Black Cobra 4 Review-Detective Malone is Super(imposed)

Detective Malone: Black Cobra 4

1990 New Way Distribution

Director Bob Collins (Umberto Lenzi )

With Karl Landgren , Bobby Rhodes, Maurice Poli & special super imposed star Fred Williamson

Review by Paul Cooke

‘‘Death is preferable to failure and disgrace!’’

They don’t come much rarer than this when searching out movies from the collectors market, but once discovered it becomes apparently clear why Director Umberto Lenzi chose to hide behind the pseudonym of Bob Collins! Fred Williamson may still be blissfully unaware that he actually stars in the movie, and with good reason as in reality he does not! What the production company have done is worked a short rehash of a lame story around actual scenes that do star Fred Williamson, but ‘borrowed’ from the original 1987 made ‘Black Cobra’ movie.

A slightly older and cleaner cut Karl Landgren does return, this time as the leader of a Middle East terrorist Arab gang. It doesn’t take a too observant fan of the original movie to notice that he is sporting his trademark black leather and silver studded jacket once again, another money saving prop for the cost conscious producers to allow for further insert edits. This time out Landgren and cohorts abduct a scientific engineer named Barry Wilson, a valuable employee of the Electronic Armourment Corporation. Wilson is a leading expert in the field of war simulation computer programming. He is required by Landgren’s people to create a device to make international terrorism less vulnerable in the fight for oppression against the Western World. With the displayed computers he works with it might have been better for them to simply have watched an old TV episode of early Seventies cult Sci Fi show ‘U.F.O’!

It sure is an Action fans distraction when amongst the highlights is a scene where scientific weapons engineer Wilson frolics with his attractive naked wife, deftly deploying his pocket rocket whilst displaying some hairy backed humping. Washed down with a shower scene, also featuring Mrs. Wilson in the shapely form of Elena Weidermann, and thankfully no insert here from a cut and paste Fred Williamson!

To keep the ‘Black Cobra’ theme live Bobby Rhodes kind of steps into the Williamson role as Officer Jackson, a lugging cardboard clone with a reactivity to coffee that brings about diarrhoea! Clearly a case of strong , black and explosive from the back. Amusingly Maurice Poli is brought back for this fourth outing to reprise his role from the Stelvio Massi Directed original, but so also are scenes of him from that first venture and they too are intermittently inter cut. Seeing Rhodes and Poli share scenes and then Poli moving out of shot to reappear looking slightly younger to stand next to Fred Williamson is indeed obvious, but nonetheless comical. Interposing scenes of Karl Landgren with his earlier and latter set of pearly white teeth is a dental hygienists faux pas, as a gold capped tooth from 1987 has been deftly reclaimed by the tooth fairy come 1990. All highly amusing continuity pick-ups to pass the time till closure, that really can’t come soon enough. Action highlight is the shootout sequence reworked from ‘Black Cobra’, which at least is pretty well reedited and shows the key players in gun blasting combativeness, allowing for a modicum of blood spillage to decorate the medical facility. In conclusion fans of Fred Williamson get to see another appearance, whereas Umberto Lenzi fails to show at all.

0.5 Exploding Huts

Japanese VHS Cover