"Crime is a disease. Meet the cure." Lt. Marion Cobretti, nicknamed Cobra (Sylvester Stallone), is a sun-glass wearing, toothpick chewing cop who is all about getting the criminals and breaking the rules. He has the entire department on his back all the time about his very violent and forceful way of getting the bad guys, normally making the punks end up in a body bag, loaded with lead issued from his trusty pearl handled Colt .45. LA, like most cities, is witnessing a crime wave with a violent crime every 25 seconds, a murder every 24 minutes and 250 sexual assaults on women every day. When a mass shooting at a Los Angeles supermarket evolves into a hostage crisis, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) summons Lieutenant Marion Cobretti of their elite Zombie Squad, to resolve the incident. Cobretti, nicknamed Cobra, confronts the shooter, who espouses social Darwinist ideals and mentions a New World. Cobretti kills him before he can execute a group of hostages. Detective Monte reprimands Cobretti for disregarding police procedure and Cobretti admonishes a group of reporters for not prioritizing the safety of potential victims. Unknown to the authorities, the supermarket incident is part of a string of violent crimes committed by The New World, a social Darwinist cult that despises modern society and believes in killing the weak, leaving only the strongest and smartest to rule. But Cobra is set a real challenge when a killer cult is spreading rapidly in the city. The cult kills innocent people, seeming picking random victims and slaying them with jagged knifes and getting off on the hunted's fear. But they make a huge mistake when they kill a woman at a bus stop and a young model sees them. She doesn't exactly know that they've killed someone, but is extremely scared when one of the killers, a muscle bound and rather deformed looking man, gives her a spine-chilling look. Soon the killers are after her! And they kill her photographer, a security guard and very nearly make her meet their sadistic style of murder. Cobra is soon on the scene, with his partner the junk food loving, Sergeant Gonzales (Reni Santoni). They ask the young model, whose name turns out to be Ingrid (Brigitte Nielsen), if she saw the killers. She says she only saw some people at the bus stop acting very odd and a man who scared her badly. But Cobra's progress into solving the case is halted by the pencil pushing, fat headed Detective Monte (Andrew Robinson), who is always on his case about too much force. He tells Cobra that he's on the Zombie squad for a reason, he's too violent and doesn't please the press. Much to Monte's disgust, the Chief Halliwell (Val Avery) and Captain Sears (Art LaFleur) decided to let Cobra use his street wise talk to fight the killer. Cobra goes through the entire population of the nocturnal seediness of downtown, where all the prostitutes, pimps, bar flies and cons of the city hang out. But he doesn't find any kind of help from these people, and they have no idea who the killers are. Cobra soon connects a supermarket killing, that involved a psycho who claimed that he was part of "the new order" who would wipe out the weak and make the strong survive, to the mass murders ripping at the soft under belly of the capital. But Detective Monte's smart mouth antics and somewhat spineless Captain Sears try to stop him from using aggressive force, not caring that Ingrid almost got killed by one of the cult followers, Night Slasher (Brian Thompson) and that numerous other people were slayed in the hospital at night. Knudsen is placed under the protective custody of Cobretti and his partner Sergeant Tony Gonzales following an attempt on her life. The Captain agrees to let Cobra take Ingrid to the countryside with Gonzales and a female cop named Nancy Stalk (Lee Garlington). Cobretti and Gonzales leave with Knudsen to the small town of San Remos. Little does Cobra know that the heat is going to be turned up instead of cooled off when they leave the city. Nancy is in fact a cult member and leading the Night Slasher and his cronies right to where Cobra is taking Ingrid. Despite not trusting Stalk, Cobretti does nothing and the group spends the night in a motel. While in a motel that's off the beaten track, Ingrid and Cobra realize their attraction to one another. The romantic mood is short lived however, and the cult is back on Cobra's trail. At dawn, the New World arrives in San Remos on motorcycles and besieges the town on Stalk's instructions. In a shootout, Cobretti kills many cultists, but Gonzales is wounded. The cult burn down the motel and almost kill Gonzales. Cobra and Ingrid ride off in a pick-up truck and almost meet their end by crashing into a burning car that's blocking the road. Cobra still manages to take some punks down though, with a very nice piece of weaponry called the laser mount sub-machine gun. They end up in a chemical factory and finally Night Slasher and Cobra come face to face. In a very psychotic speech Night Slasher says that Cobra's law is weak and that their cult will always survive. This sends Cobra off the deep end and Slasher onto a huge metal hook, that rips through his back and sends him off into a molten vat of metal. Nancy however is still alive and tries to kill Cobra, but she is also killed. After all the bloodshed, Cobra and Ingrid emerged slightly bruised and dirty, from the factory. The Captain congratulates Cobra, but Monte is too proud to actually admit that Cobra won the fight. He picks up his bit about too much excessive force, but earns himself a good punch from Cobra, sending him to the ground stone cold. Ingrid and Cobra ride off on a motorbike into the sunset to Kiss singing "Can you get enough me baby I can't get enough of you."
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