Everyone knows about Quetzalcoatl, that Aztecan murdering bird god that flies around murdering people. They even made a movie about it in 1982: Q – The Winged Serpent. If you weren’t murdered by Q, count yourself as one of the lucky ones. If you were murdered by Q, there is literally nothing I can say or do to make your afterlife more comfortable.
But did you know there was a murdering bird god movie in 1946? Yep – it was called The Flying Serpent. Was it a bird? Yep. Did it fly? Yep. Did it murder people? Yep. Was it a serpent as well as a bird? Nope. In fact it looked like a pheasant (same size, too) needing a shampoo and comb out.
Professor Andrew Forbes is an insane archaeologist. Given that nearly all archaeologists are mentally to the left of center (that’s what that the Internet claims), Forbes wants to murder (or “kill”) his enemies. Apparently, archaeologists have lots and lots of enemies. It isn’t until the despised digger-upper unearths (or “diggers up”) Quetzalcoatl and, using his social skills, uses the murder bird to peck away at his antagonists.
Here’s a potential problem with that plan; when you give an intended victim one of Quetzalcoatl’s feathers (looks like it came off a pheasant), the bird tracks you down and gives you the flapping of a lifetime. This means you get tomorrow off…permanently.
Forbes accidentally gives his wife the feather and next thing you know, she’s nesting…permanently. A mere distraction as Forbes uses this knowledge to become the richest man on earth. (Where’s there’s an ancient murder bird, there’s ancient taxable treasure.)
The Flying Serpent is less than an hour long. But we do get a fair amount of murder bird action. The flying sequences, while dated, aren’t too shabby, and it freely uses its beak of doom to exact…DOOM. So in your face, all you anthropology haters.
