Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Directed by George P. Cosmatos
• Written by Sylvester Stallone, based on the novel Fair Game by Paula Gosling
• Starring
  • Sylvester Stallone
  • Brigitte Nielsen
  • Reni Santoni
  • Andrew Robinson
  • Brian Thompson
• Produced by Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan

Okay — deep, soul-searching question time: What makes a movie bad?

Here are some clues. It ain’t the budget, as amply demonstrated by a juxtaposition of Pi and Battlefield Earth. Lack of acting ability certainly contributes but is not a decisive factor. Level of exploitation is not an objective standard. So what is it?

Here’s a definition that I think the great god Jabootu would smile upon: What makes a movie bad is how ineptly it accomplishes what it meant to accomplish. (That’s so simple, it’s almost Zen.) Thus, an exploitative softcore movie (such as would be produced by, say Surrender Cinema) cannot truly be called “bad” simply because it’s chockful of simulated sex scenes — that’s the raison d’etre of the movie, after all. On the other hand, most Surrender Cinema movies bite because they fail to be actually, you know, seductive. Failure to accomplish the implicit objectives.

Or, to get away from examples that you don’t want your mother knowing you’re familiar with, this is the reason that I’m one of the few reviewers to give Carnosaur 2 high marks. Sure, it’s a mindless little movie about dinosaurs chomping humans in a nuclear installation — but it’s a tight, entertaining mindless little movie about etc.

So when we look at a movie like, say, Cobra (quit yer bellyaching — Ken Begg would have been another thousand words into the review before he got to the point), we have to judge it against what it was obviously trying to be — comparing the mortal Cobra with the platonic ideal of Cobra, if you will, and measuring the discrepancy. In this case, the movie was pretty obviously trying to be a tough, take-no-prisoners cop/action movie, sort of a cross between Dirty Harry and Rambo. And how well did it do what it set out to do?

Heh heh heh.

Our opening scene sets up our major baddies: A bunch of axe-wielding cultists whose main form of expression of their cultishness seems to be the penchant for clanging axes together over their heads, sort of the mass-murderer version of those male-bonding drum circles. The always-recognizable face of Brian Thompson stands out among them.

From there, we go to our action setpiece, the one that shows us what a worthy badass our hero is. A sleazy psycho guy (and we know he’s a bad guy because he parks his motorcycle in the handicapped parking) strolls into a supermarket and expresses his deepseated issues with produce by blowing it away with a shotgun. While he’s at it, he blows away several shopping carts.

Quicker than you can say Jack Robinson, the place is surrounded by cops, notable Captain Sears (Art LaFleur! Woo-woo!) and Detective Monte (Andrew Robinson, no relation to the afore-mentioned Jack). Ooh, it’s a bad situation, so who do they call? The SWAT team? The national guard? A whole crapload of more cops? No — “Get me the Cobra,” says the Captain, above Monte’s objections.

That’s right, they just need one man — Lt. Cobretti, aka “the Cobra” (Stallone), member of the department’s “Zombie Squad,” which is apparently where they put all the cops who don’t need to act like cops. Apparently, Cobra is the only man who could walk right in the front doors and creep around the aisles to where the psycho is holding three hostages, all while seeing in the dim light through his mirrorshades.

The firefight that ensues is notable for two things: One, the product placement. Sly makes sure he hides behind a huge stack of Pepsi cans, beside a Pepsi cooler, bedecked with a rotating Pepsi cup. (Don’t knock the Pepsi cup — when the psycho fires his shotgun at it, its specially-treated balsa wood construction somehow absorbs the entire load so that not a single pellet makes it to the cooler directly behind it.) Pepsi’s going to have a prominent role in this movie, almost enough to get a starring credit; I haven’t seen such giggle-inducing product placement since the Salkinds posted “This Space For Rent” on every surface in the Superman movies. (It’s an oddly conflicted placement, though, as Sly doesn’t ever touch a Pepsi; in fact, in this scene, he grabs a Coors and gulps a mouthful before getting back to being manly.)

The other notable feature is Sly’s one-liner, which was modified into the tagline of the movie: “You’re a disease. I’m the cure.” Maybe you don’t agree, but I’m thinking that’s kind of a weak calling-card phrase. I know, by 1986, all of the good ones had been taken (most of them by Clint Eastwood, damn him), but maybe the Cobra ought to spend less time trying to wriggle into his skintight jeans and more thinking of catchy “I’m going to shoot you now” lines. Near the end of the movie, he gives utterance to one even lamer: “This is where the law stops and I start.” Think about it — how would you like to be the heavy, being dispatched by the hero, and the last thing you hear is a lame one-liner? Maybe you thinking I’m beating this too hard; after all, I probably wouldn’t be able to spout witticisms in the middle of life-threatening combat. But on the other hand, I don’t expect anyone to call me Cobra.

Damn, I may have bit off more than I bargained for when I invoked Jabootu.

So. Cobra blows away psycho-boy, and gets the hostages out the front door, where a crowd of reporters has assembled right outside the automatic doors; apparently, the police cordon doesn’t apply to menbers of the Fifth Estate. Thanks to these reporters, we get some necessary exposition. One, that there’s a “Night Slasher” killer wandering the city, killing at random, and the reporters wonder if this guy’s connected; two, that reporters are all bleeding-heart liberals who care more about criminals’ rights than those of the victims he slaughtered. (Well, they are, aren’t they? Aren’t they?)

Cobra goes home in his snazzy classic Mercury (Sly’s own, actually), to his apartment, whose patio is right beneath — a giant Pepsi sign! (Right, right, we get it.) While doing those normal tough-cop things (eating leftover pizza while cleaning his gun), he watches a news broadcast that goes more into depth on this Night Slasher thing. Apparently the police are having a tough time getting a handle on the case because the killings are performed with a variety of implements (knives, claw hammers, and, yes, axes), and because there’s no discernable pattern in the victims — all sixteen so far.

It’s at this point that I stopped to think (dangerous in a movie like this, I know): If there’s such a wide variety of murder weapons, and if there’s no pattern to the victims, what genius in the department decided that all of this was the work of a single person? Cobra makes the suggestion to the brass several times that it’s a whole group of killers and gets poo-poohed every time, but I can’t for the life of me understand why the single-killer assumption was made in the first place.

Mercifully, the next couple of days go by quickly; unmercifully, we get to see Brian Thompson and his cohorts, with nylons over their faces, murder people at random because… well, just because. I’ll enlighten you right now: We never find out why these axe cultists do what they do. I mean, even the Manson clan had their own internal logic for their spree. Sure, it makes no sense to the rest of us, but that’s the disturbing part about fanatical organizations, in the movies and in real life: The complex, internally-consistent rationales they construct for their actions. Here, we’re given none of that. Occasionally, a cultist (usually Thompson) will say something about “the New World,” and I can only assume he isn’t referring the the European colonization of the Americas, but beyond that, zip.

And while I’m at it (and while this review keeps growing like the mushrooms on the rotting stump in my backyard), I’ll also let you know that the supermarket psycho was also an axe cultist. Sort of. I mean, he refers to himself as a “hero of the New World,” but he’s obviously more enamored of firearms than edged weapons, and he’s never refered to again, by good guys or bad. He was just, you know, there.

Right. Anyway. As Thompson and friends (and the credits list Thompson as the “Night Slasher,” but Brian Thompson is creepy-ass enough without giving him some Marvel Comics-style moniker) carve up another victim under an overpass, Brigitte Nielsen drives by and sees Thompson standing in the street. She does not see a crime; she does not see anything suspicious. She just sees Thompson’s ugly and memorable face, and Thompson gets her license plate — as urged on by one of his comrades, who just happens to be a lady cop. (Ooh.) Interestingly enough, this role is played by Lee Garlington, who was the book-burning fascist in Field of Dreams — a movie in which Art LaFleur (woo-woo!) also played a ballplayer! Isn’t that interesting?

So after a couple of days of rising body counts, the Captain gives Cobra and his sidekick Gonzales the go-ahead to conduct an investigation their way, over Monte’s objections. They promptly use the patented Zombie Squad investigative method, which appears to consist of going to the seedier areas of town and actually asking people what they know. This only prompts the question, what was Monte and his crew doing when they were “investigating”?

And now for your visit to Surreal World: The montage of Cobra and Gonzalez questioning streetwalkers et al is intercut with (get ready) Brigitte Nielsen posing with robots. Yup, Nielsen is playing a model named Ingrid, and we’re the unwilling observers of a photoshoot in which she poses in various outfits amidst a flock (bevy? herd? throng? pride?) of chrome robot props.

Why are we watching Ingrid? Because as soon as she walks out to the parking garage, she and her horndog photographer (along with several bystanders) get attacked by the cultists; she only gets away by the skin of her teeth, hiding long enough for the police sirens to scare her attackers away.

Ingrid is taken to the hospital, where Cobra and Gonzalez question her and get her working with the sketch artist. But guess — just guess — which female cop is also assigned to the case? Wow! What a guess! Have you seen this one before? Yup, full-time policewoman, part-time cultist, Officer Stalk (gee, what a subtle name). And thus, it’s not long before mysterious calls from HQ call away two of the three cops guarding Ingrid (Cobra has meanwhile gone to his apartment to check mugshots against the composite sketch — Yo! Cobra! Why’ve you got all the mug books at home? That’s what the department is for! You think you’re Batman?). We get the oh-so-clever double-pronged attack; while Thompson helps Ingrid re-enact scenes from Halloween 2, Cobretti is beset upon by goons on his patio (allowing a lot more lingering shots of that Pepsi sign). Naturally, both escape by the skin of their teeth. (Actually, Cobra does so by shooting lots of bad guys, and Ingrid escapes by pulling the fire alarm.)

The next day, Ingrid is supposed to be transported by police escort to a safehouse, but darned if that Officer Stalk doesn’t bugger it up again, leading to an ambush which has Cobra and Ingrid both pursuing and being pursued in the requisite destructive car chase. (No, they didn’t destroy Sly’s real Mercury here; he may be crazy, but he’s not that crazy.) While I was disappointed by the absence of a fruit cart for someone to demolish while diving on the sidewalk, I suppose that the hot dog cart is an acceptable substitute.

It takes some browbeating, but Cobra finally gets permission to get Ingrid out of the city, with only a couple of other cops — Gonzalez and (Mayday! Mayday!) Stalk. Along the way, we get a little bit of downtime, and since it’s a foregone conclusion that Cobretti and Ingrid will fall in love, obviously we need to attach an Endearing Quality to the Cobra — you know, something that shows that beneath the sharp-shooting, mirrorshaded exterior there’s a man who can love a woman like a woman needs to be loved. Unfortunately, we haven’t established any of the standard qualities previous to this (you know: playing the sax, loving showtunes, an addiction to sugary candies — in fact, that’s Gonzalez’ schtick), so we’re going to have to play dirty: Gonzalez reveals to Ingrid that Cobretti’s first name is Marion. There, that makes him endearing, doesn’t it? It indicates a softer side to “the Cobra,” perhaps even an acceptance of his female side — WHOA! Hold the phone! This is still Stallone we’re talking about here, remember? Let’s leave it at just an embarrassing first name, okay? and let’s have another Coors product placement, while we’re at it.

The foursome makes it to a rundown motel upstate for the night, but since Stalk is snitching to Thompson, a big-ass biker gang attack comes at dawn. The cultists have finally discovered the wisdom of bringing guns to a gun fight, and the small town can scarcely stand their assault. Fortunately, Cobra came loaded for bear, complete with Uzis and grenades.

These climactic action sequences are tough to keep interesting when described blow-by-blow (assuming that you’ve been interested up to now), but the upshot is that after a whiz-bang chase in a truck (Ingrid driving, Stallone shooting, Gonzalez lying in an alley bleeding somewhere), we have our showdown in a foundry. Wow! How original! At least, I think it’s a foundry; by the end, we do see something that looks like flowing molten metal. At any rate, the place has got high voltage and coal bins and chains lying everywhere and nozzles that spout flames if you turn the right knob and giant hooks depending from overhead conveyor belts (don’t think those won’t come in handy) and catwalks, because hey, what’s a climactic finale without catwalks?

I don’t think I need to tell you that it comes down to Cobra and Thompson, fighting hand-to-hand amidst showers of sparks. Need I tell you how it ends?

No, we never find out anything about the cult. Stop asking. They’re just evil cultists who kill people, okay? Jeez, why do you have to make everything so complicated?

A wholly risible aspect of this movie that I haven’t touched on yet is the music. Now, I consider myself a child of the ’80s, and that’s where most of the music in my personal collection comes from. But the songs filling out ears throughout this movie are the forgettable bargain-bin ’80s music that filled all of the soundtracks of the day, and fifteen years of aging hasn’t helped it any. While I’m not about to go as far as Keith at Teleport City and declare the ’80s to be the nadir of western culture, I will readily admit that musicians in that decade perpetrated just as many crimes against humanity as in any other.

So now, we come to the final matter: Where to lay the blame? Those of you who caught the producer credits already have an inkling; Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan (aka Golan/Globus) were behind a surprising number of the low-budget action and martial-arts movies of the ’80s. One could go so far as to say that their productions defined the look of the genre for the decade. With this one, one assumes that their budget was higher than on, say, American Ninja — we’ve got Stallone here, after all — the titles still look cheap, the synthesized score still sounds canned; it’s like they didn’t know how to get those dollars to show up on screen. My guess is that any increase in budget disappeared into higher-profile performer salaries (not that I’ll ever begrudge a dollar put into Art LaFleur’s wallet), a more expansive car chase, and a whole lot more squibs.

But before we drag them off in leg-irons (quick, before they make a Missing in Action 4), let’s not let another culprit get away: Sly Stallone himself. He did, after all, write the screenplay; and while it was based on a book, you know that there are no guarantees that what came out in the script resembled the original source material. Given that this movie came out two years after Beverly Hills Cop, in which Stallone was originally slated to star, you’ve got to wonder if Marion Cobretti is the Axel Foley we would have gotten in an alternate universe.

Some Notable Quotables:

“I’ll blow this whole place up!”
“Go ahead. I don’t shop here.”

- the supermarket psycho and Cobretti

“I’m Sgt. Gonzalez, and that intense-looking gentleman behind you is Lt. Cobretti. We’re a pair of really nice guys; we’re here to ask a lot of bad questions.”

- Gonzalez to Ingrid

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 49
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 8
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• rubber chickens: 1
• hot dog stands: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 6
  • Andrew Robinson (Monte) had a beloved recurring role as Garak on DS9
  • Brian Thompson (the “Night Slasher”) was the Klingon helmsman in Generations, plus another Klingon role in the TNG episode “A Matter of Honor” and two other alien roles in the DS9 episodes “Rules of Acquisition” and “To the Death”
  • Marco Rodriguez (the supermarket psycho) played Captain Rice in the TNG episode “The Arsenal of Freedom,” and “Glin Telle” in “The Wounded”
  • Roger Aaron Brown (”Policeman #2″) played “Epsilon Technician” in Star Trek: The Motion Picture
  • Laura Drake (”murdered waitress”) played “Vekma” in the TNG episode “A Matter of Honor” (alongside Brian Thompson, oddly enough)
  • Leslie Morris (”Reporter #1″) played “Pakled Commander Reginod” in the TNG episode “Samaritan Snare”