The Black Cobra 3

The Black Cobra 3 (1990) is a movie that I recently watched on Tubi. The storyline follows Detective Malone investigating a gun trade gone wrong that left a friend dead. Malone tracks the events to a gang in the Philippines and will need help from inner pole if he has any hope of solving the case and bringing those responsible to Justice.

This movie is directed by Edoardo Margheriti (The Untidiness of the Heart) and stars Fred Williamson (From Dusk till Dawn), Forry Smith (Beverly Hills Cop III), Maria Isabel Lopez (Lorna) and Debra Ward.

This is another uneven Black Cobra film with some fun elements and some misses too. The cinematography and quality of the film is average to poor. However, the fight scenes, shootouts and explosions are a lot of fun. The grocery store opening was great and a perfect way to get the movie started. Unfortunately the dialogue and one liners were a bit cheesy. There is also some random nudity splashed in here and there.

Overall, this is a fairly average addition to the action genre that's worth watching once for fans of blaxploitation films. I would score this a 5/10 and recommend seeing it once.

Well to be fair, any film that features Fred Williamson is always worth at least a watch purely on account of the presence of the great man himself. Sadly, even having said this, our effortlessly super cool hero has often ended up in some rather mundane efforts....as is the case in fact with the film in question here.

Certainly the film isn't exactly bad by any stretch of the imagination, it's just not exactly memorable in any way, shape or form either. Sure there's a number of mildly entertaining (if rather lacklustre) action sequences and our man even gets to let fly with some humorous one liners but there's simply not enough substance in this to make it worth a second viewing and in addition, the film is unforgivably about as clichéd and predictable as could be humanly imaginable.

Having said this, I must make special mention of the very best scene though, a scene in fact that was previously played out similarly in the previous two entries in the series and that is the hilarious banter between Williamson and his irate police chief - absolutely first class!

This was followed by one final sequel although note well - Williamson only appears courtesy of stock footage in it!!!

If the first film in this series was influenced by Cobra and the second was a riff on Lethal Weapon, this third instalment is channelling Commando. In this one, Fred is sent back to the Philippines for budgetary reasons and has to deal with some bad guys in the jungle. Cue lots of explosions and machine gun fire. This one is probably a slight drop in quality from the first two but amazingly, its still not that bad.

The third time is not the charm for this series, though it wasn't the charm with either part one or part two. In this entry, the production values take a couple of steps back, though they are not as dire as those in the first film. (But there are at least some colorful jungle locations in the beginning and end.) There is an unintentionally hilarious song ("The Power Of Love" - not the Huey Lewis version) played twice. There is also some nudity, which none of the first two movies had. But despite things like that, the movie still ends up being pretty dull. Williamson, like the first two movies, seems to be on autopilot, and the action (mostly punch-ups) gets tired pretty quick. The climatic action scene (which takes a long time to build up to) is the best action scene of any in the series, but that does not mean it's good. It's too little, too late.

Well, I've seen all three (official) entries of this series. Now hopefully I can now get to movies that might be GOOD.

There isn't really much to be discussed about the third installment of "The Black Cobra" series: if you enjoyed the previous two, you'll like this one too, if you didn't, try to avoid it. It offers pretty much what you'd expect: a nonexistent budget (not even any vehicular mayhem in this one), strictly mediocre action scenes, loads of pretty useless bad guys, a crawling, draggy pace, and Fred Williamson getting by more on his trademark coolness rather than on any acting effort. He gets two sidekicks this time - one male (Forry Smith), one female (Debra Ward) - but don't expect the lady to get involved in the action nearly as much as the guys. The film is just about watchable when you are in an extremely undemanding mood. (**)