Best movie ever!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

This is an absolutely unashamed B-movie... and about as sophisticated as can be expected of any picture featuring a beautiful, wicked snake-priestess, human sacrifice into a volcano, good and evil twins separated in infancy, a gigantic mute assassin, a lost heir(ess), a cobra-worshipping cult and a pet ape wearing a skirt for decency! It's technicoloured in more ways than one -- this is the pulp fantasy material of boys' comic papers come to life, and wouldn't be out of place as a lost novel by Robert Howard or Rider Haggard. Just about everyone sports a bare midriff at the slightest provocation, most of the women spend the entire picture clad in a skimpy band of material round their top half, and Sabu wears next to nothing throughout thanks to a magnificent young physique.As the reader may have gathered, most of it is unabashed fun. There are a couple of suggestions that hint at something deeper: the idea that perhaps Tollea really ought to stay and improve life for her people instead of marrying her rescuer, for example (though the final outcome makes sense -- she was only ever herself a pawn in the hands of the would-be reformers, after all), and, despite the missionary upbringing of the main protagonists, an unexpected treatment of the cobra cult as a genuine religion, where offending the Powers can have consequences and people deserve to worship as they see fit.The special effects are rather better on the costume front than they are where dangerous items are concerned, although there is a brave attempt at showing an advancing lava front by merely illustrating its effects, which works surprisingly well. The dialogue veers wildly between pidgin and fluent English as spoken by the same character at different times (sometimes within the same speech) -- it would be nice to think that this reflected an attempt to show whether they are trying to communicate in English or addressing others in their own native tongue, but I suspect it wasn't thought out in that much detail! Otherwise, the main criticism I'd make is that the final fight goes on perceptibly too long and in too repetitive a way: it could, with advantage and with more credibility, have been cut by several minutes to provide a more explosive climax.But the film is thoroughly enjoyable for what it is. It has no pretensions to be anything more, and the characters generally look as if they're having a good time (when not being tortured, threatened with death, etc.) Sabu plays the hero's mischievous sidekick without a hint of embarrassment and tends to steal every scene in which he appears. Lon Chaney Jr has presence. Maria Montez plays a naive South Seas islander and a power-crazed priestess with aplomb and smoulders out of the screen (her snake dance in a scintillating costume is definitely a memorable scene).Jon Hall makes an engaging romantic lead, though the plot suggests that the character is perhaps more honest than bright: his approach is generally to walk straight into danger and hope that circumstances will work out in his favour. Occasionally they do (this is the sort of film, after all, where you can walk straight into the inner sanctums of the palace after changing clothes with a high official, and nobody so much as notices) but generally he needs rescuing from the consequences! I wouldn't actually describe this an unmissable camp classic, not because it's too bad but because it isn't. It's a perfectly good piece of entirely escapist entertainment which was never intended to be taken seriously, and while it has zero emotional depth it's easy on the eye.

Spurred on by the success of ARABIAN NIGHTS (1942; see my comments below), Universal reteamed its star trio of Jon Hall, Maria Montez and Sabu (but also villainous Edgar Barrier) in a handful of other exotic adventure pictures with this one, directed by German stylist Robert Siodmak, being the best-known. The latter had just scored a success at the same studio with the atmospheric SON OF Dracula (1943) – where Lon Chaney Jr. had donned the proverbial vampire cape – and he engaged the horror star yet again for COBRA WOMAN as the benign giant protector of the good Montez. The latter adjective is appropriate since the actress has a dual role of twin sisters – the rulers (one rightful, one usurper) of an island where the Cobra is worshipped as a deity! Jon Hall and Sabu are adventurers who reside in the mainland and, respectively, love and have befriended the good Montez (unaware of her royal lineage). The evil sibling had been tyrannically ruling over her people with a decidedly unwelcome penchant for sacrificing a great number of her subjects to the Cobra god; this springs Chaney into action who (dressed as a blind, pipe-playing beggar) kidnaps the good Montez in order to replace the deadly queen. Hall and Sabu do not waste time in following them to the island where they witness the latest fashion in 'snake–dancing'! These sequences which are aplently, despite the film's lean 71-minute duration, are both corny and embarrassing – never more so than when the King Cobra (real for the close-ups and a fake and hilariously overgrown one for the long-shots) is carried in a golden platter to do the honors personally!; the rubber snake shots here are about as bad (perhaps even more so) than the similar ones in Fritz Lang's latter-day entry into the exotic sub-genre, THE Indian TOMB (1959).The film is extremely handsome to look at and reasonably entertaining while it's on but, in hindsight, could have been a lot better and thus rather unworthy of both its director and considerable reputation as a camp classic; the late British critic Leslie Halliwell hit the nail squarely on the head, then, with his memorable assessment of it – "A monument of undiluted hokum"!

To many, this film will seem pretty silly and insignificant. I admit it. But, for what it was, it was one of the best. This film was meant to be a silly escapist film--not a "big" movie but a B-movie meant to entertain the kids and adults alike. And, it was a major step up from the average B-western (which, after seeing a few, looked the same). And the audiences loved these silly, yet magical films. This happens to be one of my favorites. Before I even saw it, I saw a publicity photo of the very sultry Maria Montez as the Cobra Woman--dressed in a turban, evening gown and lounging across a giant cobra statue. Considering I was about 13 or so, I think I fell in love! I HAD to see this hot lady in the film! Well, when I finally located a video of it years later, I finally had my chance (though by then, I had found my own "Cobra Woman" and didn't have quite the same pressing need as when I was a teen). It was silly but intensely exciting--with lots of action, campiness and Jon Hall as the only man virile enough to tame this "she-beast"! I loved it and wanted to see it again--it was magical and just plain fun! See it and enjoy unless you are a super-sophisticated person. I love foreign films and art films but sometimes I just gotta have some mindless B-movie fun!

I saw this movie over 30 years ago, when they used to play movies all the time on broadcast television. I enjoyed it very much.It was a treat to see 2 Maria's. Her acting had actually improved some over time!I wish someday that it would come to video, so everyone can see what a nice movie it was.