Long before he was Executive A.D.A. Ben Stone on Law & Order Michael Moriarty had a lucrative career in terrible horror movies. He may be famous for playing a hard hitting lawyer in the early seasons of L&O but I will always remember him in great roles as that guy in Q and that guy in It’s Alive 3: Isle of The Alive.
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New York police are bemused by a spate of reports of a giant flying lizard that has been spotted around the rooftops of New York, which they assume to be bogus until the lizard starts to eat people. An out-of-work, ex-con piano player is the only person who knows the location of the monster's nest and is determined to turn the knowledge to his advantage, but will his gamble pay off or will he end up as lizard food?
Genre pioneer Larry Cohen, who broke new horror ground with the killer-baby hit It's Alive!, takes a stab at the giant-monster scenario with this enjoyable low-budget exercise. The title refers to the winged Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, 
represented here as a dragon-like flying lizard (thanks to some quaint but amusing stop-motion animation from David Allen), who decides to take up residence in the art-deco spire of the Chrysler Building, taking frequent jaunts in the midday sun to nip the heads off various hapless New Yorkers. The resulting bloody mess confounds detectives Shepard (David Carradine) and Powell (Richard Roundtree), who are already scratching their heads over a series of bizarre ritual murders linked to a secret Aztec cult. Into the picture comes the film's protagonist -- neurotic, sweaty, paranoid crook Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty, in a tour-de-force performance), a two-bit wheel-man with aspirations of becoming a jazz pianist. After a botched diamond heist leads Quinn to Q's lair, his attempts to go straight take a side-turn as he decides to extort from the city an enormous sum in exchange for 
directions to the monster's nest. A few sneaky deals later, the location falls into Shepard's hands, and he leads a paramilitary assault on the Chrysler Building, where the creature's humongous egg is about to hatch. Rude, edgy, fast-paced, and peppered with witty dialogue (most of which can't be repeated here), Cohen's script retains the spirit of classic monster movies like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, injecting it with tough, gangster-movie moxie. Moriarty's unbelievable performance -- one of three collaborations with Cohen -- finds him chewing acres of scenery as a contemptible, loud-mouthed goon who's too funny to hate; Moriarty also composed and performed two schizophrenic piano numbers for the film.
The movie was shot on location in and around New York city's Chrysler Building and uses the interior of the building's tower crown as a primary location. The original music score was composed by Robert O. Ragland. The film was marketed with the tagline "It's [sic] name is Quetzalcoatl... just call it Q, that's all you'll have time to say before it tears you apart!" The film poster's glossy monster illustration was painted by science fiction/fantasy artist Boris Vallejo.
The film was given a limited release theatrically in the United States by United Film Distribution Company in October 1982. It grossed approximately $255,000 at the box office. The film was later released on VHS by MCA/Universal Home Video. It was released on DVD by Blue Underground in 2003.
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An earthquake leaves the California coastline in ruins and reduces the beaches to a state of chaos. A group of Neo-Nazis led by Adolf (Brenner), the self-proclaimed "Führer of the new beach," takes advantage of the resulting chaos by fighting off several rival surfer gangs to seize control of the beaches. Meanwhile, an African American oil well worker named Leroy (Harden) is killed by the Nazis while jogging on the beach. Leroy's mother "Mama" Washington (Neely), devastated by the loss of her son, vows revenge. After arming herself with a handgun and grenades, she breaks out of her retirement home and sets out to exact bloody vengeance on the Surf Nazis.
I re-watched this film earlier today and afterward considered going with a different movie, perhaps Poultrygeist or Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. but decided against it so I could torture myself with those films at a later date, I mean reserve the right to discuss and share the brilliance of those masterpieces of cinema at a future time if you all can behave yourselves. Damn it I sat through Surf Nazis and if I had to suffer so should you. 
If you are the curious type then you can watch the film in it’s entirety at youtube
Sweet Jeebus! Really?! The makeup is really just plastic ears and teeth, contacts and black greasepaint on the end of her nose? There is no way it can all look this bad. They had to make the male werewolf better.
Ah…Bad picture, maybe a different angle.
Holy Crap! Yep, and it only goes downhill from there. Fight sequences over-use that Matrix bullet time effect and flight by wire so the jumps are epic and acrobatic. Dialogue is delivered by growling but the ill fitting plastic teeth also make the actors slobber so every line is this weird gravelly lispy spit projecting overdone emoting monologue. Last but not least, let’s look at the character descriptions:
You would think the problem would be Tori Black since adult film actresses are not known for their acting ability but she did a great job. As I recall this film only has two locations, the street where Rose hears about the job and the hotel room so money got saved there. The pacing and dialogue feels so far off my head hurt after only the twenty minutes I gave it. There are stretches where Rose and Jacob are talking about absolutely nothing and it feels like the cameraman just let the camera roll while the two characters made up their own awkward lines.
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