Commando Leopard

A cruel tyrant named Homoza( Somoza ?) imposes his rules and tyranny in a South American country.The corruption, brutality and exploitation are usual practice but some people begin organize the resistance. A little group of guerrilla fight against the government. As a commando led by Carrasco (Lewis Collins), a tough, two-fisted rebel helped by a foreigner mercenary (John Steiner) and a veteran rebellious (Alan Collins or Luciano Pigozzi , the Italian Peter Lorre, customary in B series), among others . The adventure starts when the veteran band of mercenaries land deep inside the jungle to destroy a giant dam. Later on, they help out the jungle's inhabitants against the nasty Silveira(Klaus Kinski). Meanwhile they find a Catholic priest(Manfred Lhemamn) ruling a mission in middle of jungle and another (Mike Monty) as back-up.

This exciting film packs large-scale blow-up, routine plot, and lots of noisy action for the most part. Some cheesy scenes but contains a better scenario on the bridge blowing up , the burning installations and a spectacular Boeing plane explosion . This fast-paced movie blends adventures, thrills, and mindless agitation . Screenplay by usual Tito Carpi but some moving action scenes cannot a silly script save. Stirring final full of explosions, shootouts and including helicopters with fire-thrower ; furthermore some plot twists and turns. Cinematography is quite well, capturing the atmosphere of everywhere, in addition some moving images shot with camera above the shoulder. Embarrassment musical score composed by synthesizer isn't composed by Ennio Morricone. The picture is produced in average budget by Erwin C. Dietrich, ordinary producer and director of soft-core genre and Jess Frank's habitual financier. The motion picture is regularly directed by Antonio Margheriti or Anthony M. Dawson.These jungle-setting exploitation films from the 80s will like to action lovers and euro-trash enthusiasts.

The film belongs a trilogy directed by Anthony M Dawson(Margheriti) formed by ¨Wild Geese¨(1984)¨, ¨Commando Leopard(1985)¨ and ¨Der Commander(1988)¨ repeating similar actors, as Collins, Kinski,Manfred Lehmann , technicians and screenwriter, Tito Carpi.

Kommando Leopard is chapter 2 in the Dawson-Collins jungle war trilogy, and whilst baring no real relation to the others, is essentially the same film with a few plot variations. This instalment finds the intrepid mercenaries being pursued by contract killer Klaus Kinski whilst holed up in a Church hospital run by mysterious priest Manfred Lehmann.

Quality scale miniature sets are used in abundance but generally to good effect, whilst the personnel is also much the same as the predecessor with Lehmann, Kinski and Collins re- joining Thomas Danneberg and veteran Alan Collins (aka Luciano Pigozzi) whilst American ex-pat Mike Monty and British ex-pat John Steiner join the franchise for their first appearances. Kinski does arrogant bad-ar$e better than anyone and this is a masterclass of his less-is-more approach though it's debatable whether his bored exterior is acting or genuine contempt.

As with the others there's a fair amount of pathos on display, mourning those lost and lamenting the sacrifices and collateral damage made in the name of cheque-book war - all of which is unnecessary and pure guff. But if you like it when stuff explodes, catches fire or just enjoy massive machine gun recoil and spent cartridges flying in all directions whilst the hero nonchalantly mows down his incompetent opponents, then Kommando Leopard will be very adequate - though brainless- escapism.

Judging by the overall look of this, it would appear that Antonio Margheriti was given a bigger than usual budget to play with for this follow up to his earlier Codename: Wildgeese.

Although not a direct sequel, the two films share many of the same cast members from the earlier picture including Lewis Collins, Klaus Kinski and Luciano Pigozzi (in different roles)

Well, I've got to say straight away that the ostensible extra budget really shows in the special effects department in this with some absolutely superb explosive sequences involving Margheriti's trademark miniature work, most notably during the opening sequence wherein a dam is detonated and even more spectacularly later on when a passenger aircraft is blown up as it comes in to land....awesome stuff!

Regretfully, I must also say that the action scenes, such as those mentioned are sadly far too infrequent with the 'filling' in between them proving to be somewhat less than engaging in comparison.

The performances are all fine with Kinski especially on typically snide and evil top form. Also of note is the soundtrack by the legendary Ennio Morricone which really lifts the action sequences up yet another notch.

Overall then, whilst this may certainly represent one of, if not the pinnacle of Margheriti's work visually (and possibly budgetary), for me at least, this is most certainly not the directors best effort in the genre. That accolade would, in my humble opinion, go to the classic The Last Hunter for it's sheer entertainment value.

Commando Leopard is cheesy but enthusiastic action trash for the most part. It's not extremely different from any other jungle-set, exploitation war movie from the 1980's. However, it does have 3 notable elements: First, the photography shows occasional flourishes of style that you wouldn't expect in a cheap 80s action b-movie. It's shot in 2.35:1 widescreen and every so often you get an artfully composed shot, a low angle "hero pose" image (which are far more common to big budget post-1990 action movies!), or a visceral over-the-shoulder camera angle on the gun play. The photography is nothing spectacular as a whole, but it does give the film an intermittent visual slickness that sets it apart from the bland coverage common to 1980's B-movie cinematography. Second, legendary actor Klaus Kinski is in the movie. Third, Commando Leopard is quite ambitious with at least 3 large-scale destruction/explosion scenes. There's a sense of enthusiasm to the affair that makes it easy to watch. Overall, it's one of the better examples of low-budget, exploitation film-making in the genre and era.

As a kid I saw CODENAME: WILDGEESE and was none-too-impressed. Since then, I've developed more of a taste for these Italian films and found that Antonio Margheriti is possibly the best of the bunch when it comes to action scenes. Bruno Mattei is a close contender (and no I am not joking) but Margheriti takes the cake for best explosion-filmer in Italian cinema.

The airplane explosion at the airport about halfway through is reason enough to track down this movie. It looks completely awesome! Equally cool is a massive oil refinery/train explosion later in the film, not recycled footage from THE LAST HUNTER either! Also notable are a couple helicopter explosions and a huge dam getting busted.

The plot is negligible and the acting and photography pretty routine, but the great cast and action sequences make up for that. Klaus Kinski is underused as usual, but appears to be having a lot of fun firing blanks from his M-16 and mowing down dozens of extras. The (Morricone?) musical score is pretty light and well-used for the most part, working well with the action scenes. However, Margheriti undermines the ending of the film with a completely awful song "In The War" which plays over the ending credits. This is pretty similar to the endings of a lot of his films from the time period, though it doesn't end with a freeze-frame oddly enough.

If you're a serious action buff, you shouldn't go without this movie!