Movie Review: ‘King Cobra’

Review by Lauryn Angel

Christian Slater and James Franco play rival producers of gay pornography in director James Kelly’s King Cobra, a film categorized as a crime drama that takes too long to develop.

Christian Slater is Stephen, a.k.a. King Cobra, a porn mogul who makes a star out of Brent Corrigan (Garrett Clayton). Stephen films pornography in his home, and his neighbors and his sister Amy (Molly Ringwald) are none the wiser. Meanwhile, rival porn producer and pimp Joe (James Franco) and his lover/star Harlow (Keegan Allen) are jealous of Brent Corrigan’s success and hatch a plot to lure him to their production company, Viper Boyz.

The film spends far too much time on setting up the crime through exposition, so by the time the murder happens, it’s almost anti-climactic. The movie suffers from this problem with pacing, which is almost a shame, as Slater gives a great performance. Franco is so over-the-top that he’s more caricature than character, and Molly Ringwald and Alicia Silverstone (who plays Corrigan’s mother) are mostly in the background, barely appearing in two scenes each.

King Cobra is more sensationalist than sensational. It attempts to be titillating, but falls far short of the mark.