Theme Song: Try to fuck with this theme song by Paolo Vasile titled, you guessed it, “The Day of the Cobra.”
Have you ever heard such a reggae-fied, middle-aged, Italian-ESL man absolutely rip out those vocals?
Oh, you haven’t had enough? Well how about, “The Day of The Cobra #2” (also by Paolo Vasile), which I assume we could abbreviate to “Cobra Shits” since the entirety of this song’s lyrics are about taking an extremely long and satisfying shit in the toilet.
Interesting Dated References: Italian cinema.
Best Line: See lyrics above in either song.
Social Context: I think these are probably the type of movies my grandpa would rent in the early ‘80s? All this crime/police/espionage/expat stuff seems catered to bored guys whose interests included World War II and foreign policy. Is this even a genre anymore?
Summary: US-based private eye Larry “The Cobra” Stanziani (Franco Nero, Keoma, Enter the Ninja, the original “Django”) gets sent to Italy (his home country) to investigate the death of an FBI agent.
Once there, people give him dirty looks, tell him how “things have changed,” and follow him around in shadows. But none of that fazes The Cobra as his main goal seems to be finding his grade-school aged son at various locations throughout the day, picking him up, and endlessly spinning him around in circles!
This seriously happens like 5 times in the span of this 95-minute film. I’ve had a father my entire life as well as several other close relationships with older males and I’ve never been hoisted in embrace and spun around! I’m open to the idea, too!
Then The Cobra decides to get vengeance for some things that happened a long time ago, and falls in love with Brenda (Sybil Danning, Battle Beyond the Stars, Chained Heat), who lives in an awesome split-level apartment that is so awesome-looking it’s almost worth tracking down the Blu-ray remaster of this movie to check it out in detail.
After a bunch of dimly-lit chasing and impossible-to-decipher night fights, The Cobra and Brenda decide to run away to the U.S. with his son. But before that can happen, the son is hit by a car and killed while some thugs were trying to kidnap him. Just in case you didn’t understand how much The Cobra loved spinning his son around in circles, we’re treated to a full montage of each moment.
Then some guys chase some other guys and eventually Brenda is shot, but The Cobra is able to save her and kill still some other guys, which seems to totally satisfy him and instantly results in forgetting about his dead son.
Worth Mentioning:
– Directed by veteran Italian filmmaker Enzo Castellari who specialized in Poliziotteschi films in the ‘70s. In addition to those, he directed The Inglorious Bastards, Jaws knock-offs, such as The Shark Hunter and Great White, the dystopian greats 1990: The Bronx Warriors and it’s sequel Escape From The Bronx, as well as Warriors of The Wasteland. This guy seriously had a good run in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s.
– Michele Soavi has an uncredited role as “Leo Kandinsky.”
Poster and Box Art: There are about twenty different foreign posters for this movie that all feature slight variations on this same image from the U.S. Media Home Video Betamax release:
It infers something espionage-related will be going on. The characters’ facial renderings look accurate and the proportions look good. Overall no complaints, but that doesn’t change my opinion of the movie.
Availability: As mentioned above, this is available on Blu-ray and DVD even though nobody seems to really be all that interested in the film.