If you ask
me, there are very few things in this world that can hold a candle to the
purely awesome and cheesy horror flicks of the 80's. If I had to pick
something else that has brought me the same level of amusement over the
years, it's gotta
be the equally cheesy action movies from the same decade. With that being
said, it's high time I start covering some of my all-time favorites here
on I-Mockery. Today, I would like to share with you an action movie that I
consider to be one of the most underrated ones of all time: Cobra!
You can usually find this movie in the "bargain bin" for 5 bux or less
these days - a damned good deal considering what they try to pass off as
an action movie these days. But for those of you who know little to
nothing about this forgotten action gem, allow me to show you ten things
that make "Cobra" one of the most underrated macho badass action movies
of all time:
#1: Marion
Cobretti!
"Marion
Cobretti" is quite possibly one of the greatest names ever created for a
macho badass. Knowing that it sounds like a woman's name, he simply goes
by the name "Cobra" to help instill fear into the hearts of his
enemies, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a sense of
humor about his real name. At one point in the movie he tells the woman he's trying
to protect that he wishes he had a tougher name... like Alice. On top of
that, he likes health food to the extent that he even tells his friend to
try eating more prunes, raisins, fish and rice. See how
secure he is in his manliness? That's what being a macho badass is all
about.
And just who
is Cobra you ask? Cobra is an officer on "the zombie squad" which,
according to this movie, is "the bottom line in police enforcement."
So just think of him as the strong arm of the law who gets things
done by any means necessary.
And how
about the killer combination of oversized reflective sunglasses and a
match hanging out of his mouth? That's Cobra's trademark badass look. It
doesn't matter where he is, the sunglasses and match are always in style.
And yes, that match hanging out of his mouth actually does come into play
later on in the movie when he uses it set some unlucky bastard on fire.
But there's
more to a macho badass than just his name and his looks. Actions speak
louder than words, and Cobra is ALL about the action.
When a
maniac takes shoppers hostage inside a grocery store, Cobra doesn't panic.
He's so relaxed that he chugs a beer right there in the store before
playing mind games with the maniac. "Hey dirtbag, you're a lousy shot.
I don't like lousy shots. You wasted a kid for nothing... now I think it's
time to waste you." Cobra has tons of great lines like that in the
movie, but one of them sticks out more than all the others combined. It's
perhaps the best line ever to come from the lips of a macho badass:
"This
is where the law stops and I start, sssssssucka!"
I'm sure,
you just can't beat that. You couldn't beat that if you tried and you're
only kidding yourself if you think you can. Actually, you know what? None
of this stuff really even matters. Just look at the poster and all of your
questions about just how badass this movie truly is should be answered in
a heartbeat.
Perfection.
#2:
The Car!
There's an
old saying that a man is only as good as his ride. Whatever prick said
that was probably beaten to death by an angry mob of Ford Pinto owners.
Nonetheless, Cobra's car is the epitome of awesome. A solid black 1950
Ford Mercury. It's so awesome that even the license plate says "AWSOM
50" on it. And the seatbelts? They're not your average seatbelts,
they're the kind of seatbelts you'd strap yourself into if you were a
fighter jet pilot. But hey, it's probably a good thing he had those
seatbelts, what with the nitrous switch and all. "Cobra's car contained
a nitrous oxide system which enabled it to achieve a sudden and
instantaneous boost, increasing the horsepower by 30 percent." Not too
shabby, eh?
Proving that
the car handles well, Cobra does a 180 during a high speed chase and guns
down the bad guys chasing after him. Hmm, maybe the old saying was a
car is only as good as its driver.
#3:
The Axe-Clanking Club!
Goddamn, I
can't tell you how awesome I thought this was when I was a kid. The bad
guys in this movie constantly talk about "The New World" and how they're
going to take over everything. Well part of this "New World" involves the
club members meeting in some dingy old warehouse and clanking their axes
in the air in perfect unison. They don't speak to each other, nobody says
a damned thing. They just stand there, clanking their axes together in the
air knowing that they will soon rule the world. How badass is that?
Even better,
they're apparently not exclusive like most clubs tend to be. It doesn't
seem to matter if you're a psycho killer with huge muscles or a disgruntled, middle-aged
balding businessman... all are welcome in the axe-clanking club!
Fuck your
fraternities and sororities, THIS is where it's at.
#4: The Shirt
Rip!
This has got to be one of
the most amazingly random acts of badassness ever displayed on the big
screen. After a gang member talks shit to Cobra for pushing his car out of
the way, Cobra walks up to him and says, "Clean up your act," grabs
the punk's shirt and tears it straight down and then walks away. How do
you even react to something like that happening to you? I'll tell you how:
you don't. You just stand there in awe, wishing you could be that
awesome, but you know it'll never happen. Why? Because somebody far more
awesome than you just tore the shirt right off your back, sucka.
#5:
Scissors vs. Pizza!
For the life
of me, I cannot explain why Cobra cuts off the tip of a slice of pizza
with scissors before eating it. I also can't explain why it's incredibly
macho and badass either. It just is. When something makes no sense
whatsoever in an action movie, chances are it was something extremely
macho that you and I simply cannot comprehend. All you need to understand
is that you'll never be that much of a badass. I guess it's not too
surprising though. I mean, it's not like you or I keep an egg carton filled with gun oil in
the freezer now do we. The man's fridge is tougher than us. God, we're all such pussies
compared to Cobra...
#6: The
Montage!
No action
movie is complete without the hero getting the other kind of "action" at
some point. Cobra is no exception to that rule, but in this movie, they
decide to go the extra mile by showcasing how much of a supermodel freak
his woman is during a montage backed up by Robert Tepper's "Angel of
the City". Granted, the song isn't nearly as good as "No Easy Way
Out", but for what it lacks in that category, they try to make up for
it with ridiculous outfits for her to model and.... robots. Yes,
ROBOTS! Between shots of Cobra searching the streets for clues, the
manly music of Robert Tepper and a model posing with robots for no
apparent reason at all... you've got
yourself one HELL of an action movie montage that you won't soon forget.
#7:
Cobra's Arsenal!
For the
first half of the movie, Cobra uses two weapons: his fists and his
gun. While it's hard to say which of these two are deadlier, his gun has been customized with a white ivory handle
depicting, you got it... a COBRA. He blasts plenty of bad guys away
with this gun that he keeps stored conveniently right in the front of his
pants. You know, just above his other gun.
When the bad
guys keep trying to kill Cobra's woman, they decide to move her to a safe
house. But Cobra isn't going unprepared. He's bringing something that
packs a bit more of a punch...
In addition
to a plethora of grenades, Cobra packs an extra punch with a fairly unusual,
more exotic weapon for an action movie hero to have: a JATI 9mm submachine
gun. But it clearly serves him well as he becomes a one man army, and naturally, he adds a laser scope
onto it for accuracy. And just like in all action movies, not one of the
bad guys hits him with a single shot from their guns, but practically every shot that
Cobra fires off kills somebody. Guess that laser scope of his really helps, eh?
#8: The
Night Slasher!
Another
thing every good action movie needs is a really solid bad guy, and Cobra
has a man known simply as "The Night Slasher". The media gave him
that name because he's been slashing countless victims at night. Creative
eh? Aside from looking absolutely psychotic and also moving with an eerie
calm that's just waiting to turn into rage, the man has a fantastically
evil baritone voice. While he doesn't speak much, when he does speak it's
some truly great shit...
"Let's
bleed pig! I want your eyes pig! I want them! You wanna go to hell? Huh???
Huh pig!? You wanna go to hell with me? Doesn't matter, does it? We are
the hunters! We kill the weak so the strong survive! You can't stop the
new world. Your filthy society will never get rid of people like us! It's
breeding them! We are the future!"
Talk about
somebody you'd want at your dinner party to strike up an interesting
conversation with, eh? What's even better is that anytime he calls Cobra a
"pig" he puts so much emphasis on the word that spits whenever he says it.
And hey ladies, I'm pretty sure he's single. The Night Stalker enjoys
quality conversation, long walks on the beach, and sharpening his knife.
Which leads
me to the next item on my list...
#9:
The Best Knife EVER!
Just look at
that knife. Look at it! It's got a brass knuckles handle with spikes
embedded on it and a huge curved blade with a skull embossed on its side.
Stallone said he wanted a knife that audience members would never forget.
Well I never forgot it and neither did anyone who saw this movie. This knife
would've made Crocodile Dundee tuck tail and run for the hills. There are
some fairly good reproductions of this knife out there, but I've yet to
see any that have such an oversized blade like the one in the movie... and
none of them have the skull embossed on the side. But hey, we can't all be
the Night Slasher now can we?
#10: The Final
Showdown!
Naturally, with a badass
like cobra and a total psychopath like the Night Slasher, there's going to
be a big showdown. And can you think of a better place for the two of them
to have a showdown at than in an old foundry surrounded metal pipes,
chains, fire and pits of molten lava? Talk about a perfect scenario. So
after their classic lines are delivered, the two of them go head-to-head
in the fight of their lives. For a while, it looks as though the Night
Slasher might overpower Cobra with his knife. But come on, this is Cobra
we're talking about. He's not gonna go this far only to quit now.
He manages to get back up on
his feet and starts punching the hell out of the night stalker and then he
finishes him off in truly classic macho badass style...
He the Night
Slasher up into the air and impales him on a giant metal hook that just
happens to be passing them by. Now all the Night Slasher can do is flail
his arms about and grip his big knife with rage as he slowly dies. But it
doesn't end there. No sir.
You can't
just impale a psycho on a hook and call it a day. You have to make sure
that hook happens to be traveling into a fiery abyss so that the psycho
will not only suffer a death by impalement, but he'll be burned alive as
well. You gotta send that psycho straight to hell and make sure he stays
there. My friends, THIS is how you end a big action movie showdown.
And there
you have it. Cobra is a goddamned masterpiece of pure macho badass action cheese. I'll
take classics like this over the modern "action" flicks starring WWE
superstars any day. Modern action is a disease. Cobra is the cure.
Have any
questions or comments about this piece?
Email -RoG-