Synopsis
Cobra Verde (1987) is a Werner Herzog historical drama you can watch online on iFILM, the fifth and final film the director made with Klaus Kinski.
Early-19th-century Brazil. A ruined prospector named Francisco Manoel da Silva kills a man and reinvents himself as the bandit Cobra Verde. Taken on as an overseer at Don Octávio's sugar plantation, he gets all three of the owner's daughters pregnant. The furious planter ships him off to Dahomey in West Africa, where a deranged king has every foreigner killed, supposedly a one-way trip. Da Silva not only survives but muscles his way into the slave trade.
The script grew out of Bruce Chatwin's novel The Viceroy of Ouidah. Kinski performs at full boil, and the infamous on-set wars between him and Herzog bled straight into the frame. The closing stretch, with its army of bare-chested women warriors, is hard to shake. This is a harsh, deliberately uncomfortable watch, not a relaxed night in. Stream Cobra Verde (1987) online on iFILM.
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