as the jittery criminal whose 15
minutes of fame ('I'm just asking for a Nixon-like pardon') leave him
wondering if on some days it's better just to stay home in bed. We have
no hesitation in awarding Oscars all round.'Chris Peachment
Here is the opening scene
Time Out review of God Told Me To:
'A delirious mix of sci-fi, pseudo-religious
fantasy and horror detective thriller, with Lo Bianco as the perfect
existential anti-hero - a New York cop and closet Catholic, guiltily
trapped between wife and mistress. His investigations into a bizarre
spate of mass murders lead right to the top: Jesus Christ, no less, is
provoking innocent citizens to go on a murderous rampage. The
wonderfully insane plot - involving spaceships, genetics and police
corruption - builds to an ambiguous climax: a 'gay' confrontation which
suggests an outrageous alternative to anal intercourse. God Told Me To
overflows with such perverse and subversive notions that no amount of
shoddy editing and substandard camerawork can conceal the film's unusual
qualities. Digging deep into the psyche of American manhood, it lays
bare the guilt-ridden oppressions of a soulless society.'
Steve Woolley
Here is the trailer
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