Cobra Verde

Director: Werner Herzog

1987 / 111min / DCP

The last film to emerge from the long, tumultuous five-movie collaboration/death struggle between Herzog and Klaus Kinski, Cobra Verde features Kinski as a disgraced, priapic plantation worker sent to almost certain death by his employer on a mission to round up slaves in West Africa where, against all odds, he thrives—setting himself up as a benevolent potentate after deposing a mad king. A fittingly frenzied climax to one of the wildest director-star pairings in cinema, with Kinski delivering a performance of rabid, feral, raving hysteria and depravity. “Contains sequences of horrifying sublimity and ethereal beauty, moments that have a clarity and power beyond the reach of reason.”—The New York Times