Q (1982)

This is b movie director Larry Cohen's remake of the George Zucco The Flying Serpent, so obviously it makes a great creature double feature.

A lot of people just don't like Cohen's films.  They are put off by the sometimes gratuitous or exploitative nature of them.  I happen to be a fan of his horror style.  I think his movies have a real tongue and cheek style to them.  They are in no way subtle, but that's not the point.  If I want subtle horror, I'll go watch Amenabár or Elias Merhige or even del Toro (although he's not so subtle sometimes).  There is just something about the way Cohen garishly goes about telling a monster story that seems both funny and gritty--it just seems to work.

Cohen brings the winged serpent Quezaltcoatl to New York City as a real monster that lives in the top of the Chrysler Building, which apparently is in the same shape as some of the buildings in The Bronx at the time--who knew it was so slummy.  But it's not just that a monster flying snakey thing is on the loose biting off the heads of window washers and models alike.  There is also the an Aztec element here as well.  The cops looking into this one find all types of gruesome sacrificial victims around and about town in addition to bird/snake fodder.  They figure that some high priest flew into town (on an airplane, not a flying reptile) to help himself to some willing sacrificial victims.

OK this is all good fun.  But knowing what I know about actual Aztec belief, it is amusing the things that the script gets just plain wrong.  First of all Quetzalcoatl is a real god of the Mexican pantheon.  He is the god of life and mankind and his color is white.  He is both depicted as a man and as a feather, though flightless, serpent.  As a serpent he is sometimes shown devouring men, although from very old times, going back at least as far as the Toltec empire, he is revered as the giver of life and as deity presiding over peace. 

While it is true that heart sacrifice to him did occur, it was not nearly as often as it was to other deities such as the rain god Tlaloc or the patron god of the Toltec empire the feared Tezcatlipoca  (the "Smoking Mirror) who is both the god of darkness and sorcery!  Of course, his color is black.

Tlaloc

Tezcatlipoca

The whole flaying sacrifice in Cohen's Q, has nothing to do with Quetzalcoatl.  That was a form of sacrifice reserved for the deity Xipe Totec, whose name translates to "Our Lord, the Flayed One.  He is associated with new life, the sprouting seeds and thus with early spring.  In modern times, he is associated with renewal and the bringing back of Native Mexican arts and customs.

Xipe Totec

Aztec sculpture showing a Xipe Totec priest wearing flayed skin of a sacrificial victim

Quetzacoatl is also a curious figure because he was one of two deities that was apparently part of an internal conflict (a kind of civil war) after the founding of the Toltec empire.  An early emperor Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl apparently opposed human sacrifice, was a man of peace, wrote philosophy and poetry, but was considered a wise and fierce when he needed to be leader.  He wanted Quezatlcoatl to be the Toltec patron god.  The warrior class, which had a great deal of power, opposed this, thought that human sacrifice was necessary for both religious and political reasons and wanted the feared black Smoking Mirror (Tezcatlipoca) as the patron god of Tollan.  In the end they won out, his was run out of town to the east and never heard from again.  He is still an important figure!  He was that important to the Nahuatl speaking Mexicans, that it is common to see his image on Aztec dance regalia even today.  He is always depicted as sporting a beard and often with deathly white skin.  

A traditional image of Topiltzin

Below is the cover of Mexcian recording artist Xavier Quijas Yxayotl's Aztec Dances.  On the over is Maestro Lazaro Arvizu from the Xipe Totec Danza Azteca in L.A.  Not to be lurid or anything, but if you notice his loin cloth, you will find the image of Topiltzin at the bottom.

There is a stupid (at least I think it's stupid) myth that Motechuzoma Xocoyotzin thought that Hernan Cortez was Topiltzin returned, as he had promised to return when he was run out of town on a poll hundreds of years before, kind of like the Hawaiian Loni or Jesus maybe.  The emperor had been a priest before he was crowned and was known to be the most religious of the Aztec rulers, but the is NO real proof that he thought of Cortez as anything other than a real threat from some far off place that might not be so nice.

Quetzacoatl is an old deity in Mexico.  In the great ancient city now known as Teotihuacan, he had his own teocalli/temple/pyramid structure.  There is every evidence, from all the human remains found ritually interred inside it, that as an important deity there he was a fierce god that warranted significant human sacrifice.

Part of the building at Teotihuacan of the Feathered Serpent