Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
And not even at the right angle.
Project Ludovico
- Thread starter Athene
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- athenemas film media movie review
Athene
Rise for the Shadow Queen
- Location
- Dream of The 90s
- Pronouns
- She/Her
There's more Breen a-coming, (nothing can stop the Breen), I just started a new job that has me coming in super early (I have to wake up at 345 and I am an insomniac...), and so I'm taking a rest here because I was exhausted but there will be more Breen! How could there not be?
Athene
Rise for the Shadow Queen
- Location
- Dream of The 90s
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'm just so tired. I've been struggling to write this review for a while, but my new work schedule makes it hard. When you get 4 hours of sleep then spend all day at work, your writing get up and go stumbles. Especially when working on something so out there as Pass Thru. Its hard to keep going and produce something you're proud of. I keep sitting down to write this but I'm so tired I get distracted or have writers block. Its an awful hill to climb but I'm going to keep trying. I've been trying almost every day. I need to keep trying. I am so sorry to everyone. I'm going to get stuff out.
- Location
- Singapore
Please don't beat yourself up over it. That's always been the way of hobby projects when there's work to be done. Keeping body and soul together is more important anyway, so look after your own well-being first, then your work, and whenever there's something left over, well, you can share that with this thread.
Athene
Rise for the Shadow Queen
- Location
- Dream of The 90s
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The genesis of the movie Cobra is that Stallone was cast in Beverly Hills Cop and decided to remove all the comedy from the script. When that was rejected he made his own cop movie, with hookers and blow and you know what forget the movie.
And yet it is by far the funnier movie. It is in fact, probably one of my favorite bad movies to riff on with people and I was shocked to find out that I never actually wrote about it. I always assumed I had, because I'll discuss its crazy shit at the drop of a hat, its that fun and stupid.
Cobra is like a buddy cop version of Springtime for Hitler. That is to say, its sympathies lie with fascism but its too incompetent to be taken seriously.
I mean, the first thing that happens is a guy walking into a supermarket and shooting the place up. Now, I'm going to stop you right there because you heard "He walked in and started shooting everyone". What I said was "He walked into a supermarket and started shooting the place up". His first victim is the watermelon display. Other fruits follow. Then other produce and finally canned and dry goods. Somewhere an assistant manager is looking at all that lost stock and quietly whispering in the theater "No, please no."
Never Forget the brand name goods lost this day.
Oh yeah, and he eventually shoots a dude after the police besiege the store. With their dozens of heavily armed officers and SWAT teams on call, the LAPD are helpless against a sweaty dude on Meth. Especially since he's a member of a Jazzercise Axe Cult. They like to bang axes together in the middle of the night together to 80s soft rock and commit bloody mayhem. It really burns the calories.
Just like Meth.
But with them unable to handle a guy who commits such wanton meth fueled violence against cans, they need The Cobra. Officer Garak From DS9 disapproves. He's the weenie that worries about civil rights and ending things without further death. Cobra isn't about that, no no. He's a guy that throws a knife into a guys heart and then tells him to freeze. In that thirtieth of a second, that guy had the chance to surrender and he didn't take it, so Cobra is forced to gun him down. He warned him! Cobra gave the guy a speech about how he's a disease and Cobra is the cure. He's a gangrenous limb and Cobra is a drunk man with a saw. He's a blood clot and Cobra is a leech. He's the syphilis and Cobra is the mercury injected into a urethra. He's an strawman of a violent crime problem and Cobra is a populist appeal to violence instead of justice.
Could that guy have gunned down his hostages while Cobra was taunting and mocking him? Sure, but that just wouldn't be cricket. You have to fire wildly at the hero as he delivers cool dialogue and drinks warm coors light from a store display. No psycho ever actually turns and starts killing his hostages! Especially not ones that brag about how they're the hunters, a new world order that will feed upon the weak. They are above board the whole way.
The villain dispatched, he leaves the scene and is accosted by some pussy reporter asking such wuss questions as "Did this have to end in violence? Did you respect his rights?". If there's one thing we know about the LAPD during the late 80s, its that they absolutely respect civil rights. There's no real reason the question should be asked. Cobra of course flips out and shoves the guy into the corpse of the kid, asking about that poor kids rights and if he's going to tell the parents we should respect the psychos rights.
Rule of law, schmule of law. COBRA GETS RESULTS DAMN IT.
Except, well, he doesn't. Remember how this guy was part of an axe wielding social club? A bunch of weird dudes in a death cult with murky motivations and beliefs? The villains of the entire movie? Yeah, he never comes up again. Not once. Instead of actually linking that scene with anything else in the movie, its quickly ignored. Cobra actually has zero crime solving ability and leads just fall violently into his lap. Sure he ignores most of them, but enough stick!
We get the other scene that establishes the other side of Cobra: The completely ridiculous side. He lives in a Pepsi sign on Venice Beach. He rams a dudes car because he didn't leave enough space for him, then assaults the guy when he is unbelievably upset at this. Cowboy Cops don't exchange insurance information, THEY GET RESULTS. Oh yeah, and he keeps his newspaper in a charcoal grill. The contents of his fridge are a carton of eggs and a box with a single slice of pizza. The carton of eggs is a gun cleaning kit. The slice of pizza he cuts in half with shears. Not length wise, he cuts it in half horizontally. Like a fucking mad man.
In 20 years, I have yet to figure out why the fuck this happens.
He gets information about the Night Stalker murders from the TV. They're a series of totally random murders. Axe Cult Dudes are responsible, as we see when it cuts to a random woman being murdered. She's a typical murder victim, in that she gets in her car and nervously flings the keys away from her like they were kryptonite. She tries again but is unable to figure out what strange magicks power these horseless carriages. Not knowing how a car worked was the third leading cause of death in the 80s, with the next two being "Aquanet" and "Reaganomics". So many people could have simply driven away instead of locking the doors and screaming, so many lives lost.
Cobra insists its not a single killer but an army doing these killings. He's basing this on taking a peek ahead in the script while everyone was on a Union Fifteen and is of course correct. He has nothing to actually back it up of course because he has the investigative abilities of a dog barking at the intruder in a mirror, and is pissed off that nobody is taking him seriously. They walk out of the captains office straight into a shooting range. Now you saw that sentence and read it as them heading to it immediately. What I said was they went straight to the shooting range set up in the office across the hall and begin doing some target practice in a glass cube in the middle of an office building.
If you are of the type that actually goes to indoor gun ranges, you might have taken a look at the area beyond the firing line, at the walls and ceiling.
"Boy there's a lot of bullet holes" you might think. Maybe there is, much like one I went to, a water leak at the end of the range because a particularly poor shot ricocheted off the floor and up into a pipe. You might perhaps have seen, in the first actual correct usage of the term in the Fiction Debates forum, a bullet trap at the end of the range. These stop bullets. They are of course, an over-regulated frivolity. Real men shoot in glass cubes that aren't even sound proof. What is it even like next to this thing? It can't be soundproof, so imagine having the next office over. You're trying to comfort a spooked shooting victim and a forty five is hammering away next door. Occasionally a round or two comes careening through the room. The copy machine keeps getting shot two days before retirement.
This is 20 seconds of this god damn movie, its MADNESS. Its not like the people making it are awful either, its put together with a decent level of competence. Cosmatos gave us First Blood Part 2 and Tombstone. Stallone isn't slow, he's the third person ever nominated for both a writing and acting Oscar for a film, after Charlie Goddamn Chaplin and Orson Fucking Welles. His writing may be uneven but he's actually written a number of great movies. No, the basic problem of this movie is every instinct it has is off, like a master typist who's just off the home row. If they were centered, they would be typing with perfect accuracy, but they're just putting out a constant stream of gibberish.
When you've seen enough movies, you can guess what's throwing them off: Menahem Golan. Plus, as the movie goes on, Stallone seems to give less of a shit and just starts improving with random shit he sees. Have I mentioned we're only twenty minutes in?
The next victim of the Axe Gang/Night Stalkers, is a woman who has managed to get her horseless carriage in motion and seems to understand its workings. When a windowless van randomly rams into the back of her at three AM in the skeeviest part of town and a bunch of dudes who look like roided up cavemen hop out, she thinks nothing of it. Sure there's been a string of brutal murders, but why would that put anyone on edge? She alas, is easily led to slaughter when she forgets that the one on the right makes the car go after they start knocking on the windows with axes.
But! The actual heroine of the movie is driving along and gets a good look at the Night Stalker. She drives off in terror after he tries to shoot blood out of his eyes by staring really hard at her before remembering he's not a lizard. Acting subtle is not in Skully McCromags repertoire. She escapes, but they get her license plate. One of the gang, named I shit you not Nancy Stalk, is a cop though, and they get all her vital information. Meanwhile on top of a parking structure, Cobra and his partner-Oh yeah, he has a partner. They're part of the Zombie Squad. No, they never explain it. It doesn't matter. They're some combination of ACTION and graveyard shift. They don't seem to do much. Anyway, he and his partner get told to shake down every scumbag and "sicko" in the city.
Every "sicko" in the city being:
Some homeless people
Some sex workers including a few transwomen
A tattoo shop
Dudes eating at a seafood restaurant.
What a collection of scum and villainy. Its a good thing we have the ZOMBIE SQUAD.
Meanwhile, the female lead Ingrid is doing a 'sexy' photo shoot with 50s robots as the Axe Gang does Axe Calisthenics and drives around in a beat up van. While sweating meth out of every pore of course. Oh and this is all a music video inside the movie.
Oh and we're only twenty-five minutes in. Just in time for the Axe Gang to attack just as Ingrid is being sexually harassed and pressured into sex by her skeevy boss! Ingrid is the only victim in the movie to possess self preservation and manages to bail as the Skeezelord is axed to death and a security guard is run over by the Meth Van. At the hospital, Cobra manages to slowly connect some dots and realize that she's a witness to one of the Night Stalker murders. Her expert testimony and eyewitness description are so critical, they will stop at nothing to kill her from here on.
"All right men, we're looking for Superfriends Solomon Grundy. He was born on a Monday but I want this son of a bitch in the ground by Sunday."
I can't stress enough, that everything that follows is because she can put together an incredibly vague description of the guy. The death toll in the attempt to kill her is insane. We're only a third of the way into this wild ride. I Oh you best believe that I'm coming back to this tomorrow. It gets crazier from here, we're on the verge of an infiltration mission. Metal Gear Grundy, tactical caveman action.
And yet it is by far the funnier movie. It is in fact, probably one of my favorite bad movies to riff on with people and I was shocked to find out that I never actually wrote about it. I always assumed I had, because I'll discuss its crazy shit at the drop of a hat, its that fun and stupid.
Cobra is like a buddy cop version of Springtime for Hitler. That is to say, its sympathies lie with fascism but its too incompetent to be taken seriously.
I mean, the first thing that happens is a guy walking into a supermarket and shooting the place up. Now, I'm going to stop you right there because you heard "He walked in and started shooting everyone". What I said was "He walked into a supermarket and started shooting the place up". His first victim is the watermelon display. Other fruits follow. Then other produce and finally canned and dry goods. Somewhere an assistant manager is looking at all that lost stock and quietly whispering in the theater "No, please no."
Never Forget the brand name goods lost this day.
Oh yeah, and he eventually shoots a dude after the police besiege the store. With their dozens of heavily armed officers and SWAT teams on call, the LAPD are helpless against a sweaty dude on Meth. Especially since he's a member of a Jazzercise Axe Cult. They like to bang axes together in the middle of the night together to 80s soft rock and commit bloody mayhem. It really burns the calories.
Just like Meth.
But with them unable to handle a guy who commits such wanton meth fueled violence against cans, they need The Cobra. Officer Garak From DS9 disapproves. He's the weenie that worries about civil rights and ending things without further death. Cobra isn't about that, no no. He's a guy that throws a knife into a guys heart and then tells him to freeze. In that thirtieth of a second, that guy had the chance to surrender and he didn't take it, so Cobra is forced to gun him down. He warned him! Cobra gave the guy a speech about how he's a disease and Cobra is the cure. He's a gangrenous limb and Cobra is a drunk man with a saw. He's a blood clot and Cobra is a leech. He's the syphilis and Cobra is the mercury injected into a urethra. He's an strawman of a violent crime problem and Cobra is a populist appeal to violence instead of justice.
Could that guy have gunned down his hostages while Cobra was taunting and mocking him? Sure, but that just wouldn't be cricket. You have to fire wildly at the hero as he delivers cool dialogue and drinks warm coors light from a store display. No psycho ever actually turns and starts killing his hostages! Especially not ones that brag about how they're the hunters, a new world order that will feed upon the weak. They are above board the whole way.
The villain dispatched, he leaves the scene and is accosted by some pussy reporter asking such wuss questions as "Did this have to end in violence? Did you respect his rights?". If there's one thing we know about the LAPD during the late 80s, its that they absolutely respect civil rights. There's no real reason the question should be asked. Cobra of course flips out and shoves the guy into the corpse of the kid, asking about that poor kids rights and if he's going to tell the parents we should respect the psychos rights.
Rule of law, schmule of law. COBRA GETS RESULTS DAMN IT.
Except, well, he doesn't. Remember how this guy was part of an axe wielding social club? A bunch of weird dudes in a death cult with murky motivations and beliefs? The villains of the entire movie? Yeah, he never comes up again. Not once. Instead of actually linking that scene with anything else in the movie, its quickly ignored. Cobra actually has zero crime solving ability and leads just fall violently into his lap. Sure he ignores most of them, but enough stick!
We get the other scene that establishes the other side of Cobra: The completely ridiculous side. He lives in a Pepsi sign on Venice Beach. He rams a dudes car because he didn't leave enough space for him, then assaults the guy when he is unbelievably upset at this. Cowboy Cops don't exchange insurance information, THEY GET RESULTS. Oh yeah, and he keeps his newspaper in a charcoal grill. The contents of his fridge are a carton of eggs and a box with a single slice of pizza. The carton of eggs is a gun cleaning kit. The slice of pizza he cuts in half with shears. Not length wise, he cuts it in half horizontally. Like a fucking mad man.
In 20 years, I have yet to figure out why the fuck this happens.
He gets information about the Night Stalker murders from the TV. They're a series of totally random murders. Axe Cult Dudes are responsible, as we see when it cuts to a random woman being murdered. She's a typical murder victim, in that she gets in her car and nervously flings the keys away from her like they were kryptonite. She tries again but is unable to figure out what strange magicks power these horseless carriages. Not knowing how a car worked was the third leading cause of death in the 80s, with the next two being "Aquanet" and "Reaganomics". So many people could have simply driven away instead of locking the doors and screaming, so many lives lost.
Cobra insists its not a single killer but an army doing these killings. He's basing this on taking a peek ahead in the script while everyone was on a Union Fifteen and is of course correct. He has nothing to actually back it up of course because he has the investigative abilities of a dog barking at the intruder in a mirror, and is pissed off that nobody is taking him seriously. They walk out of the captains office straight into a shooting range. Now you saw that sentence and read it as them heading to it immediately. What I said was they went straight to the shooting range set up in the office across the hall and begin doing some target practice in a glass cube in the middle of an office building.
If you are of the type that actually goes to indoor gun ranges, you might have taken a look at the area beyond the firing line, at the walls and ceiling.
"Boy there's a lot of bullet holes" you might think. Maybe there is, much like one I went to, a water leak at the end of the range because a particularly poor shot ricocheted off the floor and up into a pipe. You might perhaps have seen, in the first actual correct usage of the term in the Fiction Debates forum, a bullet trap at the end of the range. These stop bullets. They are of course, an over-regulated frivolity. Real men shoot in glass cubes that aren't even sound proof. What is it even like next to this thing? It can't be soundproof, so imagine having the next office over. You're trying to comfort a spooked shooting victim and a forty five is hammering away next door. Occasionally a round or two comes careening through the room. The copy machine keeps getting shot two days before retirement.
This is 20 seconds of this god damn movie, its MADNESS. Its not like the people making it are awful either, its put together with a decent level of competence. Cosmatos gave us First Blood Part 2 and Tombstone. Stallone isn't slow, he's the third person ever nominated for both a writing and acting Oscar for a film, after Charlie Goddamn Chaplin and Orson Fucking Welles. His writing may be uneven but he's actually written a number of great movies. No, the basic problem of this movie is every instinct it has is off, like a master typist who's just off the home row. If they were centered, they would be typing with perfect accuracy, but they're just putting out a constant stream of gibberish.
When you've seen enough movies, you can guess what's throwing them off: Menahem Golan. Plus, as the movie goes on, Stallone seems to give less of a shit and just starts improving with random shit he sees. Have I mentioned we're only twenty minutes in?
The next victim of the Axe Gang/Night Stalkers, is a woman who has managed to get her horseless carriage in motion and seems to understand its workings. When a windowless van randomly rams into the back of her at three AM in the skeeviest part of town and a bunch of dudes who look like roided up cavemen hop out, she thinks nothing of it. Sure there's been a string of brutal murders, but why would that put anyone on edge? She alas, is easily led to slaughter when she forgets that the one on the right makes the car go after they start knocking on the windows with axes.
But! The actual heroine of the movie is driving along and gets a good look at the Night Stalker. She drives off in terror after he tries to shoot blood out of his eyes by staring really hard at her before remembering he's not a lizard. Acting subtle is not in Skully McCromags repertoire. She escapes, but they get her license plate. One of the gang, named I shit you not Nancy Stalk, is a cop though, and they get all her vital information. Meanwhile on top of a parking structure, Cobra and his partner-Oh yeah, he has a partner. They're part of the Zombie Squad. No, they never explain it. It doesn't matter. They're some combination of ACTION and graveyard shift. They don't seem to do much. Anyway, he and his partner get told to shake down every scumbag and "sicko" in the city.
Every "sicko" in the city being:
Some homeless people
Some sex workers including a few transwomen
A tattoo shop
Dudes eating at a seafood restaurant.
What a collection of scum and villainy. Its a good thing we have the ZOMBIE SQUAD.
Meanwhile, the female lead Ingrid is doing a 'sexy' photo shoot with 50s robots as the Axe Gang does Axe Calisthenics and drives around in a beat up van. While sweating meth out of every pore of course. Oh and this is all a music video inside the movie.
Oh and we're only twenty-five minutes in. Just in time for the Axe Gang to attack just as Ingrid is being sexually harassed and pressured into sex by her skeevy boss! Ingrid is the only victim in the movie to possess self preservation and manages to bail as the Skeezelord is axed to death and a security guard is run over by the Meth Van. At the hospital, Cobra manages to slowly connect some dots and realize that she's a witness to one of the Night Stalker murders. Her expert testimony and eyewitness description are so critical, they will stop at nothing to kill her from here on.
"All right men, we're looking for Superfriends Solomon Grundy. He was born on a Monday but I want this son of a bitch in the ground by Sunday."
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ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
... I'm sorry what?
FourthWall
Love & Destroy
- Location
- Chiraq
This movie sounds like one of those 80s anime OVAs, but with real people.
In fact, I half-think one of the Mad Bull 34 episodes basically was this movie.
In fact, I half-think one of the Mad Bull 34 episodes basically was this movie.
I legitimately thought this was some sort of riff on manliness in cinema until I saw photo evidence
Teen Spirit
Lost in Ever After
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah this is pretty much Mad Bull mixed with Gerald Butler's role in this trailer.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
See, I've actually heard of Cobra, mostly because the Night Stalkers Axe Cult is so fucking amazingly insane.
It was interesting to slowly realize that you weren't joking and this is probably literally what happens and then to watch the scene and see that yep that sure is literally what happens.
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- Location
- in the trash
We've Breen deceived! Where has the Breen Breen? We've Breen waiting for weeks!
(It's okay, take your time)
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Don't blame me, this was way before I was born!
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Um.
Well okay then.
Well okay then.
Here. Right here is where I lost it.
Oh cripes I recognise that knife, there was a Cracked article about that knife. The worst part is they made replicas of it so that you too can wield Pinhead's favourite sex toy.
hold up what
teslashark
One of the brother site’s janitors
- Location
- Somewhere
Mad Bull 34 AND Crying Freeman. The latter features a vigilante, but they are equally violent to the degree that blood is part of the cheese!
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Athene
Rise for the Shadow Queen
- Location
- Dream of The 90s
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Marion Cobretti might be one of the worst detectives in 80s movies.
He's rare in that he makes zero progress on his case for the entire length of the movie. Not a single step forward, despite all the scenes of him trying to crack this case. In fact, having him try to make progress on the case is used to get him away from the Hospital so the Night Stalker can attack it. He can't even prove that there's more than one killer after killing a good dozen cultists. A guy with a wheelbarrow could settle that one. I'd question how he gets any convictions, but he probably hasn't had a single suspect make it to trial alive.
Him trying to crack the case looks like someone trying to kill the last five minutes of a shift at an office job without actually doing anything. He makes useless notes on a clear map of the city, he flips through books, he stares at things printing. At one point he compares the police sketch to fingerprints. Not a lot of hits on that, the swirls are all wrong and also don't have faces.
And while all of this is going on, the Night Stalker is walking right in the front door of the hospital. The enemy's gate is down Cobra.
Though to be fair, that should be an incredibly dumb thing to do. There should be plenty of cops there with a fresh description of the guy. Sure its a terrible sketch and he's since dyed and slicked back his hair. But how many Cro-Magnon men walk into a hospital these days? Are you saying the LAPD won't profile early modern humans? I mean, it is the LAPD, so Cobra was trying to match his photo against black dudes out of sheer force of habit. Still though, he shouldn't be able to get in the doo of the one place that people will know what he looks like, to try to get at a person that knows he's the killer.
Don't worry though, he stabs a janitor who he has 50 pounds and 3-6 inches on and takes his jumpsuit. Its looser on the Night Stalker of course. Jumpsuits are bigger on the inside, like a Tardis. He needs the disguise to ghost onto the floor she's on but he almost starts stabbing some old lady for giving him shit. He's just trying to stop the red mist and she's riding his ass. She almost got a face full of knife.
Oh yeah, the knife. The knife from this movie that the night stalker uses is pretty famous. A lot of dudes apparently looked at it and went "I'll show you whose dick is too small!", so plenty of places sell it even 30 years on. At least these days you're less likely to see Rambo on the box thanks to less crossed wires from the place churning them out. This thing looks like it would be a nightmare to own. I'm just imagining the Night Stalker just constantly jabbing those points into his side the whole day. Its getting hooked on shit, ruining shirts and car doors, getting stuck in its own sheath. You're hurting your hand because it has almost no grip because its got crappy brass knuckles instead. I think its meant to be used with a tactical tomahawk in your other hand while wearing page 13 of the latest Blackhawk catalog. The brace of throwing stars in your belt is optional. You've been warned by the cops to take the lightbar off the Crown Vic you found at auction. You've been told to please not open carry a rifle at the Olive Garden.
Its trying too hard is what I'm saying.
"They laughed at me at Bass Pro Shops, but who's laughing now?!"
Cobra gets a call from his useless sidekick telling him that he's down at the station like Cobra asked. Cobra expresses some confusion as to why he's there instead of guarding the highly valuable witness. Gonzalez having had just one job says that someone called saying they were from Central and that Cobra wanted him to go to his office across town. Cobra being the Moe of this relationship, realizes they have been duped and yells "THE HOSPITAL". I want to reiterate here: Gonzalez has left his post in the middle of the night because of an anonymous voice called and said his partner needed him to go to his office. It didn't even make up a reason, it just said that Cobra wanted him to go there. Does Gonzalez keep selling his gun and badge for magic beans? Cobra has to fight his way out of his own apartment as cultists attack it, but instead of calling for backup, its the two of them racing back to the hospital. But hey, what's the worst that could happen by trying to do it all yourself?
Ohhhhh, the murderer loose in the hospital. That's what can go wrong.
Ingrid escapes though and Cobra gets an ass chewing at the station for trying to do things his way. The stupid way. Hey remember when I was like "It would be stupid for the Night Stalker to go there"? Well, apparently Cobra held onto the sketch and didn't give it to anyone. So nobody knew what the serial killer looked like. When asked why he held onto it, he tells them that Officer Gul Dukat didn't say please. Great work Cobra, way to be a dick for the sake of spiting a random dude. I mean, what's the worst that could happen because of that? Oh, right, the murders.
Its ok though, because Cobra asks Dukat why two of the uniformed officers were called off the detail. That's a fair question, given that multiple people were called off and the killers seem to have way too much knowledge to not have someone in the inside. Dukat though throws up a Somebody Elses Problem and tells Cobra its his job to look into it. Spoiler: He never does. Nobody else does either. Detective work is hard, lets go be firefighters.
Oh and Nancy Stalk is assigned to them in order to...more easily betray them? She was a uniformed dispatcher before but now she's a detective. She's really moving up the ranks, she'll be chief of police in a month! But hey, they can't advance the plot forward without her there to send wave after wave of cultists at Cobra in lieu of him having to solve a crime for a change. In fact, he's attacked in a car chase almost immediately because they panicked and didn't want him to have to do anything involving clues or deduction.
I'm not going to go over a car chase beat by beat, so I'm just going to post some random musings:
Excuse me? The theory of an army of killers is weak? Cobra can't point out the 5 men with identical tattoos who he's killed in the course of protecting this woman? Plus the dude from the beginning with the same tattoo? Did they all turn to ash and blow away after he killed them? Has he been forgetting to tell anyone when he shoots a guy? You're just giving him shit for getting in a multi car vehicle chase. Who was driving one of those cars? Automan? A fucking ghost? Can the LAPD not even see white criminals at this point? Were the guys busting through Cobras door with axes lost firemen?! How do these people play Clue? Do they just shoot the box? Can I escape the police by covering my eyes and yelling "Peak-a-boo" at them?! Are there any actual detectives working for the LAPD?
No? Ok, moving on then.
Cobra moves her upstate to-Sorry, no. The movie is about to go off the rails here but I can't get over this. This has to be the stupidest moment in a movie related to not listening to the protagonists theories. Nobody has a single clue how to actually be police. Cobra is a violent fascist that guns people down left and right and that makes him more competent than his peers. You could give a monkey a gun and it would get more results than these idiots. I know they're just there to be speedbumps for the hero and to help glorify his violent government thug tendancies, but you could have given them a brain! Cobra could prove everything he's said so far by just thinking for 15-30 seconds and then pointing at the corpse pile. This doesn't require the deductive abilities of Wishbone.
The world needs more Wishbone though
Doesn't matter though, their plan is to just send Cobra north and hope for the best. Don't worry, they're sending Nancy Stalk up with them to keep the plot moving. Cobra almost had to do some actual policing instead of just gunning people down. The movie lets down its hair for a bit at this point though giving Stallone the chance to just absolutely fuck around at random. Half the lines on their trip north have to be Stallone adlibs, as he fucks around with weird props, makes dad jokes and seems incredibly uninterested. This is of course, where Cobra comes off as being actually likeable. Don't worry though, we get some vintage Cannon Group fascism! Apparently the problem with the US Justice System is that it allows judges and juries to have a say instead of just going with whatever the cops say. If there's one thing I've learned about American culture, its that police are holy, blameless creatures. Who wouldn't want a country where the courts just rubber stamp police arrests and shootings? That's never gone wrong, not once. Ok, maybe its gone wrong a few times. Ok, maybe its gone wrong every time that's ever happened in the US. But this time, its going to work out.
You might be wondering at this point "Moira, you magnificent bitch, you keep referencing a cult. What do they believe in? What's their deal?" Oh they're just skinheads with the fascism replaced with trying too hard. They want to establish a generic new world order where they hunt the weak. They won't stop warbling about being hunters in fact. They're all white and love axes and obviously some matter of white supremacists, except that a lack of diversity in the movie means they only kill white people. But they're hunters! They're the Future! They're Generic! They're lazy screenwriting! They have no motivation or beliefs, they're just Evil Badmen.
Well, except for Nancy Stalk of course. She's Evil Badwoman. Cobra catches her in the middle of the night making a phone call in a payphone and the movie plays it like he's realized she's the mole. He goes back to his room and gets his SMG, hundreds of rounds of ammo and grenades ready in preparation for a battle. But then the next day, they're all caught by surprise by her being the mole. You had one last chance to actually figure something out Cobra! You are 2 for 50 at this point. DJ Roomba would have cracked this case. There are chatbots that would be better detectives than you! Yeah you're a murder machine but at this point the cult is trying to stop a running propeller with their bare hands. At any point they could walk away and just keep up the Turner Diaries Larp and you'd never catch them. Instead, the army of killers rolls through town murdering everyone. Oh shit, were we supposed to warn anyone in this small town that there was an army of killers probably coming? Shit, guess everyone's dead now huh? Boy is our face red!
So any attempt to break down this action scene is going to just be "Guy comes at Cobra, get shot. Repeat 35 times". Boy that edgy, dark and dramatic action movie fell apart real quick. This started out as a serial killer movie and ended up as Commando. But hey, Cobra shoots and burns his way through everyone until he's finally face to face with the Night Stalker. Now, Cobra has killed 100% of the criminals he's interacted with. He hasn't arrested a single person in the entire movie and I suspect, also in his entire career. So naturally, the Night Stalker gloats about how Cobra's rules and restrictions as a police officer won't let him kill him.
Motherfucker, have you been paying attention? Were you off sharpening your ridiculous knife when he was killing everyone without mercy? He gives speeches about how the law stops where he begins and how no justice matters but his own at the drop of the hat. The lady at the 7-11 has probably heard it every time there's no penny in the take a penny, leave a penny. His Christmas cards all have Frank Rizzo on them. He writes books that Paladin Press rejects for being too quick to violence. He once gave Jim Cirillo a CLP handjob. He was in fact going to just murder you as you gave a speech about how constrained by the rule of law he is until the gun got knocked out of his hand. He lit two of your buddies on fire and watched them burn to death. Hows this going to end for you? Not well! He's going to go for a combo death of impaled and on fire. That's a 4x multiplier in addition to the 10x streak multiplier he's on. Also, I deeply suspect he has an erection as you are slowly dragged into a furnace by the giant hook in your chest.
Second star on the right and straight on to incineration
Cue standard 80s movie ending. He punches out the guy that gave him shit for not respecting rights and doubted his detective work. You might be like "Isn't that assault" but you were allowed to attack people you know as long as the ending credits are going to roll in the next couple minutes. The case law for it is very clear. He rides off into the sunset, ready to go back to work attacking civilians and killing criminals without mercy or thought. Swoon!
Oh and the movie ends with them just assuming they got them all. Almost had to do detective work there!
Cobra is a mess. Every scene in this movie is a mess. Its your typical 80s action movie only written by a particularly fascist Martian. Oh its enjoyable, because its one of the perfect storms of crazy yet watchable. You can talk about this movie for hours, there's so much shit wrong with it. It shifts genre so hard it rolls the vehicle. Stallone alternates between trying too hard and sleep walking. Its original music is jarringly off theme. If you bought the sountrack you would eject it to make sure you got the right one. It's main plot is bouyed by idiocy at every turn. The cops refuse to believe this army of killers has an army of killers and the cult destroys itself trying to go after a single woman who probably couldn't have taken them down anyway. Its so stupid at every turn, you can't help but love it. Especially if you're making fun of it with friends.
He's rare in that he makes zero progress on his case for the entire length of the movie. Not a single step forward, despite all the scenes of him trying to crack this case. In fact, having him try to make progress on the case is used to get him away from the Hospital so the Night Stalker can attack it. He can't even prove that there's more than one killer after killing a good dozen cultists. A guy with a wheelbarrow could settle that one. I'd question how he gets any convictions, but he probably hasn't had a single suspect make it to trial alive.
Him trying to crack the case looks like someone trying to kill the last five minutes of a shift at an office job without actually doing anything. He makes useless notes on a clear map of the city, he flips through books, he stares at things printing. At one point he compares the police sketch to fingerprints. Not a lot of hits on that, the swirls are all wrong and also don't have faces.
And while all of this is going on, the Night Stalker is walking right in the front door of the hospital. The enemy's gate is down Cobra.
Though to be fair, that should be an incredibly dumb thing to do. There should be plenty of cops there with a fresh description of the guy. Sure its a terrible sketch and he's since dyed and slicked back his hair. But how many Cro-Magnon men walk into a hospital these days? Are you saying the LAPD won't profile early modern humans? I mean, it is the LAPD, so Cobra was trying to match his photo against black dudes out of sheer force of habit. Still though, he shouldn't be able to get in the doo of the one place that people will know what he looks like, to try to get at a person that knows he's the killer.
Don't worry though, he stabs a janitor who he has 50 pounds and 3-6 inches on and takes his jumpsuit. Its looser on the Night Stalker of course. Jumpsuits are bigger on the inside, like a Tardis. He needs the disguise to ghost onto the floor she's on but he almost starts stabbing some old lady for giving him shit. He's just trying to stop the red mist and she's riding his ass. She almost got a face full of knife.
Oh yeah, the knife. The knife from this movie that the night stalker uses is pretty famous. A lot of dudes apparently looked at it and went "I'll show you whose dick is too small!", so plenty of places sell it even 30 years on. At least these days you're less likely to see Rambo on the box thanks to less crossed wires from the place churning them out. This thing looks like it would be a nightmare to own. I'm just imagining the Night Stalker just constantly jabbing those points into his side the whole day. Its getting hooked on shit, ruining shirts and car doors, getting stuck in its own sheath. You're hurting your hand because it has almost no grip because its got crappy brass knuckles instead. I think its meant to be used with a tactical tomahawk in your other hand while wearing page 13 of the latest Blackhawk catalog. The brace of throwing stars in your belt is optional. You've been warned by the cops to take the lightbar off the Crown Vic you found at auction. You've been told to please not open carry a rifle at the Olive Garden.
Its trying too hard is what I'm saying.
"They laughed at me at Bass Pro Shops, but who's laughing now?!"
Cobra gets a call from his useless sidekick telling him that he's down at the station like Cobra asked. Cobra expresses some confusion as to why he's there instead of guarding the highly valuable witness. Gonzalez having had just one job says that someone called saying they were from Central and that Cobra wanted him to go to his office across town. Cobra being the Moe of this relationship, realizes they have been duped and yells "THE HOSPITAL". I want to reiterate here: Gonzalez has left his post in the middle of the night because of an anonymous voice called and said his partner needed him to go to his office. It didn't even make up a reason, it just said that Cobra wanted him to go there. Does Gonzalez keep selling his gun and badge for magic beans? Cobra has to fight his way out of his own apartment as cultists attack it, but instead of calling for backup, its the two of them racing back to the hospital. But hey, what's the worst that could happen by trying to do it all yourself?
Ohhhhh, the murderer loose in the hospital. That's what can go wrong.
Its ok though, because Cobra asks Dukat why two of the uniformed officers were called off the detail. That's a fair question, given that multiple people were called off and the killers seem to have way too much knowledge to not have someone in the inside. Dukat though throws up a Somebody Elses Problem and tells Cobra its his job to look into it. Spoiler: He never does. Nobody else does either. Detective work is hard, lets go be firefighters.
Oh and Nancy Stalk is assigned to them in order to...more easily betray them? She was a uniformed dispatcher before but now she's a detective. She's really moving up the ranks, she'll be chief of police in a month! But hey, they can't advance the plot forward without her there to send wave after wave of cultists at Cobra in lieu of him having to solve a crime for a change. In fact, he's attacked in a car chase almost immediately because they panicked and didn't want him to have to do anything involving clues or deduction.
I'm not going to go over a car chase beat by beat, so I'm just going to post some random musings:
- Cobra's supposedly badass 1950 Mercury Hot Rod with the five point seatbelts can't outrun a Ford truck with a camper shell and a Plymouth Volaré. Its a good thing they didn't have anything faster like a Ford LTD
- One of the longest lingering questions this movie raises is where the fuck Cobra got a Jatimatic from.
- LA traffic will contest lane changes with violent car chases and keep pace with them. Its technically matching the speed of traffic until a car or two blows up.
- A sawed off shotgun can detonate a gas tanker with a single shot. Every day of a hazmat driver must be like Sorcerer.
- Why does Gonzales exist? He's not funny, he doesn't provide pathos and he could be replaced by a Roomba. Hell, give me a movie where Stallone has to partner with DJ Roomba.
Excuse me? The theory of an army of killers is weak? Cobra can't point out the 5 men with identical tattoos who he's killed in the course of protecting this woman? Plus the dude from the beginning with the same tattoo? Did they all turn to ash and blow away after he killed them? Has he been forgetting to tell anyone when he shoots a guy? You're just giving him shit for getting in a multi car vehicle chase. Who was driving one of those cars? Automan? A fucking ghost? Can the LAPD not even see white criminals at this point? Were the guys busting through Cobras door with axes lost firemen?! How do these people play Clue? Do they just shoot the box? Can I escape the police by covering my eyes and yelling "Peak-a-boo" at them?! Are there any actual detectives working for the LAPD?
No? Ok, moving on then.
Cobra moves her upstate to-Sorry, no. The movie is about to go off the rails here but I can't get over this. This has to be the stupidest moment in a movie related to not listening to the protagonists theories. Nobody has a single clue how to actually be police. Cobra is a violent fascist that guns people down left and right and that makes him more competent than his peers. You could give a monkey a gun and it would get more results than these idiots. I know they're just there to be speedbumps for the hero and to help glorify his violent government thug tendancies, but you could have given them a brain! Cobra could prove everything he's said so far by just thinking for 15-30 seconds and then pointing at the corpse pile. This doesn't require the deductive abilities of Wishbone.
The world needs more Wishbone though
Doesn't matter though, their plan is to just send Cobra north and hope for the best. Don't worry, they're sending Nancy Stalk up with them to keep the plot moving. Cobra almost had to do some actual policing instead of just gunning people down. The movie lets down its hair for a bit at this point though giving Stallone the chance to just absolutely fuck around at random. Half the lines on their trip north have to be Stallone adlibs, as he fucks around with weird props, makes dad jokes and seems incredibly uninterested. This is of course, where Cobra comes off as being actually likeable. Don't worry though, we get some vintage Cannon Group fascism! Apparently the problem with the US Justice System is that it allows judges and juries to have a say instead of just going with whatever the cops say. If there's one thing I've learned about American culture, its that police are holy, blameless creatures. Who wouldn't want a country where the courts just rubber stamp police arrests and shootings? That's never gone wrong, not once. Ok, maybe its gone wrong a few times. Ok, maybe its gone wrong every time that's ever happened in the US. But this time, its going to work out.
You might be wondering at this point "Moira, you magnificent bitch, you keep referencing a cult. What do they believe in? What's their deal?" Oh they're just skinheads with the fascism replaced with trying too hard. They want to establish a generic new world order where they hunt the weak. They won't stop warbling about being hunters in fact. They're all white and love axes and obviously some matter of white supremacists, except that a lack of diversity in the movie means they only kill white people. But they're hunters! They're the Future! They're Generic! They're lazy screenwriting! They have no motivation or beliefs, they're just Evil Badmen.
Well, except for Nancy Stalk of course. She's Evil Badwoman. Cobra catches her in the middle of the night making a phone call in a payphone and the movie plays it like he's realized she's the mole. He goes back to his room and gets his SMG, hundreds of rounds of ammo and grenades ready in preparation for a battle. But then the next day, they're all caught by surprise by her being the mole. You had one last chance to actually figure something out Cobra! You are 2 for 50 at this point. DJ Roomba would have cracked this case. There are chatbots that would be better detectives than you! Yeah you're a murder machine but at this point the cult is trying to stop a running propeller with their bare hands. At any point they could walk away and just keep up the Turner Diaries Larp and you'd never catch them. Instead, the army of killers rolls through town murdering everyone. Oh shit, were we supposed to warn anyone in this small town that there was an army of killers probably coming? Shit, guess everyone's dead now huh? Boy is our face red!
So any attempt to break down this action scene is going to just be "Guy comes at Cobra, get shot. Repeat 35 times". Boy that edgy, dark and dramatic action movie fell apart real quick. This started out as a serial killer movie and ended up as Commando. But hey, Cobra shoots and burns his way through everyone until he's finally face to face with the Night Stalker. Now, Cobra has killed 100% of the criminals he's interacted with. He hasn't arrested a single person in the entire movie and I suspect, also in his entire career. So naturally, the Night Stalker gloats about how Cobra's rules and restrictions as a police officer won't let him kill him.
Motherfucker, have you been paying attention? Were you off sharpening your ridiculous knife when he was killing everyone without mercy? He gives speeches about how the law stops where he begins and how no justice matters but his own at the drop of the hat. The lady at the 7-11 has probably heard it every time there's no penny in the take a penny, leave a penny. His Christmas cards all have Frank Rizzo on them. He writes books that Paladin Press rejects for being too quick to violence. He once gave Jim Cirillo a CLP handjob. He was in fact going to just murder you as you gave a speech about how constrained by the rule of law he is until the gun got knocked out of his hand. He lit two of your buddies on fire and watched them burn to death. Hows this going to end for you? Not well! He's going to go for a combo death of impaled and on fire. That's a 4x multiplier in addition to the 10x streak multiplier he's on. Also, I deeply suspect he has an erection as you are slowly dragged into a furnace by the giant hook in your chest.
Second star on the right and straight on to incineration
Cue standard 80s movie ending. He punches out the guy that gave him shit for not respecting rights and doubted his detective work. You might be like "Isn't that assault" but you were allowed to attack people you know as long as the ending credits are going to roll in the next couple minutes. The case law for it is very clear. He rides off into the sunset, ready to go back to work attacking civilians and killing criminals without mercy or thought. Swoon!
Oh and the movie ends with them just assuming they got them all. Almost had to do detective work there!
Cobra is a mess. Every scene in this movie is a mess. Its your typical 80s action movie only written by a particularly fascist Martian. Oh its enjoyable, because its one of the perfect storms of crazy yet watchable. You can talk about this movie for hours, there's so much shit wrong with it. It shifts genre so hard it rolls the vehicle. Stallone alternates between trying too hard and sleep walking. Its original music is jarringly off theme. If you bought the sountrack you would eject it to make sure you got the right one. It's main plot is bouyed by idiocy at every turn. The cops refuse to believe this army of killers has an army of killers and the cult destroys itself trying to go after a single woman who probably couldn't have taken them down anyway. Its so stupid at every turn, you can't help but love it. Especially if you're making fun of it with friends.
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
"Holy shit! Where did she go?!"
- Location
- in the trash
We need to find a way to combine this movie with Mad Bull 34.
ForScience Gratituous Murder.
For
I am Calypso, and I thank you for playing Twisted Metal.
Whiskey Golf
Being of Editing & Technical Assistance
- Location
- Chained to my desk
It says something when this is dumber than Polis Evo, Malaysia's attempt at a buddy cop movie. (Which was actually surprisingly alright, although I was quite amused by how our police SF apparently run with Israeli RONI carbine frames for their Glocks. )
)
What? You expect him to have mastered both kindergarten-level math AND the concept of object-permanence? Pffft! Get a load of professor Egghead over here!
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Teen Spirit
Lost in Ever After
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"They laughed at me at Bass Pro Shops, but who's laughing now?!"
That thing is an abomination. As a knife it's stupid and flimsy, as brass knuckles it wouldn't work.