King Cobra Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

King Cobra Blu-ray Movie Review

"Put your money where your mouth is."

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson February 21, 2017

At the still-young age of thirty-eight, James Franco has already built an extremely prolific career as an actor and filmmaker, amassing more than 130 film and television credits. While Franco has played a variety of roles, it is his gay characters and his penchant for tackling queer subjects that have saw him carve out a niche. For example, he co-directed Interior. Leather Bar. (2013), a re-imagining of what forty minutes of deleted scenes from William Friedkin's Cruising (1980) may have looked and sounded like in a gay bar. Additionally, Franco has written a series of poems titled Straight James / Gay James (2016), which is about his bifurcated sexuality as a performance artist. Last year, Franco produced and co-starred in King Cobra, a 91-minute feature directed by Justin Kelly about a real-life case involving Internet gay porn. While not the main star, Franco helped finance King Cobra and supposedly procured shooting locations in Kingston, New York.

Stephen (Christian Slater) is a forty-year-old gay porn producer enduring something of an existential career crisis until Sean Lockhart (Garrett Clayton) arrives at his east coast suburban house from San Diego after taking up Stephen's cash offer. Fresh out of high school, Sean gives his brown hair a blond shade and sports classic teen idol good looks. (Clayton bears a striking resemblance to his fellow Disney alum, Zac Efron.) Stephen is wowed by Sean's video auditions and signs him up to a contract under the screen name, Brent Corrigan, who soon becomes a gay porn sensation on Stephen's website, King Cobra. Brent's videos are downloaded by Harlow (Keegan Allen), a thirty-year-old underground gay porn star, who brings them to the attention of his boyfriend Joe (James Franco), a producer of the rival video site, Biker Boys.

Sean Lockhart becomes Brent Corrigan, Cobra Video's new star.

Kelly develops a rhythmic pattern for cutting in between Stephen/Sean and Joe/Harlow through the device of parallel editing. (Kelly and his editor, Joshua Raymond Lee, cut the movie using Adobe Premiere Pro CC.) In his scene construction, Kelly alternates back-and-forth between Stephen and Joe's abodes to underscore disparities in class and lifestyle. Stephen may live in a modest house amid a homogeneous neighborhood but this aspect belies the palatial furniture and plush amenities in his home (not to mention the swimming pool in back). Sean basically has no money so there's a real economic incentive for him to participate in the videos as well as partake in the accouterments that Stephen can offer. Stephen produces a genre of "twink porn" in which handsome young guys are recruited to engage in erotic acts with Sean. By stark contrast, Joe produces gay porn that is rougher and more brazen with acts of S&M and bondage. While Joe also has a very nice place with an expensive car and a hot tub, he has been living way beyond his means and carries accumulative debt in the six figures.

Tim Kvasnosky's music for King Cobra is integral to underscoring the film's themes and characters. Kvasnosky goes all electronica. The keyboard beats remind me of the underground techno performed (diegetically) in Larry Clark's Bully (2001). I'm specifically thinking of the amateur strip club scene where Bobby Kent (Nick Stahl) coerces his best friend, Marty Puccio (Brad Renfro), to go up on stage with other young teens in their underwear. They dance to the instrumental beats of Atomic Babies' "Cetch Da Monkey." Besides the musical similarity, there is another reason that I bring up Bully in connection with King Cobra. Indeed, there is a common thread that runs through the interplay between these sets of characters in both films: i.e., capitalism and sex labor. Bobby profits from the pimping of his friend, who is depicted as a commodified object. We also see this play out with Sean and Harlow, who are cast in subservient roles. Stephen "owns" Sean because he is the creator of the "Brent Corrigan" moniker, having trademarked the name. Stephen becomes something of a surrogate father to Sean (we never see the teen's real dad). He has a physical attraction to Sean but Sean doesn't necessarily have the same mutual affection for him. Stephen's ownership of Sean is perhaps best emblematized when Stephen stands watching Sean scrunch down and clean the man's toilet. While Joe and Harlow are much closer in age than Stephen and Sean, there is a similar master-slave dialectic going on between them. Joe is like an older brother to Marlow and comforts him while Marlow relives the trauma of his abusive stepfather. But Joe can be prone to acts of rage and potential violence, too. Joe and Marlow say they love each other but Marlow has to continue to "perform" in order to earn his keep. He really has to work for Joe.

While Kelly creates several intriguing parallels in theme and characterization, his narrative seems rather fissured as the secondary characters could have been more developed. It's a treat to have Molly Ringwald and Alicia Silverstone in the film but their supporting roles could have been expanded. There's also a subplot involving a would-be boyfriend of Sean's but there's a long gap where we don't see them together. Despite these setbacks, King Cobra is still a film worth seeing. Kelly based his screenplay on a non-fiction book and I advise anyone who doesn't know the details of the real-life case to watch the movie first.

King Cobra Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

King Cobra is part of IFC Midnight's catalog and makes its Blu-ray debut courtesy of Shout! Factory on this AVC-encoded BD-50. The indie label presents the movie in the aspect ratio of 1:85:1, which is how it's been projected at various film festivals. Shot on the Arri Alexa, the film boasts both cool and bold colors which shine in this virtually speckless transfer. Kelly and his director of photography Benjamin Loeb employ a wide spectrum of colors, including azure (see Screenshot #13), rich green (the manicured lawn in #7), and scenes with neon lights (see #s 8 and 20). Skin tones appear completely natural with no visible traces of post-processing. The movie also contains shots that are filtered through Stephen's mini-DV cam and Kelly said it was intentional to have an amateur video aesthetic for such shots. (You can see some noise, which gives the image a grainy look: e.g., see #16.) King Cobra sports a total video bitrate of 40.35 Mbps, with an average of 31994 kbps.

King Cobra Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shout! has supplied the main feature's sound track with two options: a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround (2502 kbps) and a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo (1643 kbps). I primarily focused on the 5.1 mix, which is rock solid. Dialogue is usually always crisp and understandable. There is a nice balance and circularity on this track. Songs, however, don't exhibit a lot of separation in relation to the fronts and rears. Sony has oddly used a slightly higher bitrate encoding on the commentary track (1690 kbps) than the stereo mix. A lossy DTS would have been more than adequate for the commentary. A higher bitrate for the 5.1 mix could have added greater depth and dimensionality.

Shout! has equipped the disc with optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles.

King Cobra Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Director/Co-writer Justin Kelly - a feature-length track with Kelly that only includes a few brief gaps. Kelly discusses the movie's casting, music and sound track choices, underlying themes, and how his screen adaptation differs from the book. In English, not subtitled.

• Outtakes (7:43, 1080p) - a reel of deleted scenes and mini-bloopers, which are funny to see.

• Trailer (2:14, 1080p) - the original theatrical trailer for King Cobra.

• Previews - two trailers for other Shout! titles that load before the main menu.

King Cobra Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

King Cobra tells an important story and while well-structured, its narrative feels crammed across a brisk ninety-one minutes. Shout! delivers reference-quality picture and serviceable audio for an indie of this limited scale. Kelly's commentary is worth a listen and I can only wonder if there are more substantive deleted scenes that the director shot which could have supplemented the outtakes on this disc. Aficionados of Franco's work should definitely add this Blu-ray to their collections. Overall, King Cobra is pretty good and merits a SOLID RECOMMENDATION.