On this date, in 1941, future director George Pan Cosmatos was born in Italy.  Cosmatos would go on to direct some of the most financially successfully (if critically lambasted) films of the 80s.  He’s also credited as being the director on Tombstone, though it’s generally agreed that Cosmatos largely deferred to Kurt Russell on that film.  (Cosmatos was a last minute replacement for the film’s original director.)

Other than Tombstone, Cosmatos is best-known for the films that he did with Sylvester Stallone.  And today’s scene that I love comes from the 1986 film, Cobra.  Cobra stars Stallone as a motorcycle-riding cop who never asks question when he can just shoot a big gun instead.  Stallone’s show-no-mercy attitude may upset his superiors but it turns out to be just what’s needed to take care of a murderous cult.  Now, Cobra may be a fairly dumb film but it does have one sequence that pretty much epitomizes an era.  If nothing else, George Pan Cosmatos deserves to be remembered for Cobra’s famous robot montage.  While Sylvester Stallone searches for the murders who are decimating his city, model Brigitte Nielsen poses with a bunch of life-size robots.

One reason why this sequence works is because it really does seem to come out of nowhere.  The film goes from Stallone promising to wipe out the bad guys to a bunch of adorable robots.  It’s all very 80s.  And we have George Pan Cosmatos to thank for it.

Here’s a scene that I love: