For big stars, of course, you can't go any higher than Rudolph Valentino. I've already detailed The Eagle (1925) earlier in this resource. Alpha have now issued an excellent value DVD of this title - a very good print with a fine music score by Don Kinnier. Also scored by Kinnier and also recommended for print quality is Alpha's edition of Valentino's Cobra (1925). This one co-stars the ravishing Nita Naldi (exquisitely costumed by Adrian) and the rather dull Gertrude Olmstead and even less personable Casson Ferguson. And to add to a viewer's woes, it's listlessly directed by Joseph Henabery, an exponent of the steady-as-she-goes, don't-do-anything-exciting school of film-making. Naturally, with Henabery at the wheel, the big action scene occurs off-camera. And speaking of the camera, I don't think it moves once during the entire movie. Whereas Clarence Brown sets out to dazzle the audience in "The Eagle", Henabery's evident aim is to send us to sleep. If it were not for Nita Naldi, he would have succeeded. True, Rudy's charisma manages to surmount the director's super-slow pacing until Naldi rescues the movie. But once she exits, our interest dies.

While Valentino is good and the parts where he satirizes his public image as a great lover are priceless, it isn't hard to see why Cobra (1925) flopped at the box office when it was first released. The story is creaky (even by 1925 standards) and the one-dimensional characters are not interesting. As a result, you find yourself uninvolved in all of their troubles and heartache. The production is stage-bound. The direction is unimaginative. Sometimes the film feels like a product of the mid-1910s rather than one made at the height of the Roaring Twenties.Only Valentino or Nita Naldi completion-ists will be interested in this mediocre film.

The 1925 COBRA was among Valentino's last films--and it tends to divide the star's fans, who either rejoice at his appearance in a realistic drama or yearn for something that rivals his earlier, often outrageous seductive melodramas.The story concerns Count Rodrigo Torriani (Valentino), an impoverished Italian nobleman with a penchant for torrid affairs that lead to endless and often monetary difficulties. Largely in order to escape such difficulties, Rodrigo agrees to work for American antiques dealer Jack Dorning (Casson Ferguson)--only to find himself little better off in New York, where he wavers between office secretary Mary Drake (Gertrude Olmstead) and Jack's femme fatale wife Elise (Nita Naldi.) In a stylistic sense, COBRA shows what Valentino could do as an actor when he was not encumbered by the usual "great seducer" scripts pressed upon him--and he acquits himself very well. The supporting cast, most particularly Naldi, is also excellent. But there is no two ways about it: COBRA is so low-key that it feels excessively slow as it moves toward its none-too-surprising conclusion.The film itself is beautiful to the eye. Valentino is very close to the height of his physical appeal and Naldi is stunningly beautiful in a series of Adrian-designed gowns; the art direction by William Cameron Menzies is excellent, and the cinematography by Fischbeck and Jennings has a velvety quality that is quite fine. Even so, and with a running time of just over an hour, COBRA feels excessively languid in tone. The DVD offers a handsome transfer and good music score, but little else. Recommended--but primarily for hardcore Valentino fans.GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Rudy is very good, especially in the comedic parts. The story isn't much, and it would have helped if either of his leading ladies had been Vilma Banky (the less said about the desiccated-looking Gertrude Olmstead the better). But Nita Naldi's appeal is at least more apparent here than in "Blood and Sand," and her clothes, by Adrian, do a lot for her. What's more, though she's a bad girl, she's a believable one. The film should be seen for Rudy's charm, for William Cameron Menzies' very, very effective production design, and for the fact that the DVD is made from an absolutely gorgeous, velvety, pristine, 35 mm print. It looks better than any other DVD I'm aware of with Valentino. A hotel fire, which we learn about from a newspaper, should have been portrayed. It's really an obligatory scene, and the movie is rather naked without it. It might have put the picture in the hit category, had it been done well.