So, I did sit down and watch this on Sunday night while the Geek Husband What Rules ran his gaming group.

It is both not as as bad I had feared, and just as bad if not worse.

Made in 1982, it opens with a gross, sexually harassy window washer bugging a (sooooo early 80s) female fashion exec, then having his head bitten off while hanging there.

This introduces David Carradine as Detective Shepherd (no first name) and Richard Roundtreeas Detective Powell (no first name) standing around wisecracking and griping, as the ambulance guys hurry for no discernible reason.  The guy’s dead.  His head is missing.  What, do you have a spare on ice back at the lab?

The next death is a topless sunbather with gratuitous smearing tanning oil on her breasts in a suggestive manner.

Guys, I have some bad news for you.  We don’t actually rub tanning oil, or sunblock, onto our boobs like that.  We tend to squoosh them around like we’re kneading bread. It is utterly not sexy.

The monster we haven’t actually seen yet, picks her up while some creep with a telescope watches and carries her off.

In the meantime, Michael Moriarty’s character, you know DA Ben Stone from Law & Order, is a two-bit getaway driver strong armed into participating in a diamond heist.  He loses the diamonds, and shortly after a construction worker gets snatched and et (past tense of eat), runs to hide in the very tip-top of the Chrysler building where he discovers a giant egg and a skeleton which has been completely stripped of flesh, but all the bones remain connected and it’s still wearing a dainty gold bracelet.

Sigh.

To make a long story short, David Carradine researches Aztec human sacrifice, the Serpent (which has legs) keeps eating people, Michael Moriarty’s character feeds a couple of gangsters to it, the ones who forced him into the robbery and are threatening to kill him if he doesn’t come up with the diamonds.

Then Michael Moriarty gets arrested and tells the cops he knows where the thing is and he’ll tell them for a price. The wind up killing the hatchling, and then going back for the big one later.

I have no idea why this has never been MST3K-ed, because there are some genius moments for it.  Including Richard Roundtree and the undercover cop dressed like a mime running across a roof with guns out.  The Geek Husband What Rules walked in, took one look at the screen and said, “Richard Roundtree and Marcel Marceau, in Mime with a Gun!” and walked right back out again.

Also when they confront the “Aztec priest” (failed medical student), and his willing victim gets off the table, a cop shoots the victim, and in a line so utterly perfect and yet some 20 years ahead of its time yells, “He was coming right for me! Right for me!”

So, SPOILERS,

They kill it.

David Carradine lives to go bang his frizzy haired gf/wife, after saving Michael Moriarty from the “Aztec” priest who came after him to try to re-resurrect the monster. Leading to another unintentionally hilarious scene as the “Aztec” priest (portly vaguely Mexican guy, who I suspect is actually Indian) keeps lunging up, dagger gripped in hand.  Seriously, like four times, you guys.

But there’s another giant egg in the top of an old mansion.  And it HATCHES.

Honestly, apart from the gratuitous pair of boobs (1), the really graphic close ups of headless necks (3), possibly the bloody skeleton (1+), and a few F-bombs it reads a lot like a made for TV movie of the era.

For 1982 the special effects weren’t awful.  The green screen was, holy crap, but the rest of the effects were pretty good.

So, I didn’t hate it.  It wasn’t as unintentionally hilarious as say, The Dead Want Women or Blood-Sucking Pharoahs in Pittsburgh (holy shit you guys, it’s on Blu-Ray), but it wasn’t as terrible as I’d figured it was either.

Thank you, @DarthKrzysztof!!!

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