To start off with a little bit of good news... "King Cobra" is definitely better than all its fellow, recent creature-features handling about ridiculously big snakes, like "Python", "New Alcatraz" (a.k.a "Boa") and even the box-office hit "Anaconda". The special effects and the animatronic snake look really good here and the Hillenbrand brothers have at least have some directing skills. Still, all this can't hide the fact that "King Cobra" is an overall lame flick and, moreover, as unoriginal as humanly possible. As usual, the story opens with obnoxious scientists performing experiments for no particular reason with the world's most dangerous species of snakes. The laboratory goes boom and a humongous cobra escapes towards a little redneck-town where it starts to have the locals for lunch. Remarkble, however, is that this seems to take place only two years after the lab-explosion. Supposedly the 40 foot long snake just hijacked around unnoticed for that whole period... Many people turn up dead and their corpses filled with venom in the beer town of Fillmore but, in the good tradition of Spielberg's "Jaws", the local authorities initially refuse to accept the problem, as this would result in an economic disaster.
Granted, some sequences surely have tension and an effective build-up, but there never are real surprises or shocking moments. The Hillenbrand brothers also sometimes attempt to bring more depth into their script but this never properly leads anywhere. There's the bizarre sequence, for example, where professional the snake-hunter (Pat Morita) prevents someone else from killing the snake when he has the chance. Does he insist on killing it himself? Does he wish to keep it alive? Does it have to be killed using a special method? I do admit the dumb bunch of hunters made me chuckle and I stupidly loved the unsubtle Jaws-reference ("We're gonna need bigger guns..."). "King Cobra" is a generally incoherent film with more plot-holes than a teabag and unfortunately only a couple of good moments. Creature-Features are a terrific sub-genre in horror, but giant-snake films rarely ever work...except for the 1982 "Venom", maybe...
Granted, some sequences surely have tension and an effective build-up, but there never are real surprises or shocking moments. The Hillenbrand brothers also sometimes attempt to bring more depth into their script but this never properly leads anywhere. There's the bizarre sequence, for example, where professional the snake-hunter (Pat Morita) prevents someone else from killing the snake when he has the chance. Does he insist on killing it himself? Does he wish to keep it alive? Does it have to be killed using a special method? I do admit the dumb bunch of hunters made me chuckle and I stupidly loved the unsubtle Jaws-reference ("We're gonna need bigger guns..."). "King Cobra" is a generally incoherent film with more plot-holes than a teabag and unfortunately only a couple of good moments. Creature-Features are a terrific sub-genre in horror, but giant-snake films rarely ever work...except for the 1982 "Venom", maybe...