Monstervision's Joe Bob Briggs Looks At

Cobra (1986)

Incredibly slurred speech is his game

(From Joe Bob's Ultimate B Movie Guide)
movie poster Cobra is his name. Incredibly slurred speech is his game. Call it "Dirty Rocky." Sly Stallone and then-wife Brigitte Nielsen (Red Sonja herself) made this one right before the Big D, and it's basically the story of a killer army of ugly bikers who like to blow up Safeways and kill dozens of innocent people "for the publicity." The El Lay police call Sly to prove he can be just as disgusting as the maniac killer mutants, especially when he chews on the end of a match while spraying automatic machine-gun fire across the lunchmeat freezer. In his spare time Cobra likes to rough up TV reporters, ram his 1950 Mercury coupe into parked cars "for fun," and wear mirrored sunglasses and mangy leather jackets while somebody sings all the music-video inserts. But finally he gets sick and tired of these killer armies that meet every night to click their axes together and pound sledgehammers through the windshields of cars and slice up unemployed actors, and so he puts Brigitte in the front seat of his car for bait. The idea is that the drooling geeks with pickaxes will try to blow her away or drive a two-by-four through her stomach for being Scandinavian, then Cobra can pick em off with an AK47 grenade launcher.
Approximately 784 explosions later, we've got: "Dirty Rocky"

No breasts. (Surprisingly, Brigitte's hooters were off-limits at the time)
Two quarts blood.
Three beasts.
Fifty-one dead bodies.
Four motor vehicle chases, with three crash-and-burns.
Creep-on-a-hook.
Gratuitous bonesaw.
Safeway Fu.
Sledgehammer Fu.
Sylvester wrote all his own lines, including: "You're a disease and I'm the cure";
"You know the problem with you is? You're too violent" and, of course,
"Go ahead--I don't shop here." Three stars. Joe Bob says check it out. 2 stars

© 2000 Joe Bob Briggs. All Rights Reserved. Not an AOL Time-Warner Company in this lifetime.

For this and other movie reviews by the artist formerly known as the host of MonsterVision, go to Joe Bob Briggs.com

Joe Bob's Mailbag

Yo Joe Bob:
I have been experimenting today, trying to figure out how to barbeque the San Francisco Treat. Not much luck yet; the rice keeps falling thru the grill. I'll call you when I get results.
My obligatory personal question: How do you write your column so that the right edge always lines up. Isn't that hard? Did you learn to do it in Famous Writer's School?
Yours in George Jones,
DALLAS DENNY
NASHVILLE, TENN.
Dear Dallas:
No, it took years of study and a determination to ALWAYS make it come out the right length even if it don't make sense and you have to leave out many

 Deah Deah Joe Bob:
Plz try to explain what it's all about: why the symbolic sex, the staged horror, the beautiful erotic & almost willing victims. Is it all for money only or is there just possibly a reality here which I am not perceiving.
Your Doppelganger,
MICHAEL HEDGES
SAN RAPHAEL, CALIF

Dear Mike:
There's a reality here which you're not perceiving: money

Letters which followed the Joe Bob Goes Back To The Drive-In version of his Cobra review
© 1990 Joe Bob Briggs. All Rights Reserved. Demand that the publisher put it back in print so you can buy it.

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