Cobra Woman 🐍💃starring "Technicolor Queen" Maria Montez!

Cobra Woman takes place on one of those Technicolor South Sea islands where a volcano is always rumbling and gongs are always banging for the next human sacrifice. In the film Montez played two opposite types, Naja, the evil Queen leading a tribe of snake worshipers, and Tollea, a simple, kind-hearted peasant girl. (here giving Siodmak good practice for Olivia De Havilland's similar dual role in The Dark Mirror).The story begins on the day that the marriage of Tollea to Ramu (Jon Hall) was to take place. Tollea is kidnapped by the Cobra people, a tribe of snake worshipers, and taken to Cobra Island where she learns from the Queen (Mary Nash) that she is actually the older twin sister of Princess Naja (Montez), the island's wicked High Priestess. The Queen wants Tollea to assume the rightful place as High Priestess and to bring an end to her evil twin's cruel reign. Ramu learns of what has happened to Tollea and he decides to rescue his beloved from Cobra Island. Ramu is accompanied by his young native friend, Kado (Sabu), who not only tries to help his friend out of trouble, but gets into trouble himself.Can the good twin Tollea overthrow the evil priestess and return the island to peace? Well, maybe, but it's really the style of the whole thing that makes it such a charming bit of fluff. The best way to describe it is pure Hollywood: costumes and sets are a truly wild mixture of Arabia, the ancient Aztecs, South America, Carmen Miranda's hats, Dorothy Lamour's sarong, and Joan Crawford's shoulder pads and ankle-strap pumps. Vera West was the costume designer par excellence.The climax is Siodmak's great set piece where we see Naja/Montez performing the Cobra Dance. We hardly have time to wonder, as Maria Montez parades around before us in an ever-increasingly outrageous collection of gowns and head-dresses and high heels. As High Priestess, Naja is all-powerful, relieving both her boredom and her sadism by slaughtering her followers with impunity, and justifying her excesses with her catch-phase, “It is the Cobra tradition! I have spoken!” Naja’s ceremonial dance plays like a deliriously over-the-top cross between Barbara Stanwyck’s hip-swinging performance as Dixie Daisy to "Take It Off The E-String, Play It On The G-String" from Lady Of Burlesque (1943, United Artists), and Rita Hayworth’s mock-strip to “Put The Blame On Mame” in Gilda (1946, Columbia Pictures). At the ceremony she shimmies awkwardly for his majesty, King Cobra, until he strikes at her but she jumps away he strikes again and she jumps away again. She then erupts into a frenzied spasm, hurling accusatory fingers at sacrificial victims who are all attractive young women who will then be made to climb the "Thousand Steps" to the angry maw of the Fire Mountain. Her performance doing the Cobra Dance is one those instances in film that has to be seen to be believed where Maria reaches a level of kitsch that is so convincing.After waiting for Tollea and Naja finally to meet. What we get instead is a minor verbal altercation that terminates with a disappointing abruptness when Naja, lining up her sister with one of the spears that she likes to keep handy, forgets herself and backs a little too close to an exceedingly low balcony she slips and falls to her death. The only compensation for this lack of a pay-off is that this scene is the source of the all-time immortal Maria Montez “line” – “GEEV MEE THAHT COBRAH JOOL!!” At the production level it reunited some of the talents that together produced The Wolf Man three years earlier: producer-director George Waggner and star Lon Chaney Jr, and Richard Brooks – yes, Richard Brooks he of the: The Killers, Storm Warning, Crossfire, The Blackboard Jungle, In Cold Blood, he paid some dues by co-writing the screenplay.

This really is a rad movie! I'd say it's pretty coolio! Thanks for the trivia!