Black Cobra Woman (1976) Exploitation Voodoo

Black Cobra Woman (1976) - It is not often that I get a DVD from Netflix and the quality is really poor but this is the case with this Jack Palance, Laura Gemser movie. Presented in full screen ratio from an old print including scratches and flaws the look and sound are not great. I don't know if writer / director Joe D'Amato was trying to push his sleazy films as travel movies but he often starts his films establishing the location, in this case Hong Kong by showing planes landing at the airport and ferries crossing the harbor in front of the city.  Eva (Gemser) has arrived in town to do a show and when she arrives she is talking to Jules (Gabriele Tinti) who is interested in seeing her show. I am going to guess that the show contains cobras hence the name of the film.  This film is early in the lovely Gemser's career this being her fifth film. Already a budding exploitation star with three featured characters in the Emmanuelle series of soft core exploitation movies she would go on to do more than a dozen of the films. Fresh faced and young in this one Gemser is just starting that twenty year film career. Her IMDB bio explains her early life as:"The exotic dark-haired beauty moved to Italy in the mid-1970's and made her film debut as Janine in the obscure Amore libero - Free Love (1974). However, it was Laura's small, but memorable role as a masseuse in Emmanuelle II (1975) that really launched her career in racy soft-core exploitation fare. Gemser achieved her greatest enduring international cult popularity with her incredibly erotic and uninhibited portrayals of the titular hedonistic and sexually adventurous globe-trotting photojournalist in the steamy "Black Emanuelle" series that were often directed by the notorious Joe D'Amato and frequently co-starred Gemser's real-life actor husband Gabriele Tinti." Tinti eighteen years her senior in real life and Gemser's husband plays Jules Carmichael a playboy who since he hit it off with her on the plain invites his brother Judas to go see her show. I wonder if that name will fit the character of the man. The DVD sleeve says that Judas falls for Eva and that is just weird in that he is a good thirty years older than she, but I guess the wealthy have the luxury of not paying attention to age norms in dating.
  Judas is smitten by watching the topless Eva dancing with a boa constrictor in a room full of men. She is slender and beautiful and it is all to establish desires, Eva touching a female friend under the table in the club establishes her willingness to be open sexually. Judas staring at this with an intense desire wants her. Later Eva is touching herself on a bed while thinking about her snake dancing and female lover. Judas a snake keeper himself takes her to lunch and then hires Eva to care for his reptiles. She having just met the creepy old man is not looking to immediately move into his house to be cared for by him. Such a strange approach the older rich guy offing to keep her and take care of her. This makes her Asian boyfriend jealous, he does not mind her taking woman lovers but the idea of another man in her life makes him angry. His anger is enough for her to allow him one more fuck before she takes the job with Judas.
  Things seem to go well when she joins the Carmichael residence but this film churns slowly while Eva is finding and wooing a bleached blonde Gerri (Michele Starck) and Julkes is seducing and then torturing Candy (Ziggy Zanger) with his brother's snakes. It slogs through the two women travelling around Hong Kong talking. There is some animal violence when they watch a snake being killed skinned and cooked at a local merchant stall. There is also a feeding of Judas' snakes that includes a python killing a mouse. Mostly there is a real openness to the films approach to bisexuality and lesbianism but unfortunately it does not empower those ways of life. More it is a male POV where we can see women caressing each other and getting naked, bathing together and often times in these scenes we see Jules peeping in from the other room always reminding us that this is material for the men to enjoy. Jules is a bit of a creeper, more so than his eccentric but seemingly harmless brother. His jealousy of the two women sharing a bed prompts him to put a deadly snake in the room with the two women. Gerri panics and incites the snake to bite her and she dies quickly. Devastated Eva leaves Hong Kong with Jules not knowing that he killed her lover. Or does she?
  There is a revenge aspect to this film and we eventually get there after a lot of slow plotting. Jules taking a Black Cobra up the ass because this special breed will eat its way free is an idea to be marveled at. She also has the gall to confess her crimes to Judas looking for him to back to the happier times when they lived together. She wants t show him she is the snake charmer and brings the green mamba out to dance with it. Unfortunately for her she is bitten by it and dies. This is a quick and remarkable dark ending to the film. I am not sure how worth the time this particular film is as it slogs most of the time and there really is not any redeeming qualities. I suppose the moral is don't kill with snakes or you will die by one? On a Gemser scale for nudity this film is like 2 of 5 nudes so if that was why you want to see it you may be disappointed in that also.