Cult of the Cobra (1955)

Excellent but underrated film

Absolutely Brilliant!

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

GIs in 1945 Asia are introduced to the actual ceremony of a "female human cobra"(essentially a woman in costume who is slithery like a snake)by a native snake charmer who warns them to keep quiet inside their hooded robes, but Nick of the group stupidly attempts to take a snapshot resulting in the American soldiers being cursed. This curse entails that all the GIs will be hunted down one at a time by the cobra woman, to be victims of her poisonous bite. Returning home absent Nick(who is "reinfected" when a snake enters his room in a hospital, the bite killing him)to New York, the GIs, now civilians, aren't out of harm's way. Tom(Marshall Thompson; IT! TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE/ FIEND WITHOUT A FACE)and Paul(Richard Long; THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL/THE TWILIGHT ZONE) are both in love with a girl(Paul is chosen over Tom, though)which doesn't end their friendship(the guys are roommates). A new tenant moves in across from Tom and Paul, an exotic foreigner named Lisa(Faith Domergue). Tom develops feelings for her right away, but Lisa immediately gives him the cold shoulder any time he attempts to snatch a kiss. There's a reason why Lisa wants to distance herself from Tom romantically, but soon her feelings for him become too difficult to ignore. Something will, however, drive a wedge between their blossoming love affair and that is what Lisa is plagued with.While this is a Universal Studios picture, to me it favored something more like a Columbia Pictures product. The filmmakers decide to avoid showing an actual human cobra, opting instead to show Faith Domergue's silhouette on the wall metamorphose into a cobra(there's an ending where we see the actual cobra turn back into a human through dissolve which is flawed because it's highly doubtful that a naked snake would transform into a woman with all of her jewelry and wardrobe on). Most of the attacks on the GIs are shot from point-of-view through the eye vision of the cobra as the victims respond with fright at what is coming towards them. This movie does resemble CAT PEOPLE in that Tom falls in love with a beautiful woman he can not attain due to her terrible predicament. The filmmakers establish Lisa's situation in subtle ways like how animals react towards her, such as Tom's dog or a horse on the street. When stage actress Julia(the lovely Kathleen Hughes)begins reading on snake cults and customary practices, like in CAT PEOPLE when Simone Simon's Irena becomes a deadly threat to her husband's best friend(and future lover), Alice(Jane Randolph), Domergue's Lisa follows a similar mold, taking cobra form at the end, awaiting her in the dressing room. Domergue is a striking beauty, dressed to the nines in sophisticated wardrobe. For some reason, CULT OF THE COBRA never quite takes off but it might appeal to fans of Val Lewton and the "less is more" approach, focused more on the soap opera dramatics of Tom and Lisa's relationship and what they are up against..I imagine that had it been made 10 years previous, CULT OF THE COBRA might've been more of a creature feature with Domergue an actual cobra woman.

I had alway wanted to see this, having grown up watching all of the 50's SF films. This one had a cast of people I had grown up with in those SF films. I was not disappointed. The plot is slight, but well done. The 50's were not a decade for whodunits. It's pretty obvious who the killer is before the guys even leave Asia. Faith is a beautiful woman, and rarely has she been prettier than here. A little more meat on the script would have made this a better remembered film. The story is straightforward, with little in the way of subtlety. This was the same studio that made Tarantula and The Deadly Mantis. Both of those films were better than this, yet they had the same cookie-cutter feel to them. I put it up to the need to have new films in the drive-ins every week. All the studios suffered from this by the late 50's, with originality going out the window. Overall, I would give it a 6 out of 10. Good, but it could have been better considering the talented cast they had.------------------------------------------------------------------- Since there is no way to add a Goof to this film, I'll put it here. WARNING: Spoiler ahead.In the scene where David Janssen is killed at the bowling alley, he walks by a wall calendar several times. It is the 5th of the month when he walks past it the first time. The next time he goes by it is the 6th of the month. The date changes twice more between the 5th and 6th as David goes about his business.

Six GIs, about to be send home and discharged, get drunk and sneak into a cult meeting in Asia. Surrounded by hooded figures, two male dancers pretend to have a fight. Behind them, on an altar, a woven basket opens and a figure painted emerges and begins imitating a snake, finally biting one of the dancers on the neck. The imitation snake is dressed in some scaley looking body tights. (This is definitely a female imitation snake.) The cult member who has sneaked them into the secret meeting has warned the six men repeatedly that the ceremonies must not be interrupted and, most definitely, no photos must be taken or else they will be hunted down and killed. Naturally, the GIs take a flash photo, send the cult members into an angry hysteria, steal the basket containing the "snake" and run off with it into the Asian night.One of the guys, the most offensive and snarky, dies from a cobra bite on the neck, though no one can explain how the snake got into his hospital room.Back in New York, it all seems rather old news as the discharged men settle down into their civilian lives, still maintaining their bond with one another. Their jobs range from manager of a bowling alley (David Janssen) to graduate research student (Richard Long). James Dobson, Jack Kelly, and Marshall Thompson are also part of the neighborhood. Richard Long has a nice blond girl friend. Kelly is a somewhat reckless womanizer. But they all get along well enough and all of them seem happy.Then a dark, shifty-looking, mysterious woman (Faith Domergue) shows up and Marshall Thompson takes a liking to her and insinuates her into the group.Guess what happens. First Janssen is terrified by a shadow in the back seat and dies in a car crash. Then Kelly gets a visit from Domergue. Something scares him so badly he tumbles through the window and dies in the fall to the sidewalk. Long and Dobson begin to suspect what the viewer already knows -- that Domergue has had something to do with the deaths. They also reckon that maybe she's turning into a cobra, which is the case. Dobson confronts her with his suspicions and she proves his point.By this time Long and Thompson are thoroughly frazzled, particularly Thompson, who is in love with Domergue and has discovered that she is attracted to him, too, although he must explain to her what "love" is. No matter. A final reckless attack by the cobra woman against Long's girl friend -- not one of the six original offenders -- and Thompson must throw the snake out the window. On the pavement below, the body changes to that of Domergue. The end.I think I'll skip over most of the questions that the plot raises. I'll just mention one of the more prosaic ones in passing. Who paid for Domergue's fare from somewhere in Asia to New York? Who's paying her utility bills in the hotel? Who paid for her spectacular wardrobe? How come she speaks American English so well? What the hell's going on? The writers and director have clearly seen some of Val Lewton's modest horror films and, though not much effort has gone into this production, they've unashamedly stolen some gimmicks from Lewton. In Lewton's "The Cat People", for instance, the woman is transformed into a black leopard but, with one tiny exception, the threat is always kept in the shadows and is all the more spooky for it. Most of the transformations here use shadows too, but unlike Lewton's, the shadows are clumsy and unambiguous.Lewton also made occasional use of what he called "buses". Lewton's first "bus" was a literal one. A potential victim is hurrying alone through the dark tunnels of Central Park with only the sound of footsteps. Something or someone is following her. She freezes with fright under a street lamp. Something rustles the branches of the shrubs above her. She looks upward. There is a loud, wheezing shriek that makes your hair stand on end. It's a bus using its air brakes to stop for her. The producers used at least two "buses" in this film and they amount to nothing. A guy is walking distractedly across an intersection, for instance, and there is the sudden rumble of a truck that almost hits him. There is no set up to the shot. It's jammed in with a shoe horn.I don't much care for movies that perpetuate the stereotype of serpents as slimy, ugly, venomous, and phallic. As a matter of fact, no snakes are slimy, most are harmless, and many are extraordinarily beautiful. Furthermore, they're more feminine than masculine in their sinuous movements and serpentine approach to goals. You want a reptilian symbol for masculinity? Try a six-lined racerunner. It's a really fast lizard. When it sees something to eat, it rushes up and gobbles it down.Anyway, if you want to see some fine, low-budget scary films, don't bother with this one. Find "The Cat People" or one of Lewton's other minor masterpieces, of which this is an obvious copy.

Cult of the Cobra is now available on DVD in a pristine print that does full justice to whatever merits it has as a movie. Unfortunately, that is not saying much.It has a competent cast of second-rankers that acquit themselves as well as could be expected under the circumstances. It is efficiently directed, entirely on sound stages and standing sets on the studio backlot. It looks OK, but is ponderously over-plotted and at a scant 80 minutes it is still heavily padded.For example, the double cobra attack on the first of the GIs was surely one attack too many.The business about Julia choosing to marry Pete rather than Tom never amounts to anything. Tom immediately falls in love with Lisa and she never has any reason to be jealous of Julia (nor is she).Julia's 'feminine intuition' is introduced as if it is going to lead to an important plot development, but it doesn't. Similarly, Pete's investigation into cobra cults and the suspicion that briefly falls on Tom serve no purpose other than to fill up screen time.These are just symptoms of the underlying problem. The movie is structured like a mystery but it isn't. As soon as the curse is pronounced we know exactly where the story is heading, so the characters are left painstakingly uncovering what we already know.The ending is particularly lame. Julia is menaced purely by accident. Lisa has no reason to want to kill her - she just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. When Tom turns up in the nick of time to save her, it is not even clear whether she was threatened at all. He then simply disposes of the cobra in the way any of the previous victims might have done.It is such an inconsequential little pipsqueak of a story that I found myself wondering how on earth it had been pitched to the studio heads. Then it occurred to me. Someone said: "Those Val Lewton movies were very successful over at RKO, so why don't we make one like that?"Cult of the Cobra is clearly modelled on Cat People: mysterious, troubled, shape-shifting woman falls in love with the hero, is apparently frigid, kills people, arouses the suspicions of the hero's woman friend and dies at the end. But 'modelled on' doesn't mean 'as good as' - by a wide margin. It copies, but doesn't understand what it is copying.It is obviously trying for the low-key, suggestive Lewton style, but this approach doesn't follow through into the story. Lisa is no Irene. She is meant to be strange and mysterious but there is no mystery about her. We get a glimpse of her after the first attack in Asia, so immediately recognise her when she turns up in New York. There is never any doubt about her purpose. Neither is there any ambiguity about whether of not she actually turns into a snake.Then again, during her nocturnal prowling we get, not one, but two attempts at 'buses'. Neither come off, because the director doesn't understand what makes a 'bus' work and, in any case, they happen to the stalker, not the person being stalked.These faint echoes of Cat People give Cult of the Cobra whatever small distinction it might have, but they only draw attention to the yawning gulf between the original and the imitation.Plagiarism may be the sincerest form of flattery, but I doubt if Lewton or Tourneur were particularly flattered when this tepid little time-passer came out.