Rating: **
Review Date: 9/1/26
Cast: David Warbeck, John Steiner, Almanta Suska, Luciano Pigozzi
American soldier Bob (David Warbeck) and British intelligence officer Dave (John Steiner) are in the Philippines in 1944 trying to spring a double agent out of a Japanese military camp. The agent goes rogue and flees with a treasure known as "the golden cobra," which is said to have supernatural powers that can turn the tide of the war. After a harrowing aerial chase, Bob ends up lost in the jungle and attacked by natives. A year later, Dave finds a washed-up Bob in a cock-fighting den and drags him back to civilization, only to have the military send him back to the jungle to try and find the golden cobra again. He steadfastly refuses to go, until numerous attempts on his life and a pretty girl named Julie (Almanta Suska) eventually change his mind. You see, Julie has an identical twin sister named April who lives in the jungle and saved Bob from the natives' poison darts at the beginning of the movie. The hunt for the relic leads Bob, Julie, and Julie's crotchety uncle (Luciano Pigozzi) to a cave inside a volcano that's full of lava. They manage to nab the relic and rescue April, but can they defeat the sorcery of the supernatural cobra priest?
The success of "Raiders Of The Lost Ark" (1981) was bound to draw low budget imitations, and this was one of the first. It's a decent production, but it doesn't make a lot of sense and the pacing suffers from way too much incidental footage and padding material. The visual effects are unremarkable, with the exception of some unconvincing, but charming miniature work. Bob and Dave are overly goofy characters and John Steiner nearly steals the show with his crazy dialog and insane laughter. It's hard to take David Warbeck seriously, as he's constantly overacting and often has his shirt unbuttoned to his navel. Almanta Suska is the real gem of the film and is disarmingly pretty, but it's clear that she doesn't understand English and her interactions with the other actors are awkward at best. As it's an Italian production, all of the characters are dubbed in English with varying degrees of success. It's not a terrible film, but it's also not a good film, and is best viewed as Saturday afternoon disposable entertainment.