Black Cobra (1976)

Black Cobra is directed by filth king Joe D'amato, edited by fellow trashmeister Bruno Mattei, stars gorgeous Asian sexpot Laura Gemser, and even features future Oscar winner Jack Palance in a key role, and yet despite this massive potential (particularly for deviancy), the film blows it by being thoroughly bland for most of its running time. With a story revolving around poisonous snakes, erotic dancing, and revenge, this could and should have been so much more sleazy.Naturally, the frequent full frontal nudity from Gemser prevented me from switching off in disgust (or rather, lack of disgust), but the soft-core action soon became rather tedious, with Gemser delivering loads of the self gratification and girl on girl action that we can always rely on, but nothing out of the ordinary (I find it hard to believe I'm saying this, but the copious bare flesh actually got boring).Admittedly, there are a couple of scenes that manage to register slightly on the sleazeometer—a rather amusing strip scene in a lesbian bar that gets the clientele frisky, and a live snake being chopped up and fried for lunch—but most of the action falls way short of what I have come to expect from my Italian trash. The biggest cop-out is the finale—Gemser's revenge on the man who killed her lover—that involves the insertion of a cobra up the jacksy, but which is satisfied to simply suggest the nastiness.Strangely, the film is also known as Emanuelle Goes Japanese, despite no character of that name going anywhere near Japan (Gemser's character is called Eva and the film is set entirely in Hong Kong).

This slithering pit of serpents tells the story of a beautiful young female snake dancer, Eva, who falls in with two wealthy brothers whilst working in Hong Kong. The older brother, Judas, is an amateur herpetologist with his own collection of deadly vipers, adders and mambas; the younger, Jules, carries with him some resentment at having to work running the family business for five more years before he can get his hands on his inheritance. Judas adds Eva to his collection, setting her up with her own room, car and bank account, but things get complicated when Jules starts using his brother's snakes for his own deadly purposes.This early (1976) D'Amato thriller throws his usual jaundiced glance at the predicament of a woman in a man's world and, like the previous year's Emanuelle e Françoise le sorelline, it shows a woman going to extreme lengths to revenge herself on the man who does her and her female companions wrong. In the previous film, Emanuelle had wrought revenge on the man whose abuse drove her sister to suicide; here, Eva seeks redress when one of Jules' victims is her female lover; the revenge is lurid and horrific, as Jules is tricked into going to a remote island whereby a cobra is inserted into his anus and left so that it has no option than to eat its way out (this is apparently an old custom of the Island Eva was born on, called "putting the devil into a man to set him free"!). Yet Eva's revenge does her little good, and she ends up rejected by Judas and committing suicide like a modern day Cleopatra.D'Amato's film shows him stepping onto the path which was eventually to lead him down the route from softcore to hardcore porn and he loses few opportunities to show his actresses in various states of undress and erotic clinch. But he also ensures that his women are treated sympathetically – Eva's relationship with her girlfriend is seen as a refuge from a male world which is exploitative, abusive and tainted by the idea of ownership and patronage. Eva is given a considerable back-story, which details her being left and orphan, taught by a guardian to dance with snakes and being prostituted to men when she was still in her teens. She chooses Judas' patronage in order to escape the poisonous relationship she is having with a jealous Chinese businessman. The irony is that for all her attempts to escape from the world of male power, she can only help her girlfriend by her own patronage (using the money Judas has given her) and her revenge on Jules does nothing to free her from the cycle of violence which is as involving and inescapable as Ouroboros, the famous serpent which swallows its tail. In some ways, the film is a twisted contemporary spin on Biblical myth, with the traitor Judas at the top of the patriarchal tree and the temptress Eve the struggling victim of male power.Eva Nera isn't a perfect film; there are major plot-holes and there's rather too much erotic filler. D'Amato's cinematography is nevertheless immaculate; Gemser and Palance give their usual turns, which will delight their admirers, and the Hong Kong locations are well used. It does add weight to the idea that D'Amato was using his exploitation film-making put on screen valid visions of a female against a world of power, corruption and dominance in which the cards are stacked against her and in which, if she turns into a snake to fight the snakes, she is caught in a deadly, venomous trap.

Black Cobra (1976) * 1/2 (out of 4) Joe D'Amato directed film about a shy, lonely man (Jack Palance) living in Hong Kong where his only friends are his pet snakes. One night his brother takes him to a strip joint where he sees a beautiful woman (Laura Gemser) putting on a dance with a snake. He moves the woman in but soon someone starts killing off her lesbian friends. The killer doesn't know the woman is a Goddess to snakes. Like many other D'Amato/Gemser films, this one here basically leaves the plot behind in favor of the beautiful actress walking around in the nude and carrying out various lesbian scenes. Gemser is also fun to watch (when she's naked) but the story here is pretty dull and lifeless. Palance must have really been down on his luck at the time.

I should have known better. I was actually expecting this film to be a combination of mystery, drama and horror. I knew from the box cover that there would be nudity. What I didn't know was that the nudity is the main feature of the movie. The movie has several nude women and many nude scenes. That would be OK if there was at least a stronger plot and a little bit more reason for making this movie other than showing skin. I know this type of film may have it's followers but even if viewed as a skin flick, it's boring and even a bit humorous. It was made in 1976. At that time it may have been exciting but compared to milder, soft porn movies of today, this would have to be classified as very mild, to the point of being almost dull. This movie was just too long for so few meaningful scenes. I can't think of any good reason for watching this film other than to have a nostalgic look at a 70s nudie flick.