Synopsis
Crime is a disease. Meet the cure.
A tough-on-crime street cop must protect the only surviving witness to a strange murderous cult with far reaching plans.
1986 Directed by George P. Cosmatos
A tough-on-crime street cop must protect the only surviving witness to a strange murderous cult with far reaching plans.
Sylvester Stallone Brigitte Nielsen Reni Santoni Brian Thompson Lee Garlington Art LaFleur Andrew Robinson Marco Rodríguez Val Avery Nina Axelrod David Rasche John Herzfeld Ross St. Phillip John Hauk Nick Angotti Brad Bovee Kevin Breslin Roger Aaron Brown John Cahill Louise Caire Clark Christine Craft Gregory Cruz Deborah Dalton Scott Dockstader Laura Drake Karen Kondazian Dorothy Meyer Clare Torao Julie Hampton Show All…
Mike H. McGaughy Mark De Alessandro Terry Leonard Branscombe Richmond Gary McLarty Corey Michael Eubanks Brad Bovee Terry Jackson Tracy Keehn-Dashnaw Joe Finnegan Debbie Evans Kerry Rossall Pat Romano Lane Leavitt Michael Runyard Ben Scott Paul M. Lane Mike Tillman Richard Epper Mike Johnson Scott Dockstader Diane Kay Grant David D. Darling
Fred J. Brown Margie O'Malley Evelyn Dutton Gregg Landaker Rick Kline Jay Wilkinson Michael Minkler Stanley B. Gill Teri E. Dorman Joseph A. Ippolito Michael Evje Michele Sharp
Kobra, 浴血擒魔, 眼镜蛇, Die City-Cobra, 铁胆威龙, 鐵膽威龍, Die City Cobra, Кобра, Cobra - O Braço Forte da Lei, Cobra, El Brazo Fuerte De La Ley, Κόμπρα, קוברה, Stallone: Cobra, Cobra - lain vahva käsi, 코브라, 眼鏡蛇, Cobra: El Brazo Fuerte De La Ley, コブラ, კობრა, คอบร้า
This is a great movie, but that's not why I'm here. I just want everyone on Letterboxd to know that I shaved Brian Thompson's face. Physically, with my hands, touched and shaved his beard. This is a true story, it's my reality, no one can take this from me.
Every time I revisit Cobra it never fails at being a fucking tastlessly, tasty treat... and it scrumptiously slaps hard.
Sylvester Stallone rocking jet black shades, a toothpick, and a laser-sighted submachine gun, looking the coolest anyone has ever looked and ever will look. A psychotically ideological bad guy named the Night Slasher wielding a souped up trench spike and a sawed-off 12 gauge. Exploitative sleaze, over-glorified violence, and unapologetic self-seriousness. A cold hearted, anti-crime, pro-vigilantism, pro-excessive force, paranoid fascist fever dream fantasy. In the end, the only criminal scum left unpunished are the cowards who never greenlit a sequel.
Without any irony or that "aware of how silly it is" quality people for some goddamn reason champion in action movies these days, this Sylvester Stallone penned thriller hurls a big sleazeball of post-Dirty Harry fascism at your eyeballs faster than you can say MTV. I would argue that Cannon Films generally, and this film in particular, represent the nexus of low brow exploitation and slick Hollywood spectacle (and perhaps its apex too). This is a nasty and mean piece of work, that, though never overtly graphic, feels as grimy and ludicrous as some of the stuff that played on 42nd Street in the decade prior. It's all coated in a sheen of style from director George P. Cosmatos and…
This is why you should give this film a pass:
- awsom(50)
- cutting pizza with scissors
- 'This is where the law ends and I start...........sucker!'
- Matchstick toothpick.
- Dennis Leary once said he wanted a cheese helmet so he could put it on and eat cheese the entire day. This is that.
- There is no plot. This is a good thing.
- Lots of A-team violence.
One thing:
Brigitte Nielsen is awful. It's like watching an East European shot put athlete trying to act.
Had to cleanse the palate after watching two movies that I’ll never think about again for the rest of my life and nothing does that better than COBRA. Can confirm, this is the cure. Unlike most movies, this doesn’t need gas station dick pills to get itself off.
i always forget this is one of those movies that never 100% lives up to its (incredible) concept & potential - dont even mean that as a diss cuz like most 80s cannons (or empire/concorde/new horizons) all the mindblowing dope shit, KNIFE CULT etc is more fun to remember & think about than they actually pull off but whats onscreen still fuckin rules & when they drop robert tepper's "angel of the city" over the l.a. skyline & cut to brigitte nielsen dancing with a robot wearing a fur coat (and a robot with a dick) none of this even remotely matters
"Call The Cobra!"
If Stallone had have got his way, this was meant to be Beverley Hills Cop .... bloody hell! God only knows what would have happened with the banana in the tailpipe scene? 😫
It's violent with a bit of a grindhousey vibe to it with the main killer called Night Slasher (which sounds like someone who has to relieve themselves in the early hours?) and there's only one badass mother who can put a stop to his naughtiness .... Cobra obviously!
There's apparently a work print version of this which is supposed to be even more violent. - Hopefully one day someone will find it and release it?
*Also it's set at Christmas, so does that make it a Christmas Movie?
Anyone who takes a pizza box out of the FREEZER with a carton of eggs containing gun cleaning parts and cuts off a small piece of pizza with SCISSORS is ok in my book.
Had to give it two and half stars to average the eternal quantum oscillation between being a 1 star movie and a 5 star movie. As my colleague Felix Biederman pointed out to me, this film is the aesthetic distillation of Bolsonaroismo.
COBRA is certainly a unique experience. Nothing about it makes any sense, and right from the beginning the tone is set as something surreal, bordering on science fiction. It's mean as hell and the strange camera angles turn it into a kind of dirty nightmare. If Stallone was wilder it would have resembled a comic book, instead his deadpan manner turns him into a charming little Terminator. There is no real villain, only a vague army of murderous psychopaths, making the story into a paranoid vision of our society. If you've ever wondered what it's like to have social anxiety this is pretty close - Cobra is too busy battling this endless stream of faceless monsters to have an actual…