1944’s Cobra Woman, for which you see a poster in insert dimensions above, is a Universal Pictures tropical island adventure starring the immortal Maria Montez. As we’ve mentioned before, she was one of Hollywood’s premiere escapist film stars, specializing in exotic cinema. This particular feature, among her best known, is a huge, high budget, well costumed Technicolor production featuring Montez as innocent young Tollea, kidnapped to steamy Cobra Island, where she’s meant to save her ancestors from her cruel sister Naja (also Montez), who sits upon a cobra throne having subjects sacrificed like tindersticks to a flaming volcano.
Montez (the good one) would rather canoodle with studboy Jon Hall, but duty has called so she embraces it. Unfortunately, Hall loads up plucky sidekick Sabu Dastagir, the two show up unbidden on Cobra Island, which is barred to outsiders, and are unceremoniously captured—throwing a coconut into Montez’s subtle plans to depose her sibling. Men, right? They eventually manage to improvise a course of action which unsurprisingly results in a huge subterranean brawl involving various brutal dogpiles, swinging around on chains, sizzling torches, a helpful monkey, and a deep pit of sharp spears. It brings the spectacle to a cracking if occasionally comical conclusion.
Despite this tympani pounding final piece, the center of the movie is really Montez’s (the bad one’s) cobra dance, which goes hand-in-hand with the aforementioned sacrifice ritual. It starts slow but gets pretty wild toward the end. You’ll wish it had gone on much longer. An interesting aspect of these old tropical adventures is that the visual elements really haven’t changed since then. You can see them in everything from Indiana Jones to Moana. The fact that Cobra Woman looks familiar works in its favor, and it deserves credit for helping to establish visual motifs relied upon for similar efforts today. Still, though, it’s a cheeseball movie. If you watch it, watch it with Mai Tais at the ready.
