This promo image of Dominican actress Maria Montez in costume for her starring role in 1944’s The Cobra Woman sells the movie for us. We’ll definitely watch it—and hope it’s better than the similarly named 1972 b-horror flick Night of the Cobra Woman. For that matter, we hope it’s better than 1955’s Cult of the Cobra. Our fingers are crossed. Montez was one of the top actresses in exotic escapist films, appearing in such fare as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, South of Tahiti, Moonlight in Hawaii, Sudan, Tangier, White Savage, Pirates of Monterrey, The Thief of Venice… you get the idea. She was still at the top of her globetrotting game when she was found dead in her bathtub in 1951 at age thirty-nine, but her legacy as a film star is assured—even if her movies were shot on Hollywood sound stages, she helped audiences travel the world.
