The Panther Squad

I pity the video rental store customers who, looking for something fun to watch on a slow night in the mid 80s, saw this sexy box cover with Sybil Danning holding a machine gun, got excited, read on the back that "the Panther Squad gives you non-stop action", and believed it.

Even connoisseurs of trash are likely to feel let down by this one. After a promising opening credits target practice montage set to a fun rock song called "Tough and Tender", Panther Squad goes limp and lazily smirks its way through a series of lame gags, sub-Dolemite fight choreography, and lifeless acting to a mildly amusing end sequence involving an easily whipped world takeover attempt and a cheesy laser that makes a Jeep disappear. A chintzy flick like this one really needs to slather on the exploitative elements in order to hold a viewer's interest, but Panther Squad is sadly and uninterestingly barren of any gore or nudity.

Danning lacks the charisma to carry such lackluster material, and Jack Taylor, a familiar face from European horror films like The Vampires Night Orgy and Pieces, looks bored throughout - though this is apparently intentional and supposed to be humorous - and his absentminded spy character effectively sums up the film's merits when he observes, "Things move pretty slowly around here." Panther Squad is clearly intended as camp, but at times one wonders where the winking, unfunny play ineptitude ends and the real lack of behind-the-camera talent takes over. Case in point: the villains are supposed to be wacko anti-pollution terrorists, but in one scene we see a group of them riding in a car that's putting out blasts of thick, black smoke. Is this a joke, or was the production just that cheap and shoddy? I'm still not sure.

Fans of filmmaking on the Mikels or Sloane level might be able to tolerate this, but all others are advised to avoid. As of writing, unloved VHS copies of Panther Squad are cheaply available.

This is a movie that I'll be honest, I didn't know about until getting the Eurocine Volume 1 collection for review thanks to Laura from Scandal Coactive. This was one intrigued me more than others because it featured Sybil Danning. She's an actress that I know from The Howling 2. I also know that she appeared in Rob Zombie's Halloween, V and other things from back in the day. I was intrigued to see what we'd get here.

Synopsis: a squad of female mercenaries take an organization called Space Clean, which is dedicated to stopping space exploration.

We start this off with seeing women doing target practice in a shooting range. This is done with the opening credits and the theme. We then shift over to learning that the world has joined into a world order called N. O. O. N. or New Organization of Nations, outside of a few smaller ones. The reason is pooling resources together for space exploration. We see the president, played by Roger Darton, as he is relaying this information.

There's a problem though. An eco-terrorist group, Clean Space, has hijacked this spacecraft. We see that N. O. O. N. tries to regain control, but they can't. There is something on Earth that is preventing making contact to the spacecraft. They also scramble to send up the other pilot to regain control, but she is kidnapped. It is decided that a special group needs to be called in, they're led by Ilona aka The Panther (Danning).

She contacts Frank Bramble (Jack Taylor). He's supposed to be a great special agent, but he's a drunk. We see that Ilona doesn't drink to keep her wits about her. She brings in her unit, made up of Françoise Bocci, Donna Cross, Karin Brussels, Analía Ivars and Virginia Svenson. They're all women and they use it to their advantage.

Their mission leads them to a compound that houses Barbara (Karin Schubert), the leader of Clean Space is played by Jean-René Gossart and a local general Carlos (Antonio Mayans). This elite team is risking their lives to save the hostage and regain control of the space craft before it is too late.

That is where I'll leave my recap and introduction to the characters. There isn't much to this story and it feels like it is borrowing from other action movies of the time. I'm not as versed with when movies came out, but I can't imagine this did it first. Something that is interesting is that our villains have a good point. They just do it in a way that isn't great. They don't want humanity to explore space, they want to keep it clean. With environmental issues we're having today, this is relevant.

Where I'll then start to delve deeper is that I love the feminist approach we have here. There's an all women squad of commandos. They're all beautiful with Danning leading the way. This is also sexist with the outfits they're wearing. Having them wear bikinis at one point as a distraction makes sense. When they're infiltrating an enemy base in heels and barely any clothes, that isn't practical. Now I've not seen much of them, but this feels like an Andy Sedaris film without the nudity. Having the latter would make sense for what it tries to do.

I think next aspect I'll go to is filmmaking. This Blu-ray looked great. I'll credit the clean up there. I'd say that the cinematography is fine. Setting up the locations are good. We do have filler here with documentary footage edited in. I get why they're using it, but it doesn't make sense to show a traditional rocket and then cut to space where it is something futuristic. The action scenes aren't great. We can see that these people aren't used to doing their own stunts and it is limited what we get there. The stakes aren't there either. I do have a soft spot for the soundtrack. It is so 80s from the theme to songs picked. This is just a low budget action film and you can feel it with how it limits what they're doing.

All that is left then is acting. I loved seeing Danning here as she's gorgeous. The problem is that she doesn't have much to work with here. Her fight scenes are stiff. The draw here is seeing her in this leather outfit. Her crew isn't much better. I'll say that they're good looking and we see them wearing little. The best performer here is Taylor. He's hilarious as this drunk secret agent. I thought that Schubert, Gossart, Mayans and the rest of the villains were fine. The acting here isn't good. Part of that is the language barrier. This isn't working with a large budget so take that into account.

I've given this a second watch with the commentary on. This featured Danning chatting with a gentleman. He did say that he was calling from Toronto or somewhere near there in Canada. He was hard to hear. Danning on the other hand was in a studio in Los Angeles. What I'll say is that listening to her made me appreciate this movie more than I did originally. She talks about her career, different things that she's done and how her time working on this film was behind the scenes. She does also give insight to her co-stars and the locations this was shot. I rather enjoyed hearing this and the information that she provided.

In conclusion, this is a fun action film. It's not good though. I do hate to say that, but the story is generic. There isn't much in the way of tension as I'm not worried about the characters. Part of that is we don't get to know any of them outside of Ilona or Frank. This is a vehicle to show off Danning and her body. The filmmaking is fine, but it is limited by the budget. There are things that aren't matching up. The action sequences are boring. This feels like it is a movie that needed nudity to get it a draw. Not one I can recommend until you want one you can mostly ignore while having drinks with friends.

My Rating: 3.5 out of 10.

Embarrassingly bad, grade-Z "action" film, but the spectacle of a leather-clad Sybil Danning is worthy of a single star. If you're looking for a serious actioner with girls kicking a**, don't bother; obviously the people involved in making this don't have a clue. The man who plays the only male agent gives the only convincing performance; he looks utterly stupefied.

This movies is properbly the best from Sybil Danning. A team of sexy commandos go to rescue the world from an terrorist orginisation. This theme is nothing special but the talent of sybil's group make this one very impressive. They do run, fight a lot and beat up the bad guys. However, this is a low budget film that unable to make a convincing sences at the end of the story. Indeed, such kind of girl-n-gun genre would never be convincing enough. Who care. I should say this is very good one you can find among the euro spy action and Miss danning is impressive. Definitely, it delivers the elements that charlie' angels does.

It's camp at best and a very poor imitation of a female version of a James Bond action film. Sybil Danning struts around the screen in tight leather pants and a leather halter top and bandana accompanied by a bunch of so called Charlie Angels in bikinis. They are assigned to save the world from a gang of bad guys who simply want to stop the space mission to save the planet of course.

Obviously the producers just wanted to keep close to Sybil Danning and watch her in action. I'm still waiting for the action to start.

I give it a 3 out of 10 IMDb rating.