Komodo vs. Cobra (2005)

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General		Extras
Category	Science Fiction	Main Menu Animation Trailer-Man About Town, The Big White, The Covenant, Solar Attack Trailer-Black Hole
Rating
Year Of Production	2005
Running Time	90:30 (Case: 94)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Jim Wynorski
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Michael Paré Michelle Borth Ryan McTavish Renee Talbert Jerri Manthey Ted Monte Glori-Anne Gilbert Rene Rivera Jay Richardson
Case	?
RPI	$37.95	Music	Chuck Cirino

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

   I am a big "bad movie" fan - my large film collection is split into my very favourites, the very best films ever made, and then the absolute worst. There's a lot of fun to be had watching the latest Uwe Boll film with a bunch of likeminded friends and picking it apart, laughing at the awful special effects and terrible dialogue and insane, incoherent plotting. My first review for MichaelDVD was the thoroughly enjoyable B-grade schlock Boa vs. Python, and I was hoping for a similar experience with Komodo vs. Cobra. It was not to be.

   Komodo vs. Cobra is, frankly, an embarrassment. Essentially 90 minutes of "actors" doing their darnedest to appear scared of a tennis ball on a string, it is the very definition of Z-grade, trading the ridiculous men-in-rubber-suits of the past for deeply awful budget CGI. The film appears to have been set in another universe: not a single character acts in any way human at any point in the film. A lot of it appears to have been shot in the director's house. This movie is also so cheap that the gunfire is done entirely with CGI as well - no one ever reacts to recoil because the guns are made of plastic, and they all seem to have unlimited rounds. (Watch an ordinary pistol fire two hundred bullets without reloading! Not only that, but at about the one hour mark, I'm watching a character shoot dozens of bullets into the air to hit the water 10 feet in front of him. What the hell is going on in this film?!) There's no tension, there's no suspense, there's no action, there's no dialogue - but worse, there's no fun. It is boring in every respect, which is the curse for all bad movie fans. The actual fight between the computer generated komodo dragon and the computer generated cobra lasts 37 seconds. I really, really, really do not recommend this film. Cross the street to avoid it. That is all.

Video

   The video transfer is extremely bland, seemingly shot on low grade digital video featuring very dull colours. Day scenes are often overexposed and the film looks very artificial, occasionally changing to various pieces of stock footage that make the experience even less engaging.

   There are few film artefacts present in the digital transfer, typically only in scenes using obvious stock footage, though the entire film suffers from a nasty grain common for digital video. This is especially obvious in scenes with the computer-generated animals (such as 16:08), in which the graphics look very crisp compared to the rest of the image. The black levels are awful, lacking detail in almost all of the dark scenes, making for plenty of floating heads and torsos during the scenes set at night.

   No subtitles are available on this DVD.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

   This simple audio track is reasonably listenable, but lacking in almost any usage of the 5.1 surround; rear speakers are rarely used at all, and the subwoofer is completely absent, even when the huge komodo dragon stomps onscreen (in the same awful animation used across the entire film). This may as well have been a 2.0 track.

   The musical score is as artificial as the CGI, repeating the same awful electronica motifs across the film. The sound effects appear to have been lifted from Duke Nukem 3D. The amateurish usage of cheap computer generated music and sound effects is both obvious and numbing.

   The dialogue is always distinguishable from the rest of the sound mix and remains at a decent level. ADR problems are absent. However, there’s a frankly bizarre moment at 61:07 in which a sound resembling a monkey scream suddenly appears over the dialogue for no reason at all. As this continued to happen across the film, I came to realise than this is actually a strange form of censorship, in which some "offensive" language is covered by a monkey scream sound effect, although not all - some language I'd consider more offensive is left intact. I am extremely baffled by this.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menus with Audio

Trailers - Man About Town (2:37), The Big White (2:00), The Covenant (1:54), Solar Attack (1:34), Black Hole (1:55)

   The video transfer is low quality, with dull color, grain and poor black levels.

   The sound is unspectacular and wouldn't even be mentionable if not for those bizarre monkey screams.

   The extras are non-existent.

   If you're given the opportunity to watch this film or hacksaw off your own leg, you might want to seriously consider the hacksaw. You'll still be able to hop.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall