Mr. Wydey's Film Guide Letter Q

Quantum Apocalypse (2010) Bang up to date (shown in Feb. 2010) but pure tosh! A comet changed direction and slammed into Mars, instead of by-passing the planet, and sent a killer shower of debris heading for Earth to cause an extinction-level event. The US military brought in a pair of wacked out teenage experts and they produced a name for it: The End. All the trouble was being caused by a gravitational vacuum – like a black hole but with directionality, and it sucked in time. And when it hit, the Earth would be gone.
The Russkies & Chi-Coms started shooting off missles. Gravity weakened and people could toss cars around. There were earthquakes everywhere. Terry, a savant, came up with a solution involving dark matter, quarks of opposite spin and using a wormhole to bring them together as a tsunami took out Manhattan and stuff in London started flying up into space.
Phones and everything electrical stopped working in America but Terry kept the family truck running, and took over the driving to Houston when his brother had a heart attack. Terry had been talking on the internet to the wacked out experts, and they were able to join forces and zap the Anomaly. But all they did was wind time back to the point there the comet was approaching Mars. So a Groundhog Day scenario?

Quantum of Solace (2008) J. Bond delivered a prisoner to M in Verona, only to see him gunned down by an infiltraitor during the Pallio. So cue another chase and some really daft stunts. M was pissed off because there's an organization which is "everywhere" and she knew nothing about it.
Bond went pratting about in the tropics. The bad guys were after a bit of Bolivia. Bond bagged a popsie from The General who was hoping to stage a coup there and crashed an electronic meeting of conspirators at the opera. M tried to recall Bond after he killed a rogue British agent, but he just blagged another passport and credit card.
Off to Bolivia for more murder & mayhem. Bond out-flew a local wise guy, did some sky-diving and discovered that the evil Mr. Greene was creating a drought. M turned up to collar Bond but he refused to stay busted. Murder, mayhem and explosions out in the desert, where Bond dumped Mr. Greene. Then Bond went bug-hunting in Russia. Maybe there was a story in there, but it played about ninth fiddle to the stunt stuff.

Quatermass and the Pit (1967) Fossil skulls turn up in work at Hobbs End Tube station; and an unexploded bomb? No, something else. Prof. Quatermass and Col. Green, his military counterpart, examine it. There was a skull inside it; one 5 million years old! The "bomb" is near houses abandoned before the war because the inhabitants were too scared to stay on.
   The street used to be Hob's (the Devil's) Lane and the object is a spaceship. A soldier goes into it and freaks out. There are demons at Hob's lane, the ancient records say. There are decomposing gargoyles the size of a dog in the spaceship; like ones in cave paintings from 30,000 years ago!
   Quatermass upsets the government by telling the Press that the monsters are from Mars, and they put ape-mutants on the Earth. Col. Green thinks the bugs are some sort of German wartime propaganda scam. The area around the Tube station starts shaking. QM thinks it's diabolic and evil! He does some messing about and finds that Barbara, the lady assistant, is the poltergeist. His report gets short shrift from Col. Green and the Man from the Ministry.
   QM thinks the Martians are going to turn London into a colony. so he goes and wrestles with Barbara whilst the archaeologist uses a large crane to short-circuit the process; and kills himself in doing so.

Queen of the Damned (2002) Lestat, a vampire, who's fronting his own rock band, has told the world what he is and he invites other vampires to come to his gig in Death Valley. Jesse, a member of the secret Talamascan Society in London, studies a journal of Lestat's in the library. In it, he describes how Marius, age 2,400, made him into a vampire and he drank the blood of Akasha, the Egyptian Queen of the Vampires.
Jesse visits the Admiral's Arms, a vampire pub in London, and Lestat saves her from being eaten. Jesse returns his journal and she wants to know what it's like to be like him. Lestat changes her mind. His gig in Death Valley turns into a battle of the vampires with Marius at his side. Then Akasha joins in and makes off with Lestat.
Jesse meets her vampire foster mother in the Mojave desert. The Queen tells Lestat to kill Jesse and she lets him drink some of her blood as a reward. But he guzzles enough to weaken her, the other vampires attack her and she croaks in a dust storm. Then Lestat revives Jesse with some of his blood.

The Quest (1996, Jean-Claude van Damme, Roger Moore) An old customer in a bar beats up thieving punks. Back in 1925, fighters from all over the world were being summoned to a basho at the Lost City in Tibet. Dubois runs a gang of thieving kids in New York. One of them steals a bag of Mob money and the place becomes too hot for him. He stows away on a ship of gun-runners, which is hijacked by Lord Dobbs, the pirate. Dubois is dumped on the Mu Tai island, where fighters are trained.
   Six months later in Bangkok, Dobbs meets Carrie Newton, a journalist whose dad owns the New York Globe. She wants to go to the Mu Tai island. Dubois is still there. He wants Dobbs to take him to the Lost City to fight for the golden dragon. Newton invites herself along. Dobbs plans to steal the dragon.
   The US boxing champ gives Dubois his title and his invitation. The dragon is the size of a pony, so v. difficult to steal. The kid makes hard work of his first round match, but wins. An encounter with a Mongolian Moustache Pete in the final looks inevitable. The kid refuses to throw a fight and Dobbs' attempt to steal the dragon using an airship flops.
   The kid has to fight for the lives of his party instead of the dragon. The battle goes from the dojo to the street outside. Dubois gets his ass, and everything else, soundly kicked but, of course, he flattens Mongolian Pete and goes back to New York to look after his thieving kids.

The Quick & the Dead (1995) A bird in a cowboy outfit survives being shot at by a nutter. She rides into a town full of cartoon characters. There's a shooting contest with a $123,000 prize. The bird buts heads with the town boss. The bozos start shooting one another. There's some chat and socializing then the boss sez all gun-fights have to be to the death. There's a bit of a storm and everyone goes crazy.
The crazy Bible-basher, whom the boss is holding prisoner says he won't kill but he has to. The bird is on the point of running away, scared of the boss, who killed her father, the marshal. She goes back to town to shag the Bible-basher.
The boss says if the bird tries to run away or refuses to fight, his men will kill her. The boss kills the annoying kid. The Bible-basher shoots the bird then the boss's minions clobber him. When he has to face the boss, the town blows up. The bird is less dead than advertized. The boss is reminded that she was just a little kid when he made her kill her father. Then it's one dead boss with the sun shining through the bullet holes in his carcase!