Komodo vs Cobra is a movie released in 2005 by LionGate. It was directed by Jim Wynorsk, probably well-known by a lot of long-time B-movie fans. Although I have to admit this is my first movie from him that I have ever seen!
I am reviewing the US region 1 DVD version, which to my surprise contains English subtitles (which I applaud a lot). Sadly, that’s about the only notable extra feature, as the disc does not contain director’s commentary or any other additional feature.
KvC starts quite unusually immediately in the middle in an action scene. We see a small team, consisting of two male and a female scientists running in the woods, while a horrendous huge Komodo dragon is following them (am I the only one who had to refer to Wikipedia to see what a Komodo is?!).
While the three stand still, the Komodo seems to get a little confused, but one of the scientists foolishly runs away and gets eaten by the big beast, their countless shots from their pistols did nots seem to hurt the beast in any way. It is revealed that the remaining male is the dad of the girl. They dive into the water and swim safely to the other side, the Komodo does not seem to like swimming and gives up. Unfortunately Dad is eaten by a gigantic Cobra that suddenly dives up from the water out of nowhere, while he was looking for wood. Will daughter Dr. Susan Richardson survive on her own?
Some things are made very clear from even the very earliest scenes. The CGI special effects are on one hand somewhat laughable, but on the other hand perfectly suited for a movie like this, which does not seem to take itself too seriously anyway. This movie does not try to pretend to be something which it is clearly not, it’s just made to entertain. To me, that’s perfectly fine.
What happened? How could two dangerous animals on the island Isla Damas become so big? Many questions begging for an answer. We see that the army is interested in the island too, as they are getting nervous they are not able to get contact with the scientists there.
We are soon introduced to the main characters of the movie. A male/female couple apparently are trying to find a boat to charter and have a suitable captain in mind. This captain, captain Stoddard, is not interested as the couple wants to go to… Isla Damas (which is now revealed to be a off-limits military island!). Why would two love-birds want to settle off to this particular, forbidden island, anyway? Well, they finally reveal to him that they are environmentalists, which captain Stoddard instantly translates to “Tree-huggers“… He was my hero from then on 
When he is promised US$10.000, he changes his mind eventually and agrees he will bring their whole environmental team there.
I’d guess the director, like mr Stoddard, was not a big fan of environmentalists at all, as they are represented here as stereo-type, violence-hating, somewhat naive bunch of people. The team consists of a few young environmentalists and a camera-man and news-reporter. Captain Stoddard is still my hero, as when he gets the question “We almost there yet?” he answers “You tell me. You happen to see an island anywhere around here? No? Then we’re not almost there“. This guy is a fabulous! They can not enter the island because of darkness and decide to stay on the boat.
We then follow a subplot with a few heavily-armed army soldiers that land on the island that night and try to find out what is going on on the island. They hear roaring and one of the soldiers quickly becomes Komodo-food…. While I was watching the movie for the second time, I finally recognized a familiar face…
The one and only PAUL LOGAN is one of the soldiers!!!! He’s from The Asylum’s The Terminators and Mega Piranha fame (reviews for both films should be coming soon on this site) !!!!!
Sorry… he’s a personal B-movies hero of mine, could not resist it.
One of the funniest aspects of this movie that guns NEVER run out of ammo in this movie. You can fire a thousand bullets to the Komodo or Cobra, but you won’t have to reload your gun once… just keep on shooting. Also the actors are so very good in handling guns, that they don’t have to swing their arms back when firing a bullet. Too bad, the beasts seem not to be injured or even really bothered by any bullet though.
The acting is generally mediocre at best, but to be honest, what else did you expect? On a positive note, the director managed to take some beautiful shots along the way, the movie is filled with various of those small beautiful scenes every once and awhile. The movie’s duration is about 95 minutes, the first hour is the most entertaining, the final 30 minutes drag a bit on and on, as if they ran out of ideas a bit. It’s not too bad though, it remains watchable, I think thanks to a lot of humor that is added. It gets too repetitive though, then it’s Komodo attacking the remaining survivors, then it’s Cobra who wants to prepare its meal. Oh, let’s not forget about the army who wants to destroy the island.
My bottom line is: this is just plain fun pulp, that could have been even better if it were a bit shorter.
By the way, be thankful I did not spoil the bizarre ending here 