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      The Black Cobra

      1987 1h 25m Action List
      Reviews 17% Audience Score 100+ Ratings A detective (Fred Williamson) protects a murder witness (Eva Grimaldi) from a vicious gang of bikers. Read More Read Less

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      The Black Cobra

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      Audience Reviews

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      delysid d its the long forgotten adventures of a black super-cop who is an inspiration to us all Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/12/19 Full Review Audience Member The Black Cobra is pure trash as far as low budget films go, but it sure is enjoyable trash. Everything about this film is poorly made: the storyline, the acting is dreadful, the dialogue is hilariously terrible, the picture quality is awful, the fight scenes are choreographed awkwardly...it's B-movie fun, overall. As cheesy and ridiculous the film is, it has a great deal of fun contained in it for a B-movie fanatic since it is all done with such energy. It's no masterpiece, but it works as a guilty pleasure. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/26/23 Full Review Audience Member Fred Williamson is again in fine form as a Chicago cop protecting a photographer from a biker gang. I only wish the Italian production values were as good. Fred's handling of negotiations with criminals holding hostages is not to be missed. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/13/23 Full Review Audience Member This was one of the most boring 'action' flicks I've ever seen, even Fred Williamson couldn't save it from yawns and obscurity. Oh, and FYI, that cover image of a flaming city and all that other shit has nothing to do with the films itself, so don't get your hopes up. Pass, unless your morbid curiosity gets the better of you. Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 02/07/23 Full Review Audience Member Wasn't Sylvester Stallone's "Cobra" bad enough? Did we really need a cheap Italian knock off of it? No we didn't but none-the-less the Italians thought it enough to rip it off and change the title just a bit to reflect its main star, cult icon Fred Williamson. The plot is exactly like "Cobra". Sadistic gang going around brutally killing people for no apparent reason: check. Hot babe witnesses a murder and gets away without first seeing the face of the gang leader: check. Tough as nails cop assigned to protect her from the gang: check. Gang tries to murder the witness while she is in the hospital: check. Car chases: check. As you can see this is just "Cobra" with a lower budget and bad dubbing. The main reason to see this film is for cult icon Fred Williamson but even he seems bored with the premises. He seems tired and wore out as the fight scenes are really poorly staged. He isn't even to get his likeable charm to shine through the silted dialogue as lines like "I'd do it even if it was Santa Clauses' daughter" come out more head ache inducing than unintentionally funny. Director Stelvio Massi directed some decent Poliziotteschi films in the 70s but again like many of his director brethren his output in the 80s degrades to the Z-grade action level as this is a far cry from his superior 70s offerings. His directing just seems cheap and shoddy with poor zooms and pans. I understand he was working with nothing for a budget but he did nothing to try to heighten up the look of the film. The worst part perhaps is the god damn score. We get one fucking piece, the same piece played over the opening credits, and it is the only piece of score played throughout the entire picture. That would be fine if it was a catchy, likeable score but it's not so it gets annoying really fast. Like almost every other poliziotteschi film released in the 80s, "Black Cobra" weaves just above the line of god-awful and isn't even that fun for unintentional laughter. Williamonson looks bored and the directing is uninspired. For an Italian low-budget knock off this should have been a lot more fun than it was. Two sequels did follow (The Black Cobra 2, Black Cobra 3: Manila Connection) which are both MUCH better than this one. A fourth film entitled "Detective Malone" was also released but it was just a movie filmed around stock footage of Williamson from the first 3 films. Bonus Rant: It was enough to rip-off "Cobra" but the writers decided also to lift some dialogue from "Dirty Harry". During the final gun battle, Willaimson's Malone character has the balls to say a slightly changed version of Dirty Harry's famous dialogue of how many bullets did he fire and if the thug feels lucky. Come on guys! Note: The "Black Cobra" trilogy has fallen into public domain here in the United States and to be honest most of the releases are pure crap as they cram all three films onto a single layer DVD. The least crappy DVD release of these films is the triple feature from Diamond Entertainment which has all three films spread out on two discs, the second disc being dual layered so that means one film per layer! The transfer of the first "Black Cobra" though is still from a poor VHS source so only the most forgivable cult film fanatics, like me, are encouraged to hunt this DVD set down. Rated 1 out of 5 stars 01/17/23 Full Review Audience Member Fred Williamson is again in fine form as a Chicago cop protecting a photographer from a biker gang. I only wish the Italian production values were as good. Fred's handling of negotiations with criminals holding hostages is not to be missed. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/28/23 Full Review Read all reviews Post a rating

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      The Black Cobra

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      Movie Info

      Synopsis A detective (Fred Williamson) protects a murder witness (Eva Grimaldi) from a vicious gang of bikers.
      Director
      Stelvio Massi
      Screenwriter
      Danilo Massi
      Genre
      Action
      Original Language
      English
      Release Date (Streaming)
      Jan 23, 2017
      Runtime
      1h 25m
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