Commando terreur

An odd concept for a movie: in Kokomo, Indiana, a group of Libyan terrorists raise hell in the town. What follows is a lengthy car chase (clocking in at almost 30 minutes) involving the entire sheriff's department (led by Chuck Connors of all people). A slew of police cars are demolished, splashed, blown up, etc. Unfortunately, the movie then transitions to a low-rent version of The Breakfast Club (which sets up the rest of the plot) where we follow a group of misfit students who are under the watchful eye of a hateful teacher and they must band together when the terrorists hold them hostage. To be honest, the oddball plot doesn't really work and even with the great Ken Foree in a supporting role as Connors' loyal deputy, the movie still can't get up off the ground.

I recently watched Terror Squad (1987) on Tubi. The storyline follows terrorists seeking revenge against the US, going on a killing spree, and then hiding out in a school. Local authorities strive to bring down the terrorists and save the children.

Directed by Peter Maris (Land of Doom), the film stars Chuck Connors (Tourist Trap), Kavi Raz (Pet Sematary), Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead), and Marco Kyris (Con Air).

This is a movie with a horrible concept and poor execution. The fear of terrorists was the premise, but the terrorists' points, method of communicating their stance, and overall objective were painful. Both the acting and writing for the villains were poor. While there were a few good shootouts and corpses, even those felt cheaply executed. This has a strong '80s feel in terms of characters, dialogue, and circumstances, with a few '70s-style car chase scenes sprinkled in. The finale was laughably bad, both the background music and overall conclusion were dreadful.

Overall, there's absolutely nothing to see here. I would score this a 2/10 and recommend skipping it.

For a low-budget regional production, they certainly managed to do a lot, particularly the endless action scene in the middle of the movie where an unbelievable amount of carnage is enacted. (Though the sluggish pacing at times makes the scene come across as too long, unfortunately.) The premise - terrorists in Indiana - is a hoot, and it helps to partially counteract the slow pacing, thin characters, and questionable writing at times. And there's a big laugh from how the school bus at the end of the movie keeps changing sizes! Not a great movie, but you can't help but admire what the filmmakers accomplished for so little. May very well have inspired the Dolph Lundgren movie DETENTION.

My review was written in April 1988 after waching the film on Forum video cassette.

"Terror Squad" is an exciting B-actioner, despie its absurd premise of Libyan terrorists invading Kokomo, Indiana. Unluckily, pic failed to get a theatrical tryout, going directly to home video shelves.

Chuck Connors, back in his trademark Brooklyn Dodgers jacket, is tghe loal police chief when a commando squad from Khaddafy-land attacks a nuclear power plant. There ensues a spectacular car chase, the lengthiest and one of the best since the classic Barry Newman fpi "Vanishing Point" of 1971. Terrorists, led by Kavi Raz and hothead Joseph Nasser, kidnap a high school class and hold them hostage while Connors comically uses "Dog Day Afternoon" expicitly as his guidebook to negotiations.

Topnotch action directed by Peter Maris lifts this one out of the lookalike boredom of made-for-vid titlesl, and indicates he is ready for a theatrical assignment. Young cast, essaying stet roles in a "Breakfast Club" detention setting, is okay and tech credits are impressive.

Four Arab terrorists, probably Libyans, sneak into the US through the Canadian border. They badly botch an attempt to blow up a nuclear power plant in Indiana. The four that survive are badly pursued by the police, who mostly crash their cars. The terrorists shoot up a town's main street and run down an old man with their car. The pursuing police chief then runs over the old man (a bad dummy).

Meanwhile, a bunch of actors apparently in their twenties are portraying high school students. One of them plays guitar with the janitor, except that on the soundtrack is bad synthesizer music, the same kind of bad synthesizer music that is on the soundtrack. Later, a bunch of the students are in detention. The guitarist plays some more synthesizer music in detention, even though he doesn't have an amp. A jock makes farting sounds with his armpit, except that it sounds more like a synthesizer playing fart sounds.

The now two surviving terrorists, apparently having evaded the police, burst into the detention room. Thus the stereotypical Arabs meet the stereotypical high school students. The police and SWAT surround the school, and miss dozens of opportunities to get into the school and/or shoot the terrorists. The students and their teacher frequently do things to make the terrorists nervous and angry (and one of them is quick to anger anyway), which only results in getting themselves injured or killed.

As others have noted, when the terrorists leave the school in a bus, they are very clearly in a full-length bus. At some point while the police are following them to the airport, it clearly turns into a short half-length bus. I'm at a loss to explain how the filmmakers thought they could get away with that, especially since there are lengthy shots of the bus both when it is long and when it is short.