Night of the Cobra Woman (1972) * (out of 4) Really bad Filipino horror movie starts off during WWII when a nurse (Marlene Clark) walks into a cave and is bitten by a special snake, which makes her live forever as long as she has its venom. Flash forward several decades and the nurse has her snake killed by a studying student (Joy Bang), which means she now needs sex to live. NIGHT OF THE COBRA WOMAN is a really, really bad movie that has a few moments that are so bad that they at least keep you mildly entertained. I'm not sure where to start on this sucker because pretty much everything here is bad. I guess the lack of a screenplay could be the biggest issue because scenes just seem to happen out of nowhere and deal with things that really aren't necessary to anything else in the movie. The movie never makes a lick of sense and it appears that the producers were just making things up as they went along. Even worse is that the special effects are going to be some of the worse you've ever witnessed but these here do get some of the biggest laughs in the picture. Just check out the transformation scenes of the woman turning into the "cobra" and have yourself a good laugh. As far as the acting goes, it's clear that most people were never trained and if you check their credits it appears most never appeared in another movie. The best thing about lead actress Joy Bang is her name. Mrs. Bang would appear in a few notable films including PLAY IT Again, SAM but this here was certainly one of her only lead roles. Clark, who appeared in a few cult movies including SWITCHBLADE SISTERS, has several nude scenes, which certainly adds some appeal. The supporting cast members are all equally bad and forgettable. The film does offer up some cheap sex scenes and nudity, which might help keep some awake but there's really no defending a movie like this. It's beyond cheap and so poorly produced that you have to wonder what the entire point was.

Joy Bang plays a brilliant scientist (hold on a second--I have to stop laughing hysterically) who is in the Philipines doing research on snakes. Her dorky boyfriend comes to visit, for some reason bringing his pet falcon with him. He goes exploring in the jungle and his falcon ends up killing a snake--bad news since this was the sacred snake of a Filipino snake cult led by an African-American woman (Marlene Clark) who has been using snake venom to keep herself young ever since she was accidentally bitten by a snake while serving as a nurse during World War III. Problem is all this snake venom apparently causes her to turn into a snake (at least, I think--they kept this particular transformation offscreen, possibly as a homage to the original "Cat People", but more likely because this is a cheap-ass Filipino production). But speaking of asses, it is left up to the owner one of the nicest ones of the early 70's (Bang) to save the day after her boyfriend is seduced into some interracial ((and perhaps inter-special) lovin' by the evil cobra women.Actually as Filipino productions go this isn't that bad. It has the same scruffy charm as the John Ashley/Eddie Romero "Blood Island" series and between Clark and Bang it almost approaches the T and A level of the Roger Corman/Jack Hill WIP films. It also seems to directed with a considerable amount of intelligence by someone who was clearly in on the joke (although being in on the joke is vastly overrated in my opinion). The acting is a little weak. Bang is a little miscast and not nearly as good as leading lady as she is as a character actor, and Marlene Clark is no Pam Grier (who really should have played this role). The interest of either of these women in the dipstick leading man is REALLY beyond me though.Not great, but Filipino horror/exploitation fans at least will certainly want to check it out.

Filipino fright flicks don't get much stranger than this singularly messed-up no-budget curio which treats its hilariously absurd story with an endearingly misguided conviction that proves to be as utterly engaging as it is weirdly engrossing. Granted, we're not talking unsung overlooked classic here, but this honey's peculiar enough to warrant a viewing.The ever-adorable blonde sprite Joy Bang (who had sizable co-starring roles in the lowdown funky early 70's drug deal items "Cisco Pike" and "Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues") is a perky, kooky, constant delight as Joanna, an eager beaver college biology student who treks off into the Filipino jungle to research rare breeds of snakes. Joanna brings her scrawny, charmless drip boyfriend Stan Duff (woodenly played by insipid string-bean Roger Garrett) along to keep her company. Unfortunately, Stan falls under the lethal and alluring spell of Lena (the busty, beautiful, frequently nude Marlene Clark of "Slaughter" and "Switchblade Sisters"), a sexy, slinky, slithery black snake goddess who has to regularly make love to a huge volume of dudes in order to retain eternal youth! Naturally, said guys wind up prematurely aging after they've enjoyed a night of carnal bliss with Lena. It's up to Joanna to find an effective anecdote to Lena's deadly venom before Stan meets a most horrid fate.If one can get past the admittedly asinine story, Nonong Rasca's crude cinematography, the jarringly choppy and abrupt editing, Restie Ulami's sleep-inducing score, the mostly flat acting, a deadeningly slow pace and lots of banal dialogue ("Doctor, I've really hit the jackpot with this venom"), "Night of the Cobra Woman" makes for an enjoyably quirky piece of high camp horror dreck. Chief among its strongest assets are the commendably straight-faced mood that treats the whole ridiculous story with utmost seriousness, plenty of choice nutty moments (after having sex with a guy a freshly rejuvenated Lena peels off her old skin and stuffs it in her purse!), Marlene Clark's sexy, often undraped, roll-your-tongue-up-from-off-the-floor smoking hot beauty, and, best of all, an oddly moving performance by invaluable trash movie treasure Vic Diaz as a pathetic, deformed, imbecilic mute retard victim of the irresistibly vampy villainess Luna (Vic also briefly appears as a Japanese soldier at the start of the film). It's a genuine pity that director and co-screenwriter Andrew Meyer, an eccentric talent who started out doing experimental underground features for Andy Warhol and died in 1987, next wound up directing the cheesy Lorne Greene insert sequences for "Tidal Wave," which was Roger Corman's terrible, truncated travesty of the epic Japanese disaster stunner "The Submersion of Japan."

During World-War II, a nurse is bitten by a cobra in a cave. She survives, and is blessed with eternal life, beauty, and a highly lethal sexual prowess. She cohabitates in the cave with the cobra(which she has named "Movini"), and utilizes its powerful venom for all sorts of surprising practicalities...as a healing agent, fertilizer, nail polish remover, etc.Flash to modern times(1972)...pretty, young Joy Bang(fetching ingénue of many films of this type during the 70s)is a UNICEF researcher working to develop antivenoms. She hears about the reclusive snake-lady, and naturally goes snooping around her cave. Things heat up when Ms. Bang's pet eagle(!) kills Movini, and her boyfriend becomes the serpentine seductress's new "boy toy"...all hell proceeds to break loose in a rather insouciant and formulaic fashion. The theatrical poster's image and tagline deceitfully suggested this film to be about a woman in lustful, taboo concupiscence with a large snake. It's not. What it *is*, however, is a sufficiently entertaining low-budgeter which might register as slightly above average due to able performances and higher-than-usual production values for a quickie flick of its particular feather. Despite these minuscule endowments, however, NIGHT OF THE COBRA WOMAN remains a very modest production and a far-from-crucial viewing experience.5/10