La battaglia dell'ultimo panzer

A German panzer brigade is smashed to bits by Americans ( who are wearing stupid Nazi helmets , what ? ) but one crew survive and must repair their m47 Patton , sorry , tiger in order to get back to their own lines before being captured or killed. The plot sounds interesting but when the film gets started it delivers bad acting , poor action scenes and an array of weapons that are from the 1960's , come on every war film still manages to get the correct uniform and weapons ( besides tanks ). Don't even watch this film sober otherwise you will go to a neighbouring farm and shoot yourself with the farmers shotgun. A poor movie in every aspect and i am shocked that TCM were the ones who showed this on TV.

"The Battle of the Last Panzer" was a co-production between the countries of Spain and Italy. Despite two countries collaborating on the movie, it seems that they weren't able to raise a decent budget. Although the events of the movie take place in France, the filmmakers stuck to filming in the Spanish countryside, which looks nothing like France. Also, the French village in the movie is obviously a thinly dressed set used for a spaghetti western!

However, the tacky look of the entire enterprise wasn't what sunk the movie for me. There are two big problems in the movie. The first is that none of the characters is sufficiently fleshed out enough so that we can care about them (or hate them). The second problem is that the movie is pretty boring. There's far too much talk and not enough action. And the little action there is in the movie is poorly directed so that there isn't the least bit amount of excitement. Too bad, because despite the low budget you can see the potential the premise of the movie had.

I almost turned this movie off during the first 10 minutes. I decided to continue watching it to see if there really was a plot buried amidst all of the other shortcomings of the film. There are several things that you should know that are bound to annoy the typical war movie viewer. 1. Stupid music. Some of the worst I have ever heard. It reminds me of the old spaghetti westerns. 2. It's a dubbed movie. I'm not a fan of movies that are dubbed, i'd rather watch them in the language they were shot in and read captions. In this case, it's worse because the Americans and the Germans are both dubbed and have no accents what-so-ever. In some really dark scenes, you don't know if you are watching the Germans or the Americans. 3. Authenticity. There are so many inconsistencies with weaponry, uniforms etc that it's hard to tell who is who and who they are shooting at. Even the Germans shoot at the other Germans who are hiding behind a tank early in the movie yet, Later, in pitch black one of the men can identify the Lieutenant from 1/4 of a mile away as he walks down a hillside. 4. Dialogue. War movies are about war. Guns, explosions and people fighting. There are some really odd cut scenes. There is one with a prostitute where a soldier trying to teach her about humanities indecency - she's not interested, she just wants the $64 dollars. Most of the dialog reminds me of watching Japanese Anime.

If you watched it this far, you might as well know that it doesn't get any better. All of the actors have perfected rolling down hills as they die. Apparently gravity always pulls you towards a camera man, never away.

All in all, a complete waste of time. Unless you are just looking for a movie with cheesy dialog, there's ALWAYS something better than this to watch.

This one could have easily been called LITTLE LOST PANZER ON THE RANGE, and is a nearly brain dead but nonetheless enjoyable Spaghetti Western masquerading as a war thriller. Since Spaghetti Westerns are essentially cartoons for grown-ups, I can see how BATTLE OF THE LAST PANZER has confused many viewers into thinking it a failure. There are no "good guys" in this movie (a quality shared with Spaghetti), but there are no real "bad guys" either, which is perhaps the movie's biggest flaw -- it's hard to figure out whom exactly one should be rooting for, but one of the characters helpfully states straight out the movie's agenda: There are no good or bad nations, only good or bad men. A worthy and romantic conclusion to be sure but in direct conflict with the traditional role that Germans play in mainstream WW2 movies, which is to be the villains. Just ask Steven Spielberg.

So like Umberto Lenzi's DESERT COMMANDOS, here is a low budget pre- DAS BOOT war movie that asks us to consider the German soldiers as people with the same kind of good/bad dualities that exist within even the most noble of us. "Stan Cooper" plays a more or less straight-laced young German Lt. in command of what is portrayed as the last functioning Panzer tank still fighting World War II, cut off from German lines after a devastating ambush knocks out all of the other Panzers in his column retreating from Normandy after the allied D-Day invasion, the German war effort obviously lost beyond any hope & the Nazis in a near panic as defeat looms. The majority of the film depicts Cooper and his crew roaming the faux-French countryside -- which will look eerily familiar to anyone who has seen at least three Spaghetti Westerns, since most were filmed on the same Spanish exterior locations -- encountering various indigenous locals, fighting off allied elements, and contemplating the meaning of service, loyalty, the value of life, and the price of failure to follow orders. The usual stuff, competently staged & filmed by true professionals. Whether or not the tanks or other equipment used are historically accurate is irrelevant: get over it. This is a well made movie, even if incredibly stupid if you stop to think about it.

Regardless, all of that works pretty well until the film stumbles when the element of a woman is arbitrarily interjected, and Cooper finds himself falling in love with a hostage (blond Erna Schürer, a classic beauty in every sense of the term) who has volunteered to lead the wayward tank crew back to German lines. Skirmishes with odd looking war surplus garbed Partisans and headline Gringo star Guy Madison's ineffectual American brigade kill time and raise the body count, punctuated by a fascinating combat sequence where director Jose Luis Merino -- best known for his Gothic Horror thrillers -- colors his film with nearly opaque red and blue filters. Another interesting moment comes when Cooper is allowed access to the body of his new lust-thang and the thought of his men, his mission, and the danger they are in causes a certain amount of post traumatic stress disorder coitus interruptus, much to the annoyance of his would be squeeze. The romance subplot is perhaps the film's other major flaw but it does allow for some dimension to be added to the character of this zealous, ultra-loyal German officer and leads to the eventual cracking of his surface to let some of the humanity come through.

But the ending is almost an unforgivable cop-out, a seemingly arbitrary "War Is Hell" moment added to show viewers the futility of it all, in case we missed the point on our own & were having fun. In the end Merino's message seems to be that war isn't fun but it can be entertaining for others to watch, especially if you can get your hands on a big, cool looking working tank, a pretty girl or two and some moments of choreographed destruction. The final tank battle is actually very reminiscent of a show down on the streets of a dusty Western town between the hero & the villain, and Merino chose to have the two tanks be identical to sort of tell us that one is just like the other, like Radio Raheem's LOVE and HATE knuckle dusters from DO THE RIGHT THING. It's not the most profound insight into human character ever to pop up in a war movie, but in this case it will have to do.

All in all the movie goes on for about 10 minutes longer than it should have, and while the story is involving for sure it never really resonates on the emotional level that the subject matter would usually endow on a film. So it really is almost a pure example of how the Euro cult genre directors re-tooled their Spaghetti Western approach to ape war movies for the brief period of time (1968 to 1970 or so) that this strange little "Euro War" genre was all the rage, and stands as an instructive example of the process at work. Fans of the Euro B-movie scene from the 1960's/1970's will be well served by taking a look, but anyone in search of a history lesson might want to just see what's on the History Channel. That's not what these movies were made for, and holding it accountable for failing to rise to a standard imposed upon it by a future generation with different social mores isn't fair.

7/10; look for it on one of those bargain priced multi-disc DVD box sets for about $9, and make up your own mind.

"La Battaglia dell'ultimo panzer" is about a German panzer crew caught behind the American lines in France in 1944. The production values of the movie are very low; the anachronisms and errors concerning equipment and uniforms are actually quite obvious. Nevertheless, the plot is quite intelligent. This is a surprisingly serious war movie and much more reflective than most WW II war movies of the period (such as 'Where Eagles Dare' or 'Kelly's Heroes', or the countless Italian rip-offs of these more 'lighthearted' war thrillers.)

This is mainly because the characters, and in particular the German soldiers, are more than just the kind of cardboard cliches one expects from this type of low-budget movie. Especially the main character, a German lieutenant and commander of the crew, played by Stelvio Rosi, is a surprisingly three dimensional character. While he presents himself as a hardline nazi believer at first, we later see that the horrors of war affect him deeply in an unexpected moment and the final scenes of the movie have a very bitter lesson in store for him. Civilians and their different ways of dealing with the occupation also have a place, giving some surprising nuances which most war movies (including the technically infinitely superior, but plot-wise arguably inferior 'Saving Private Ryan') lack.

The acting is middle-of the road. None of the (quite unknown) actors are really bad, but none really stands out. 8/10 for some of the writing, 2/10 for the production values