It’s got big hair, car chases, one-liners and, erm, robots. Could Sylvester Stallone’s Cobra be the quintessential 80s action flick…?
Cobra could have been another big franchise for Sylvester Stallone, a third panel in a macho, blockbusting triptych that already included Rambo and Rocky.
A chaotic action thriller that saw Sly reunited with First Blood Part II director George Pan Cosmatos (though legend has it, of course, that Stallone ghost-directed that hit, not Cosmatos), Cobra did respectable business on its release in 1986, earning an estimated worldwide gross of $160m on a $25m budget. That’s less money than the first Rocky movie managed to make, but more than the first Rambo flick, First Blood.
There’s a major difference between Cobra and Rocky or First Blood though: the latter films were largely applauded by critics, while Cobra was torn apart. And unlike some denigrated 80s flicks, Cobra hasn’t, as yet, gone through a period of critical reassessment.
This is understandable because, even by the standards of trashy 80s action cinema, Cobra is a mess – an unintentionally funny mixture of cop thriller, witness protection drama and even serial killer horror. Its violence is unimaginative and occasionally nasty, its direction indifferent, and its script generic.
Nevertheless, Cobra is still hugely entertaining, and memorable for one reason above all: it may be the quintessential 80s action movie. Its violence isn’t as over-the-top and downright fun as Commando, and its one-liners aren’t as zinging and quotable as Die Hard’s, but Cobra has the distinction of containing almost every action movie cliché you can possibly imagine. To prove it, here’s a breakdown of some of its most typically 80s moments.
A renegade cop
Following a grand tradition established by the classic Dirty Harry, Sly stars as Marion ‘Cobra’ Cobretti, a sour-faced cop on the edge. “In America,” he growls as the film begins, “there’s a burglary every 11 seconds. An armed robbery every 65 seconds. A violent crime every 25 seconds. A murder every 24 minutes…” Marion’s answer to these statistics is, naturally enough, to gun down every violent criminal he sees.
Easily recognisable thanks to his gigantic shades, black jacket and an ever-present match drooping from the corner of his mouth, Cobretti cuts up pizza with scissors, and spends his spare time cleaning his gun while watching Toys R Us adverts (surely one the most curious instances of product placement in Hollywood history).
Cobretti’s called into action when a cult-like group of psychopathic killers begin attacking LA residents at random, headed up by the muscle-bound, barbarian-like Night Slasher (Brian Thompson). In true 80s style, Cobretti responds with bullets, and searing one-liners (“This is where the law stops and I start. Sucker!”)
Chirpy side-kick
No rampaging lawman would be complete without a devoted partner, and in one of several allusions to Dirty Harry, Cobretti’s side-kick, Gonzales, is played by Reni Santoni. Santoni played Harry Callahan’s partner in Dirty Harry, who was also called Gonzales. In true 80s style, Gonzales is later shot by the bad guys during a motel shoot-out.
Robots
I’m not sure why Sylvester Stallone had a fixation with robots in the mid-80s, but 1985’s Rocky IV featured a creepy electronic butler (as our own Matt Edwards pointed out), while Cobra features an entirely unnecessary cameo from an entire army of kettle-nosed tin men, whose faces are, bizarrely, intercut with scenes of homeless people on the streets of Los Angeles. This weird montage leads directly on to…
Gratuitious photo shoot
No 80s action movie would be complete without a hapless love interest, and in Cobra, the role is filled by Brigitte Nielsen. She plays sultry model Ingrid Knudsen, who’s introduced in a photo shoot scene that is quite possibly the most 80s sequence ever filmed. There’s 80s rock, the aforementioned robots, shoulder pads, and an extraordinary selection of wigs.
When Ingrid witnesses one of the Night Slasher’s crimes, she falls under the sad-eyed protection of Cobretti. In true 80s style, Ingrid finds herself strangely attracted by the lawman’s somnambulant charm, even though he isn’t particularly great at romantic conversation. “Do you ever get involved?” she coyly asks in one of the film’s quieter moments, to which Cobretti incredulously replies, “With a woman?” as though it’s the most bizarre thing he’s ever heard.
Angry bosses
Every maverick cop eventually has to answer to an angry superior, who usually ends up shouting about damage to public property after yet another car chase or gun-crazy shootout. In Cobra, our hero has to answer to both the snide Detective Monte (Andrew Robinson, in a weird reversal of type – he played the crazed killer, Scorpio in Dirty Harry) and the grumpy Chief Halliwell (Val Avery), who are both critical of Cobretti’s violent methods of policing, but employ him anyway.
When Chief Halliwell asks Cobretti, “Do know you have an attitude problem?”, the former fires back the razor-sharp retort, “Yeah, but just a little one.”
In true 80s style, Cobretti ultimately earns his superiors’ begrudging respect when his unorthodox methods end the Night Slasher’s reign of terror.
Slasher movie moment
With Stallone keen to throw in as many disparate genre elements into the cauldron as possible, Cobra briefly switches gear around 40 minutes in. Having stolen her cheese sandwich, Cobretti and his rather dim fellow officers are tricked into leaving poor Ingrid unprotected in a hospital. Carrying his spiky pet knife, the Night Slasher closes in for the kill, leaving Ingrid running around, slamming doors and screaming for help.
There follows approximately five minutes of cat-and-mouse, with Brian Thompson playing the crazed Michael Myers to Brigitte Nielsen’s shrieking Laurie Strode. And in a direct reference to the 1980 classic, The Shining, Thompson even gets to shove his knife through a surprisingly flimsy door, recreating Stanley Kubrick’s infamous “Here’s Johnny” scene.
Big car chase
No 80s action movie would be complete without a car chase, and although Cobra’s isn’t the best, it’s certainly one of the more outlandish. While ferrying Ingrid to “A place called a Safe House”, Cobretti’s attacked by the Night Slasher’s henchmen, resulting in a high-speed pursuit through the streets of Los Angeles and the destruction of numerous bins, barriers, and even a petrol tanker. Of all the action sequences in the film, this one’s shot and edited with the most brio, and concludes with a spectacular (and slightly odd) collision with a big wooden boat.
The nitrous-injected Mercury Monterey Cobretti drives belonged to Sly himself, which would explain why, at the film’s conclusion, the character asks for a replacement.
80s rock
Two words: Robert Tepper.
A steel mill
The steel mill is an element as important to 80s action cinema as the wailing rock soundtrack, the one-liner and the car chase. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character worked in one in The Running Man, and RoboCop wouldn’t have been the same had it not been shot in and around the grounds of run-down mills and factories.
Cobra, therefore, concludes in the most gloriously 80s way possible – with an extended shoot-out and fist-fight in the broiling environs of a steel processing facility. Various goons are gunned down, stabbed, blown up and burned by the seething Cobretti, before he turns his righteous anger on the Night Slasher.
The two engage in macho fisticuffs, and in true 80s style, poor old Brigitte Nielsen is given nothing to do – she has to do the same thing that all women did in old action films, and simply look on anxiously while the hero tussles on the floor with the villain. This is unfortunate, since Nielsen proved in Red Sonja that she’s more than capable of defending herself, and it would have been quite funny for her to simply step in and snap the Night Slasher’s neck like a twig.
Cobra, of course, is simply too dripping in testosterone to allow such female intervention, and the movie shows Stallone at the height of his grunting, alpha male powers. It’s not a great film by any conventional yardstick, but it is a true time capsule of an era of excess, and as we hope we’ve proven here, the quintessential 80s action flick.
Cobra is out now on Blu-ray.
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