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Guess what, Frot fans, it’s time for your monthly Frotcast Live Riff! That’s when we get together with some pals and riff over a silly and/or awesome movie. This month’s title is Cobra, as suggested to us by longtime commenter The Mighty Feklhr, which we riff on with the help of Good Mythical Morning star Emily Fleming and Matt Lieb associate Daniel Jarvis.
Released in 1986, Cobra is just about the only action movie I can think of that begins with a factoid about rapes. That there are 250 rapes a day in America is apparently important context! In any case, this is a movie about a tough-as-nails vigilante cop who wears extremely tight pants and was such a badass that his car had a vanity plate that said “AWSOM” on it (oddly enough, Cobra did not drive a Cobra).
No, Cobra was Marion Cobretti, played by Sylvester Stallone, in a film also written by Stallone, which, according to some completely unsourced information I found on Wikipedia, began its life as Beverly Hills Cop until Stallone took out all the funny parts and turned it into… whatever the hell Cobra is. A hyper-violent rape-revenge fantasy about a gang of axe murderers?
One fun thing to do when you’re watching Cobra is to try to figure out what the bad guys’ evil plan was supposed to be. They seem to be some kind of renegade troupe from Stomp. It’s unclear what they actually want, other than to rape random women in a confusingly organized fashion (then again, maybe I need to watch it again without people shouting over it). Stallone reportedly demanded the film be cut down to less than 90 minutes so that when it went up against Top Gun at the box office Cobra could have one extra showing per day. Which didn’t exactly work out, box office-wise, but did create a delightfully inexplicable movie. Anyway, enjoy.
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