I have a hard time remembering what this movie is even about, so I guess it make sense to start from there
Michael Moriarty is is Quinn who is kind of a bum that just got out of prison or jail or something, and maybe wants to go back, but this isn't super clear because he was born with lego hair and generally looks like a sweetheart. He's introduced by coming into a bar and asking for a job and nobody really responds and he sits down at a piano and starts playing and singing jazz really enthusiastically and a woman looks at him encouragingly and a guy sweeping is into it and then the bar owner isn't into it and then everyone hates it so Quinn leaves. He's talking basically the entire time in a way that feels ad libbed. Later it turns out that the woman is his girlfriend or wife but it's not clear if she already was and she just happened to be in the bar or if this is a result of being charmed by his jazz yelping.
At some point Quinn gets recruited to be part of a diamond heist at a store called neil's diamonds. He walks in and gets diamonds and then drops them in the middle of the road and leaves. After this he's pursued by mobsters(?) that think he still has the diamonds.
At the same time there's someone sacrificially murdering people for unrelated reasons and there's a giant bird eating people sometimes. David Carradine is investigating with the assistance of Shaft from Shaft. This is completely unrelated.
Quinn gets scared for some reason, I don't remember if this was part of the original failed heist, so he climbs into the spire of the Chrysler building. Presumably this is because Larry Cohen paid for permission to film inside the top of the Chrysler Building and he was going to get his money's worth, so like half the movie is inside a weird little attic that is also the actual real inside of the top of the Chrysler Building as far as I know. Quinn sees a giant egg up there and later on he deduces that he can tell the mobsters that he hid the diamonds up there and they will be eaten by a giant bird. He does that.
At this point the police know a giant bird is eating people so Quinn comes up with an elaborate plan to get a million dollars in cash and all rights to pictures and film of the bird in exchange for telling the police where it is. David Carradine goes to the top of the building and shoots the egg a bunch and then reneges on the deal because it was an egg and not a bird. Then some other shit happens and there's a big shootout on top of the Chrysler Building where I'm pretty sure they actually have David Carradine leaning out of the top. The guy that plays Frank's landlord and also a blue alien in Star Trek was apparently trying to summon an ancient Aztec bird god for some reason. Also there's another egg.
This is entirely from memory but I think the form of the memories is more informative than a literal recounting of events, these are the things that mattered enough to stick and the way in which they stuck. Michael Moriarty comes across like an insane person and these plus the Its Alive movies make Larry Cohen feel like a John Waters type of guy. He keeps saying things like he already thought of the next thing and he's distracted and
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