Cold Fusion Video Reviews

(The box insists on calling it “The Black Cobra,” but the actual print just says “Black Cobra,” so that’s what I’m sticking with)

• Directed by “Stel Mass” (Stelvio Massi)
• Written by Danilo Massi
• Starring
  • Fred Williamson
  • Eva Grimaldi
  • Karl Landgren
  • Vassili Karis
• Produced by Lucciano Appignani

Those damned Italians.

If you hang out around B-movie fans long enough, you’ll hear more denigration of Italians than during WWII; if you hang out long enough in the back corners of the video store, you’ll also start voicing them. It’s not an ethnic prejudice. Hell, some of my best friends are Italians. (No, I’m not going to name any. Take my word for it, okay?)

But Italian cinema… dear hell. There is no middle ground. On the one side, you’ve got the arthouse darlings that show up in every freshman’s Film Appreciation 101 class (and I just have to mention here, I think Fellini’s La Strada is one of the most overrated films in the history of pretentiousness); at the other extreme, you’ve got the schlock product for which Italy has been most famous for at least forty years. The Italian film industry, at least the part that makes money, encourages imitation of other (largely American) successful movies. Hell, they apparently encourage out-and-out ripoffs. Hammer-style horror, zombie movies, crime thrillers, post-apocalyptic action, supernatural horror, space opera… name a popular category, and the Italians have cranked out their version with a minimum of budget and originality. By and large, these Italian flicks are bad in a way and to a degree undreamt of in Hollywood proper.

So when Cobra, a low-quality but high-profile action-thriller made its way out of Hollywood, I can only imagine that some Italian filmmakers (most likely director Stelvio Massi and producer Lucciano Appignani) were shooting the breeze one day over warm beer or cold tea or whatever it is Italians drink, and chuckling about the lousy reviews. “Those Americans think Cobra is lousy?” one chortled to the other; “they don’t know how lousy it could have been!” “Let’s show them!” said the other.

And thus Black Cobra was born.

If you’ve seen Cobra, the opening scene of Black Cobra will ring little bells of unsettling deja vu (and if you haven’t seen it, or it’s been a while, my review is right here; feel free to take a refresher course): First, we’re given close to two minutes of stock footage of New York — helicopter shots, people walking down the sidewalk, vendors hawking their wares — footage that was obviously shot years before the 1987 date on the movie. Why so much footage under the opening credits? It’s a desperate attempt to convince you that the rest of this movie is actually set in New York, rather than the pretty obvious Italian setting. Over this footage, we get a voiceover conversation over police radio in which the police chief explains to tough cop Malone (Fred Williamson) about a botched bank robbery from which the perps have fled to a sports club, there to have shot several patrons and grabbed some as hostages. (Why are we being told about this, instead of seeing the actual assault, as was shown in the comparable scene in Cobra? Because it’s cheaper to talk about it, duh!)

Malone arrives at the health club — and in Italy. As I said, it’s pretty obvious we’re not in NY; the grassy hills with low expansive apartment buildings are a clue. So are the police cars, with a very unamerican style of light carriage on top. And then there’s the fact made visible as soon as Malone gets out of his car and begins speaking to cop-on-the-scene Walker: Williamson’s lips are the only ones that do, or will for the length of the movie, movie in tandem with his English dialogue. It’s like watching Clint Eastwood in one of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns, only much, much sadder.

Since this is a cop movie, the First Law of Cops must be invoked: of any two officers shown to be of comparable rank one must be a rule-breaker, one must be a straight arrow, and the straight arrow must have a chip on his shoulder about the rule-breaker. Walker relays the instructions from The Brass: That Malone is supposed to go in there and accede to every demand (this is the Italian version of “negotiating”? I thought it was more French). Well, you know that nobody hires Fred Williamson to play a meek capitulator, so…

So Malone wanders inside to where the three robbers are holding three hostage by the pool. (The corpse of a previously-dispatched hostage is also on the floor.) He doesn’t announce himself, doesn’t say, “Hey, negotiator coming in,” nothing; he just wanders in, not looking particularly cop-like in his black leather trenchcoat, and waits to be noticed. One of the ski-mask mafia gives Malone his list of demands — two million dollars, a plane to Mexico, Twinkies for life, expanded basic cable — to which Malone says, “No.” He then flips out the shotgun he’s been hiding under his coat, pulls his automatic with the other hand, and blows the three away. Naturally, Walker and his uniforms promptly flood the building, and before they even get the distraught hostages out of the crime scene, Walker starts chewing ass: You were supposed to negotiate, give them everything they want, you always gotta be the tough guy, etc. It really makes you wonder: What, exactly, was the point of sending the known loose cannon into a situation where the Brass ostensibly wanted diplomacy and retreat? I mean, is there an even less suitable person on the force for such a job? This doesn’t even have the rationale of Cobra, in which Cobretti is sent in as a last ditch effort (in a police force that apparently doesn’t have honest-to-goodness SWAT teams). Were they just trying to set Malone up to fail? I dunno.

You realize, all of the above was just in the first five-minute “set piece” scene, the events of which have absolutely no impact on the plot. Let’s see: Italy masquerading (poorly) as New York, Fred Williamson as the lone English-speaking member of the cast, dumb police tactics… Yup, we’ve pretty much nailed down the problems that are going to be in evidence for the rest of the movie.

All right, then. On to the plot. If you’ve been following our progress in our Cobra template, you know that sooner or later we have to meet our evil gang, right? Well, here they are, a posse of leatherclad bikers, led by a smirking psychopath (Karl Landgren) with a big scar under his jawline. (The credits call him “Snake,” due to the large snake tattooed on his forearm; in practice, he’s never called by name. Once again, this is as in Cobra — hereinafter “AIC.”) I should also let you know that despite the spike-covered Mad Max-style bikes on the video cover (though it might be more appropriate to call them The Cars That Ate Paris-style), what they ride on-screen are much wimpier bikes — the kind that would get their asses kicked at any biker bar in the U.S. of A. They hang out in a big abandoned warehouse, and occasionally venture forth to terrorize and pillage, such as in the ensuing scene in which the half-dozen bikers accost a young couple at the beach, kill the guy, presumably rape the girl, and steal their Jeep Camper.

Let’s see, wwe’ve got our kick-ass cop, we’ve got our terrorizing cultists — who else do we need? Why, the hapless witness girl, of course! We meet Elys (Eva Grimaldi) in a fashion photography studio, though in a stunning break from the Cobra template, she’s not a model; no, she’s the photographer! Wow! How creative! She then goes home (with her camera, you know), and sees the dastardly gang murder the people in the condo next to hers. Why? Because they’re a dastardly gang, dang it! What do you want them to do, bang hammers together over their heads? Snake catches sight of her and moves to catch her, but she cleverly clicks her camera at him repeatedly, blinding him with the flash. (If you want to give these Italians extra credit for demonstrating that they saw Rear Window, go ahead.) Off she drives in a panic, and the gangbangers give chase — though this time, they’re apparently using their recently-acquired Jeep Camper (minus the camper shell, and repainted with flames trailing back from the hood; nothing says class like an oversized, blocky vehicle with painted flames). Given that Snake is driving, and he recently got blinded, plus he insists on wearing mirrorshades at night, it’s not surprising that they can’t catch up with her before she finds a patrolcar to scare them off.

Okay, let me know if you saw this coming: Malone is assigned to protect Elys! Wow, what a concept! Actually, this has a lot more basis here than in Cobra — as you’ll recall, in that movie, Brigitte Nielsen didn’t even see Brian Thompson committing a crime; she just noticed his disturbing face. In this instance, not only did Elys witness a crime, she took several pictures of Snake — although it turns out that the reflection of the flash in his mirrorshades washed out the picture, so the police can’t use that to identify him.

From here on out, you can pretty much plot the movie in your sleep: The bad guys try to attack Elys in the hospital, to be thwarted by Malone (and no one else — apparently the concept of hospital security hadn’t taken root in Europe by 1987); Malone protects her at his apartment, where she starts to see his human side; Malone and a goon get into a big knock-down fight when they got back to Elys’ place to get some of her things; yadda yadda yadda.

Eventually, Snake has Walker’s daughter kidnapped, offering to exchange her for both Malone and Elys, which leads to a big-ass battle, as Malone and an erstwhile sidekick go armed for bear: knives, grenades, throwing stars (!!), UZI’s… Just to spit on all things American, our darling screenwriter even puts in Malone’s mouth a bastardized version of the famous “Dirty Harry” speech, complete with “Do I have any bullets left?” and “Do you feel lucky?”

From reading my description, you may get the impression that this is a lackluster but adequate entry in the action-thriller department. However, my description doesn’t convey the tepid pacing of all of the action scenes. Nor do you get an accurate impression of the soundtrack (one part generic synth score that would be at home in any any early-’80s Italian post-apoc film, one part sax-and-electric-piano improv jazz that plays, inexplicably, during the “tensest” scenes). Nor, really, do you truly understand the sense of despair that comes from Williamson himself, surrounded by a whole bunch of performers speaking a different language. He’s a professional, and as a professional he shows up on the set, remembering his lines and performing them competently; but quite frankly, they aren’t paying enough for him to muster any real enthusiasm. In fact, his performance reminds me most of Donald Pleasence’s in Specters, in which Pleasence occupied a similar position in an Italian-made movie.

And yet, after all of this lambasting, I can’t quite bring myself to give this movie a “cold” rating. For one thing, the upper-limit of quality was imposed by the initial goal of imitating Cobra; the odds of surpassing the source material are pretty low. (Of course, one could blame them for taking Cobra as their template in the first place, but that’s kind of like slapping a baby because his parents had unprotected sex.)

But the other thing is, in a real sense, these Italians did really show how to make a bad movie. Sure, this is worse than Cobra, but it probably cost about one-fifth of Cobra’s budget. And as the ultimate proof that the Italians can make bad movies better than anyone… Black Cobra spawned three sequels.

The mind reels.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 23
• breasts: 1 (from the “Hey, we forgot to put any breasts in this movie — think we can fit one into this scene?” department)
• explosions: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Fred Williamson played “Anka” in the original episode “The Cloud Minders”