Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

A grand example of Hollywood delirium, and a major influence on 60s filmmakers including Jack Smith, Andy Warhol and John Waters. Maria Montez plays twin sisters---one good, one evil---vying to be queen of Cobra Island, a dazzlingly lush tropical location. Actually filmed on location in Laguna Beach. Some think of Montez as the first method actress in the movies, which is to say that she took her roles so seriously that she was known to act as if she had 'become' her character even to the point of appearing off-screen in full costume and expecting to be treated as some sort of exotic royalty. Now that's entertainment!

Maria Montez - the name conjures up Technicolored tropical islands, Arabian nights, exotic jungle maidens. She was definitely the true Queen of Technicolor during the 40s. She was the original "jetsetter", traveling the world. Of course she was originally a model but Hollywood had always been her goal and with her determination and her gigantic ego, she was going to make it. She thought she was the world's most beautiful woman. After meeting Orson Welles she remarked "He is as spectacular as I am"!!!! During a private showing of "Arabian Nights", she stopped the film, turned to the executives and asked - "Isn't that the most beautiful woman you have ever laid eyes on!!" If Deanna Durbin singlehandedly saved Universal Studios during the 30s, Maria Montez ran a close second. Her exotic Technicolor fantasies earned millions for Universal during the 40s.I don't know about being the most beautiful but she was extremely gorgeous and in "Cobra Woman", with its lush tropical settings, Technicolor and playing twins - one good, one evil - she had never been shown to better advantage. Her co-star was Jon Hall. He had already made several adventure films with Dorothy Lamour, who Maria Montez was about to displace as "sarong queen", so he was an ideal choice. Sabu completed the threesome this time (sometimes it was Turhan Bey) and was a welcome comedy relief.A strange blind??? peddler comes to the village just in time for the wedding of Ramu (Jon Hall) and the beautiful Tollea (Maria Montez). Before the wedding can take place Hava (Lon Chaney Jnr.) the beggar, has kidnapped Tollea and taken her back to her people at Cobra Island (she had been taken away as a baby). Ramu and Kado (Sabu) go to the island and search for her. She has been bought back to save the island from her sister's cruelty. Ramu bumps into the evil sister Naja while swimming but thinks it is Tollea. He is then captured. Kado, with his companion Koko, the chimp, comes across Hava, who leads him to Tollea.The costumes of Naja are unbelievably gorgeous. Poor Tollea spends the film in plain sarongs!! Naja's "Cobra Dance" has to be seen to be believed - she looks like she is enjoying herself so much - while picking young women to be put to death!!!! Tollea confronts Naja, who dies after a spectacular fall from a balcony. Tollea then dresses as the high priestess and impersonates Naja in the cobra dance.This is an amazingly rich and extravagant film in which no expense was spared. Richard Brooks, who went on to direct "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958), "Elmer Gantry" (1960) and "Sweet Bird of Youth" (1962) was given an early script writing credit for "Cobra Woman".Highly Recommended.

My parents went to see this movie when they were first married.(1944) The name Tollea was selected for me when I was born. And after all these years I finally got to see part of the movie COBRA WOMAN. I would like to purchase a good copy of this movie from some where. Of what I have got to see It was very interesting.I liked Maria Montez a lot a very exciting woman. Lon Chaney was a very young man at this time. I didn't think they could do double takes back at that time. Must have been the first time or close to the first time. I have read that Maria Montez was only 34 when she died. To bad she was around to give us lots more movies to share. Although she starred in many, I think I would have liked to have seen more resent movies. Thanks

Cobra Woman was directed by Robert Siodmak just as he was embarking on his peerless string of black pearls: Phantom Lady, Christmas Holiday, The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, The Suspect, The Spiral Staircase, The Killers, The Dark Mirror, Cry of The City, Criss Cross and The File on Thelma Jordon. And that's a bitter pill to swallow.The movie harks back to styles of moviemaking which the noir cycle, which Siodmak was so instrumental in creating, was putting blessedly to rest: To Saturday-matinee serials and boys' stories like Treasure Island, to South Seas excursions like Rain and Red Dirt and White Cargo, to gaudy, escapist musicals. And yet Cobra Woman achieves an almost solitary stature; only Vincente Minnelli's Yolanda and The Thief, from the following year, challenges its reputation as a movie so wildly overblown it's unhinged. There's little point in rehashing the plot, which centers on twins separated at birth: Tollea, a sweet native girl engaged to marry an American; and Naja, high-priestess of a snake cult that practices human sacrifice. Rightful heir Tollea is kidnaped so she can depose her evil sister and placate the Fire Mountain (a cheesy back-lot volcano). Supporting parts are taken by Jon Hall, Lon Chaney, Jr., Sabu and a loinclothed chimpanzee.A thickly-accented native of the Dominican Republic, Maria Montez plays, sensibly, both twins (giving Siodmak good practice for Olivia De Havilland's similar dual role in The Dark Mirror). Cobra Island, her domain, in its outlandish costumes and grandiose sets, puts to shame those elephants-and-all productions of Aida staged in the Baths of Caracalla; this Technicolor nightmare gives a sneak-preview, in its prurient take on pagan excess, the cycle of Biblical epics that were just down the road for Hollywood.But neither Cecil B. DeMille (in Samson and Delilah) nor Douglas Sirk (in Sign of the Pagan) nor Michael Curtiz (in The Egyptian) – nor even, for that matter, Minnelli (though he came closest) – could rival Siodmak's big set-piece: Naja/Montez performing the Cobra Dance. Clad in a snake-scale gown, she shimmies awkwardly for His Undulating Majesty himself, King Cobra, until he strikes at her (a mating gesture? Reptiles can be so ambiguous). She erupts into a frenzied spasm, hurling accusatory fingers at sacrificial victims who will then be made to climb the Thousand Steps to the angry maw of Fire Mountain. It would be reassuring to write off Cobra Woman as some sort of failed allegory, about Fifth Columnists, or Free French vs. Vichy, or something; but no such evidence exists. The movie is what it is, and utterly astonishing.