King Cobra
by David Hillenbrand
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Arell Blanton, Cedric Duplechain, Gary Bristow, Hoyt Axton, Megan BlakeDirector: David Hillenbrand
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 93 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-08-10
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Lions Gate
Movie Reviews of King Cobra
Movie Review: Hilariously, laugh out loud BAD!
Summary: 5 Stars
I went into "King Cobra" wanting to hate it. And I do mean hate; the sort of all consuming, all caps HATE I reserve for my list of worst films. Why should I bear such animosity for a film I haven't even watched yet? Moreover, why bother watching a movie that I will probably loathe? The answer to the former is this: "King Cobra" is yet another tired entry in the tired "animals run amok" genre revived by Spielberg's 1975 magnum opus "Jaws" and later rescuitated by the same director's CGI masterpiece "Jurassic Park." If you've seen one "Jaws" knockoff you've probably seen them all, and "King Cobra" makes it very apparent almost from the beginning that its paying "homage" to Spielberg's monster movies. The answer to the second question is more elusive, mired somewhere deep in my brain. I don't know why I like watching bad cinema. I can say that it's great fun to watch a movie fail, as much fun as watching a good one succeed. Too, I get an enormous charge out of reviewing horrible movies. It's amusing to bash a piece of celluloid trash that deserves whatever nasty things I can say about it.
All of which brings us to "King Cobra," a film directed by Scott and David Hillenbrand, special effects provided by the Chiodo Brothers (who brought us "Killer Klowns from Outer Space"), and starring has beens Hoyt Axton, Courtney Gains, and Noriyuki "Pat" Morita. Yep, Pat Morita tops the bill in this "so bad it's good" car wreck. Before all you Mr. Miyagi fans get your knickers in a bunch, however, let me inform you that "King Cobra" is not a cinematic tour de force. Rather, it's an atrocious rip-off so loaded down with plot holes that it makes Uwe Boll's work look like "Citizen Kane." When Dr. Irwin Burns's (Joseph Ruskin) laboratory goes up in flames thanks to a reckless assistant (Courtney Gains), a king cobra/diamondback rattlesnake hybrid some thirty feet long named Seth is born. Flash forward two years (?) to a little California town holding a beer festival. Local cop Jo Biddle (Casey Fallo), her disenchanted boyfriend Dr. Brad Kagan (Scott Hillenbrand), Sheriff Ben Lowry (Eric Lawson), and hotshot herpetologist Nick Hashimoto (Morita) must band together to stop the hungry Seth from wreaking havoc in the woods outside of town. Sounds great, doesn't it?
It's not, not by a long shot, but "King Cobra" is one of the funniest films I've seen in ages. That it's not marketed as a comedy makes little difference; the stuff we see here is gut busting, throw back your head and howl hilarious. Let's get the laughs rolling by looking at the relationship between Biddle and Brad Kagan. The doctor plans on leaving town for the big city in search of excitement, but Biddle likes her life and refuses to join him. In a scene obviously meant to be serious but as far from it as possible, Kagan and Biddle debate his reasons for leaving. At one point in the pointless narrative, actor Hillenbrand stares at Biddle with such a stupid look on his face that I couldn't help but giggle. O.K., hardly the belly laugh I promised, but the film is just getting started. As an aside, I find it ironic that the only intentional laugh getter in the movie, a group of local yokel hunters who eventually fall prey to the snake, isn't funny in any way, shape, or form. The rest of the cast provides more laughs than a Rodney Dangerfield concert, but these guys induce barely a snicker. Anyway, the serious yucks fade in when we see Erik Estrada waltzing down the street camping it up as a flamboyant gay man. As embarrassing as the scene is to watch, I'm adding a star to the overall review for the sheer audacity it took to put such an idiotic sequence in the movie.
I could write a doctoral dissertation on Pat Morita's role in this movie--or an obituary for his acting career. He shows up to help when contacted by Dr. Burns, roaring into town in a mobile home with a bunch of gimcracks to catch the snake. He tells us to "respect" the snake, and later on launches into one of the biggest piles of bunkum ever heard in a b-movie, namely that he injects himself with venom every couple of months to keep his immunity levels up. His blood, we learn, is worth "a couple of million dollars" as anti-venom. Uh huh. I ultimately bought the explanation because the august Morita delivered the lines like he believed them. Well, that and I was too busy trying to retrieve the lung I coughed up while laughing to really question what he said. But what really takes the cake is Morita's standoff with Seth. Folks, if I live to be a hundred years old I will never witness anything as funny as this sequence. Not only does Morita stare down the cheesy looking snake, he soon suffers bite after bite. His character absorbs enough venom to kill the population of China and he's still on his feet. Morita's death scene--complete with facial expressions that looked like the actor bit into a lemon, a camera spinning around the actor in an effort to simulate his death throes, and sad music--reduced me to a series of honking sounds I didn't think human vocal cords could produce.
Wooden acting, cliches piled atop cliches, and ridiculous dialogue mark every aspect of "King Cobra," but the whole is so funny you won't mind. O.K., you probably will mind if you take it seriously for a second. Those looking for a so bad it's good flick, though, will find much to adore here. Trimark releases "King Cobra" to DVD with an awesome widescreen transfer, a commentary, a making of feature, and a bunch of trailers. If you like laughing until it hurts, definitely check this one out.
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