Black Cobra Review

Well here I am, back again, your favorite Mexican with a pad and pen…or rather a laptop and some clove cigarettes. Sorry for the delay, I’ve been swamped with writing assignments and haven’t had much luck in the way of watching the latest and greatest in film. That’s all changing though, with the next couple of films in the can ready to update. Here is the first of two reviews that I recently got to throw up in. Join me today in the reviewing or whatever you’d like to call it of Black Cobra.

Black Cobra is a rip off of the 1980’s Stallone film “Cobra” and some might say that it’s far better. Fred Williamson plays a rogue cop that is hired to protect a young lady from a vicious motorcycle gang, and is caught up in some dangerous liaisons. As he moves forward with trying to protect her, the gang gets closer and closer, leaving him no choice but to start exacting a fierce revenge.

Williamson is ok; his acting is about the best you can get in this Blaxploitation film from the 1980’s. The plot moves forward fast, he fights hard, and has big guns amidst a gang who continually shoots him with automatic weaponry. By the time you get to the nitty gritty of the action, you realize that this film is over.

The gang is hilarious, it’s like a Vanilla Ice type of street gang from his film, and Fred Williamson is way too large of a character actor for the role he’s playing. He seems to be sly and nearly gets the white woman at one point, but it doesn’t matter. The movie is gets tiresome by act 2, and you really just want it to end. Pegged as a martial arts film, this is far from anything to do with kung fu or karate, unless you count Williamson’s punches and kicks.

The sound quality is low, the picture quality is even worse, but then again, this is Blaxploitation cinema at its best. While this is not a scary film, it does have some harsh fights and some sick pieces of violence that has to be mentioned. At one point a dude gets shot in the back in front of his girlfriend that is about to get raped, and in another scene Williamson battles his way through a parking lot of foes with one automatic hand gun and his guts.

Creating the Black Super Hero is hard for anyone, but in this film, I saw glimpses of all the archetype heroes from the 1980’s. While this film is not going to be a top 10, and it is not overtly horror, I found it should be reviewed here because it fits into the Blaxploitation and Exploitation era of film that I love and you scary film review fans love too. I don’t recommend repeated viewings of this one, but if you see it once, you’ll at least think it’s not half bad. I liked a few elements of it, I admit it, it is just not one of my favorites, that’s all.