King Cobra

If you are occasional gay porn watcher like me and have a few favourites, then Brent Corrigan is a name that you must be quite familiar with. This film is a true story and is based around him as the central character around an incident that became a big deal and affected his career and his personal life to a large extent. I didnt realize this until the very moment I started watching the film. Had I known this fact, I would have seen this film, right when it came out. And it has, the now famously ambiguous actor James Franco as well. Anyway, better late than never.

Bryan is a gay porn producer and he own Cobra films. He meets Sean Paul who introduces himself as Brent Corrigan for his porn name. Brent signs a contract with him and Bryan starts producing a couple of porn films. Within a very short time frame. Brent gains immense popularity and becomes really famous. On the other side, we also meet a low key porn producer Joe, who runs his company Viper Boys whose sole porn star is also his lover Harlow. Joe also occasionally rents out out young Harlow to middle aged man. The couple has weird intensity, almost destructive, about their relationship. Brent soon finds out that he is not making even an iota of money that Bryan is making on his behalf and asks for more money, which Bryan refuses. Brent leaves him and gets a shock when he finds out that no other producer would hire him because they want top use his name, which is now copyrighted by Bryan. When Brent finds this out, he threatens to expose Bryan for child pornography since Brent was only 17 at that point. Joe and Harlow are in debt and desperately need to make money to keep up their lifestyle , so the reach out to Brent Corrigan to make a porn video with Brent and Harlow which will be the best gay porn ever. Joe tries to reason with Bryan to give up the copyright on Brent’s name which he refuses. In a fit rage and pre-meditation; Joe and Harlow end up killing Bryan and then burn down his house. Although Brent is the first suspect, because of the under-age scandal; he ultimately helps the cops by producing evidence that it was indeed Joe and Harlow. Finally Brent’s dream of making porn films, producing and directing them himself comes true.

Despite a subject matter that solely relies on gay porn, this film is far from being porn itself. It shows the inner workings of the porn industry, refrains from showing unnecessary sex and solely focuses on the intersection of the above four main characters over the period of time. The acting by all the main actors is all around pretty good. There are scenes that show a little bit of what’s going on in the head of the characters. The scene where Brent is lured by Bryan into having sex with him shows the loneliness that Bryan is dealing with but also shows the helplessness of Brent who doesn’t want to have anything to do with Bryan sexually. In another scene with his mother, Brent confesses that he is not ashamed of being a porn star. In fact, he likes to do in front of camera and he is good at it. The intense and jealous and over protective relationship between Joe and Harlow is also pretty good. But they are also emotional, especially while shooting for a sex scene, Harlow is reminded of his step-father who used to rape him. And finally in the end we do get to see Brent’s famous tattoo on his ass albeit played by another actor. I really wish Sean Paul has played some part in the film. I missed not having him here.

The surprising thing about “King Cobra” is that it winds up being a sex-positive movie that’s sympathetic to Corrigan while also poking some gentle, loving fun at him and committed to fully exploring the sadder fates of the three other men who came to their doom in his sunny presence. I was hoping that the film would be cheesy, bad with needless sex scenes thrown in for excitement but I was surprised to see that it was made with all honesty. (7/10)