Review: Cobra (George P. Cosmatos, 1986)

Underrated 80s action fun

"Crime is a disease...meet the cure"

I just saw this for the first time today- wow! I had so much damn fun with this flick! It's total badassery from the get go, which starts off with a very cool and stylish opening title. From here on in it's classic 80s action all the way with Stallone playing "Cobra" Cobretti of the "Zombie Squad"- a hard-as-nails cop who is the only one to call to take on the jobs no-one else will do. He's like a slick mix between The Punisher, Dirty Harry and Judge Dredd- donning his aviator shades, toothpick in mouth and fed up with crime, he'll do anything it takes to get the job done- and that usually involves putting shooting the sh!t out of the punks that are the cause of it all with a typically badass "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude. But underneath the hard exterior, he's a likable guy with a dry wit and everyday man sense of humour.

Cobra is enlisted with the other police to try and crack down on on some seemingly random female killings, but when a young model (Bridgette Neilsen) survives the onslaught of the villain dubbed by police as "the Night Slasher" and becomes the one and only witness, Cobra is sent to protect her, hoping as well that she will be the only key to finding the murderers as they try all it takes to come after her again and silence her for good. But not while Cobra is there- nothing will stand in his way to deliver his own brand of justice! This movie is truly a nostalgic gem of an 80s action film. It has everything in this to please fans of the genre- from psycho bad guys (here played by Brian Thompson as "The Night Slasher"- leader of a group of hardened knuckleheads hell bent on spreading their "new world order" of crime, first by killing the weak, helpless women of LA), to awesome action scenes including a fantastic car chase, explosive shoot outs, a terrific hand-to hand and hand-to-knife bare knuckle fighting, to fun one liners, all on top of brilliantly foreboding electronic style musical score (as well as heavy 80s pop tunes) It even has essences of James Cameron's "The Terminator" in it. It pretty much ticks everything it sets out to do and is the epitome of 80s action. Just what the doctor ordered.

My only gripes with the film are, well...zero! It's just pure old school fun from start to finish. Okay if I had a gripe, it would be that the UK version of the film cuts out a 3 second scene of Stallone giving a great one liner: "You have the right to remain silent" as he burns a guy to death) (why this was cut out i'll never know, especially since they show the scene of the guy getting burnt), but that's the BBFC's fault, not the film.

Otherwise- it's a truly underrated film (no idea why it flopped in cinemas when it as first released). It is an adaptation of the Paula Gosling novel "Fair Game" (which was later remade as Fair Game in 1995 with William Baldwin and Cindy Crawford), I haven't seen that, but i had one hell of a time with this one! Highly recommended for all action fans and all 80s junkies. On top of Rocky and Rambo, Stallone makes another iconic and lovable hero as Cobra. I only wish this was successful enough to warrant more sequels, but as it is- it's awesome. Film wise i'd rate it an 8/10 but really and truly it's warranting of a 9, even a 10- simply because they just don't make them like this anymore. I actually found this movie better than a load of action films in this present day. True, classic old school 80s action. Loved it.

9/10

Review: Hiruko the Goblin (Shinya Tsukamoto, 1991)

Gory Japanese creature antics with an old-skool flavour . Flawed, but fun.

Shinya Tsukamato (writer/director of the cult Tetsuo: The Iron Man) returns to the horror genre but this time, instead of doing something experimental and "out there" like Tetsuo, decides to adapt and direct a much more mainstream tale of horror. Based on the novel by Daijiro Moroboshi, the story is of a rural Japanese school in the middle of lush green fields which houses an underground lair home to seemingly thousands of "Hiruko"- which are, literally, small spider-like arachnids with heads of either their previous victims or their original alien forms. Sealed away by the spells of old Gods and legends, they are unwittingly unleashed by an archaeologist excavating the area. As a teacher and his student (played by Naoto Takenaka and Megumi Ueno) go missing within the area, crack goblin hunter Reijiro Hieda (Kenji Sawada) is called upon the site to deal with the shenanigans, who along the way meets Masao (Masaki Kudou), who is also there as he searches for his father who has mysteriously vanished there. Cue some monster-fighting fun as the two discover they are dealing with more than they bargained for, and with the help of Heida's home-made monster-busting tools and traps as well as the school's janitor Watanabe (Hideo Murota) who knows the truth, they plan to end this onslaught attack of spider-like creatures who enjoy stealing the heads of their victims.

The film has a great look with excellent colour and lighting. It also houses some pretty cool special effects in the form of severed heads, animatronic spider-like creatures (most of which sprout from these heads) and some use of stop-motion animation- so all in all, if you love low budget vintage horror (especially from the 80s), then you will definitely find something to like about this film. Tsukamoto was definitely inspired by the likes of Sam Raimi and John Carpenter and the influence shows as their fingerprints are rife throughout- the way scenes are shot, the style, the camera angles, how the monsters look and such, are all heavily inspired by films like The Evil Dead (1981), Evil Dead 2 (1987) and The Thing (1982), it even has essences of the oddball antics of Ghostbusters (1984) and even James Cameron's The Abyss (1989) in there too (Tsukamoto was already inspired by Cameron's The Terminator (1984) with his previous work of man and machine techno-bio-fusion). The story is also quite interesting as it heavily uses lots of traditional Japanese folktale lore, which to me was cool as it gives it it's own unique slant against other films, though the execution is rather dull at times. The acting by the cast is fine and they all do their job well. The music is also fantastically 80s- some cool electronic/synth beats, again inspired by Carpenter, but used to equally great effect. The charm of the film is because it's so retro, and that's what makes it fun.

The film's weak points are that it tends to drag on a bit and might be a bit boring (and confusing) in parts as the film takes some long breaks in between the action. There is also an ending which was quite cringe worthy (it had the intention of being sweet but came off as cheesy because it takes itself too seriously and, with age, hasn't fared well with it's use of effects, even though the rest of the film is solid in it's use of old-skool SFX).

Other than that, it's decent 80s creature feature schlock which delivers on some bloody gore and carnage, cool monsters, fun SFX and a cool style/atmosphere that is as good as the directors and movies it was inspired from, just don't expect too much and you'll have a blast with it, it's definitely got some creative ideas in there to make it worth a watch at least once. Definitely not up there with the best of Tsukamoto's work, but a decent enough effort for his first mainstream feature.

6/10