Komodo vs. Cobra

KOMODO VS. COBRA is another Z-grade slice of movie monster entertainment from prolific B-movie king Jim Wynorski. This one's a bottom-of-the-barrel production that throws together all the elements familiar from Wynorski's movies: bad acting, cardboard characters, top-heavy starlets in revealing attire, and massive CGI monsters that look like they belong in an old Playstation game.

This one's a kind of spiritual successor to the awfulness that was BOA VS. PYTHON, as it follows almost exactly the same storyline. On a remote tropical island (shades of JURASSIC PARK, which this film so wants to be), dastardly scientists have been genetically experimenting on the wildlife, leading to a pair of giant monsters wreaking havoc on the unsuspecting tourists. What it all boils down to is an average action-adventure template with characters running around and emoting and occasionally being bloodlessly eaten by the beasties.

The special effects are very poor here, although not the poorest I've seen, but the monster action could have been worse, I suppose. There are a few memorably icky moments, like the bit with the giant leeches, which is well achieved. Otherwise, it's business as usual for the B-movie genre.

"When a top secret island research facility goes dark, a crack team of commandos is sent to investigate. Once there, they are shocked to find that giant Komodos and Cobras live on this island and they're really hungry. Now with the deck stacked against them, and nearly no hope for survival, the team is locked in a battle of survival with two of nature's most formidable predators." Also on the island - big-breasted women and Michael Pare! Komodo vs. Cobra is the highly anticipated movie smackdown that will answer the age old question: who would win in an apocalyptic battle between a giant Komodo dragon and a giant cobra? Oh, yes, and there are big-breasted women and Michael Pare running around trying not to get caught in the crossfire.

Enormous reptiles? Big breasted women? Michael Pare? This has got to be a Jim Wynorski film. Hold on. Let me check IMDb just to make sure. Let's see...

IT IS!!! Oh, who am I kidding? I already knew KvC was a Jim Wynorski film, although I wasn't aware that the movie co-starred rising scream queen Michelle Borth and reality show banshee Jerri Manthey.

And as hard as it might be to believe this, it isn't meant to be a sequel to his recent giant Komodo dragon flick Curse of the Komodo, although I'm sure it was the inspiration as well as an ominous measuring stick of KvC's potential quality.

Komodo vs. Cobra is not going to set the world on fire. It's not a hallmark of cinema history. What it is is a group of underfunded filmmakers trying to make another movie, make another paycheck, and continue to support themselves and their families. As such I give these efforts a lot of slack. I mean, come on, it has to be hard to be a Russian special effects technician. Not a lot of big budget films getting made there. BUT-- they are a dedicated bunch and more than willing to throw their all into whatever lame American monster flick needs affordable SFX. And I get a kick out of looking for the same locations appear time and again in these flicks. If for some reason you find yourself watching this again, look at the sequence where Pare and company are walking through a "jungle." Look at their feet and you'll see paved walkways. And if you happen to still have a copy of "AI Assault" (shown a week or two earlier also on SciFi), you'll see the folks in there tramping through the same ersatz jungle. Come to think of it, I think the helicopters land in the same clearing in both flicks. I can admire the thriftiness of these films. Every dollar really does show up on the screen! Too bad there just aren't enough dollars......

As a total movie geek with the fortunate job of video store manager, I tend to watch all sorts of movies, from good to very very bad. This was a movie with so many corn-ball lines, cheesy CGI effects and predictable plot points that I ended up laughing extensively before switching it off after 30-40 minutes. The "creature feature" genre of movies has been putting out some pretty awful stuff in recent years (Godzilla 2000 anyone?), but this movie makes me think the creators weren't even trying. It might be worth checking out just for the "make fun of me" potential (count the gunshots!), but I couldn't in good conscience recommend this movie to anyone.

So, Wynorski remakes Curse of the Komodo a second time, this time replacing the interesting characters of the original with a bunch of obnoxious environmentalists / anti-capitalists. And he adds a Cobra. Most of the movie is spent listening to the self-righteous characters prattle on about the evil capitalist pigs, while sandwiched between this cavalcade of condescension are flashbacks to what happened on the island before they got there. DNA experiments were conducted, critters started to grow, people spoke to each other without coming off as being morally superior jerks, etc. Needless to say, it would have been a much better movie if they would have made the flashbacks the movie and forgotten about the sanctimonious do-gooders. Lest I forget, there are a few short scenes scattered here and there where the holier-than-thou posse gets picked off one by one, but they probably comprise less than 2% of the film. The main event pitting our title characters against each other lasts about one minute and is as exciting as watching the previews for the latest Dino-Crisis video game.

The acting is pretty bad overall, even for this sort of film. Half the actors seem like they're more concerned with pronouncing every last syllable of every word than speaking their dialog in any sort of believable manner.

I actually did make it through to the end, but it's one of those movies I wish I would have recorded and then watched later, because there are plenty of parts that need to be fast forwarded through. Overall, I give this effort one star, it has absolutely none of the elements that make a B-movie fun to watch. It's a sad day indeed when you can say with sincerity that the makers of this movie could have learned a thing or two from watching Boa vs. Python.