{"id":237925,"date":"2025-07-04T17:10:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T17:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/237925\/"},"modified":"2025-07-04T17:10:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T17:10:11","slug":"the-new-arrow-4k-blu-ray-teases-an-ultra-violent-lost-version-well-never-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/237925\/","title":{"rendered":"The new Arrow 4K Blu-ray teases an ultra-violent lost version we’ll never see"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of Sylvester Stallone\u2019s most underrated action flicks of the 1980s has to be Cobra, directed by George P. Cosmatos. Coming off the massive success of Rambo: First Blood Part II<\/a>, Cobra was a solid box office hit in its own right, earning $48 million domestically (in 1986 dollars) and around $112 million overseas. Still, compared to the previous year\u2019s Rambo sequel, it was seen as a disappointment. In fact, when I attended a Stallone masterclass at TIFF<\/a> a few years ago, Sly himself expressed regret over how the film turned out, saying:<\/p>\n

\u201cCobra, to me, was half-baked. I could have done better, but I wasn\u2019t concentrating enough. I felt like that\u2019s something I should have directed, and I didn\u2019t\u2014and I regret that. That\u2019s one thing about making movies\u2014aside from watching your hairline recede\u2014you go, \u2018God, why didn\u2019t I try harder?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite Stallone\u2019s misgivings, the film has become a major cult classic over the years. This month, Arrow Video is giving Cobra the deluxe treatment with a new 4K UHD edition<\/a> that boasts a dazzling transfer. But what really stands out about this release is the inclusion of the film\u2019s rarely seen TV cut.<\/p>\n

Now, this isn\u2019t the first time Arrow has done something like this\u2014they previously included the heavily censored TV version of RoboCop as a curio on that film\u2019s 4K disc. But Cobra\u2019s TV version is especially interesting because it runs a full six minutes longer than the theatrical cut.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the deal?<\/p>\n

Originally, Cobra was a much grittier, more intense film than what audiences saw in theaters. It played as a horror-action hybrid, with Stallone\u2019s Marion Cobretti hunting a cult of axe-wielding serial killers led by Brian Thompson\u2019s chilling \u201cNight Slasher.\u201d Yet the final cut, which runs a lean 89 minutes, feels oddly truncated, as though we\u2019re watching a censored version, despite its hard-R rating. Every time the Night Slasher kills someone, the camera cuts away. Even in the climactic shootout, when Cobretti mows down bad guys with his custom Jatimatic submachine gun, we never see any squibs go off, leaving the action feeling strangely muted.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a reason for this. The original cut, which reportedly ran over 30 minutes longer, was slapped with an X rating by the MPAA. At the last minute, Warner Bros. ordered the film cut down drastically\u2014something that also happened to Wes Craven\u2019s Deadly Friend<\/a> that same year. As a result, the theatrical release was severely pared down. So much so that, for the TV broadcast, extra scenes had to be reinstated to stretch the film to a two-hour slot.<\/p>\n

Those restored scenes hint at what the original vision for Cobra might have looked like. There\u2019s more focus on the cult and its rituals, including a chilling scene where a young boy brings a box containing a victim\u2019s remains to the police. There\u2019s also an extended murder sequence where the manager and receptionist at the motel\u2014where Cobretti is holed up during the climax\u2014are killed, in a stylistic set piece that cross-cuts with Dial M for Murder playing on a TV. Even though this footage is still censored for TV, it\u2019s clear the longer cut leaned further into horror territory\u2014almost reminiscent of an Italian giallo film.<\/p>\n

Would that version have worked better than the slick action cut we got? Hard to say. But wouldn\u2019t it be cool to see?<\/p>\n

Sadly, this TV version is probably the closest we\u2019ll ever get to the original Cobra, as the uncut footage is likely buried deep in the Warner Bros. vault\u2014if it even still exists. A full restoration would probably only happen if Stallone himself decided to revisit the film, as he did with Rocky IV (a project I was lucky enough to speak with him about<\/a>). Here\u2019s hoping he does\u2014because many of us here at JoBlo love Cobra, especially our President of Operations and the founder of Arrow in the Head, John Fallon, who had this to say about one of his all-time favorite films:<\/p>\n

Cobra is a nostalgic\u00a0favorite of mine. And although the film is probably\u00a0too lean for its own good (to this day I yearn for the Director\u2019s Cut), it still delivers hardcore every time I watch it. If it wasn\u2019t the brutal fight sequences whooping me into a smile frenzy, it was that insane car chase hitting the spot (all about that 180 degree turn and shoot bit\u2026nice), the lengthy shootouts, the unintentional\/intentional laughs, its engaging score, priceless macho dialogue or the sight of Cobra in the back of a pickup truck mowing down ALL KINDS of varmints with his nifty automatic weapon (the rare Jati-Matic submachine gun). Whenever I see the latter scene I say to myself: \u201cLife doesn\u2019t get much better than this. Cobra is maybe not perfect on paper but it always pushes my right detonation buttons. That\u2019\u2019s all that matters to me!\u00a0 Bummer we never got a sequel\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of Sylvester Stallone\u2019s most underrated action flicks of the 1980s has to be Cobra, directed by George…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[22056,77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-237925","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-cobra","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-movies","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114796076995028661","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}