The Panther Squad (1984) Poster

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3/10
Embarrassingly dreadful.
gridoon7 July 2002
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.
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3/10
They call me Jane ... Jane Blonde "0037's"
Ed-Shullivan18 April 2022
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.
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2/10
How can you make a boring Sybil Danning movie?
BandSAboutMovies29 August 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Yes, I realize that this is not a Full Moon film, but they carry it in their online store and on their streaming platform and I'm quite frankly exhausted by all the puppets and bongs and miniature killers and DeCoteau movies and when I saw Sybil Danning on the poster, teenage me said, "We need to stay up until.4 AM on a work night and watch this."

The New Order of Nations is ready to escape Earth and start exploring space, but there are these terrorists called Clean Space who realize that humans are just going to litter other planets, so they decide to kill every astronaut so the nations of the planet decide to hire Sybil Danning, who wears lots of leather and honestly, that's more than enough plot and makes me like this movie even if they never go to space.

There are so many guitar riffs and people running around in ill-advised outfits and I watched this in French because why not?

Force Five Podcast put up the best action from this movie - honestly there barely is any - and I can admit that I'm only posting it here because Sybil Danning is lounging poolside dressed like someone ready to fight a Terminator and sometimes when I get sad, this is the kind of thing that gets me through the day.

Facts you should know:

The theme song is called "She's Tough and Tender (Theme from Panther Squad)."

Sybil Danning kept her outfit after filming was done.

Somehow, Jack Taylor made bad movies all over the world and I love him every single time he's on my screen. I feel the same way about Donald O'Brien and I would like to think they had several meals and drinks together where they argued over who had the craziest films in their respective histories. I'd love to debate this with someone.

Karin Schubert, Hanna D.'s mother from that Bruno Mattei blast of ripoff insanity, is in this.

If you want to see this movie done right, I can recommend every single Andy Sidaris movie to you.
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Slapdash Video Euro Trash
rcoates-661-2224927 August 2011
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.
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2/10
an incredibly lame movie(may contain spoilers)
wound317 January 2001
Warning: Spoilers
this movie is incredibly lame. im not sure whether the makers of this movie were trying to make a serious movie or a parody of something that was supposed to be laughed at. apparently the "panther squad" is supposed to be some sort of elite crime-fighting force made up of young, sexy women led by a more experienced member(who looks forty) . sure, they're supposed to seem cool, but they come out looking and sounding sooooooo stupid. its funny to watch at times. they have these really lame remarks through out the movie, like; lets show'em how to party", or,"stay down or we'll blow your snikes off". it's laughable how they also look so lame becouse they're trying so hard to look cool, and their fights(which they win so easily).are acompanied with funky 70S type music. the plot is ridiculous, as they try to win against incredible odds. watch out for the dumbest ending ever. there's some effort to make this movie good, but its spoiled by the fact that it looks really low budget, and is really boring unless you've got nothing else to do but to whatch this horrible, horrible movie.

so lame, it can be funny. and a boring movie if you have nothing better to do.

my rating: 2/10 (which is pretty much the worst movie i've seen!)
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4/10
This Has Good Elements, but Budget Holds it Back
Reviews_of_the_Dead14 March 2024
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.
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3/10
Very tame 80's action flick!
TodaysHaul31710 February 2024
Panther Squad is a 1984 action film directed by Pierre Chevalier (House of Cruel Dolls, The Invisible Dead, East of Berlin, and Ladies House of Pleasure) under the name Peter Knight. It was written by Georges Friedland (Angel of Death, Maniac Killer, Night of the Eagles, and Moonwolf) and Ilona Koch. It was produced by the legendary Jesus Franco (Jailhouse Wardress, Golden Temple Amazons,Faceless, House of Cruel Dolls, Zombie Lake, Barbed Wire Dolls, The Sadist of Notre Dame, Angel of Death, Diamonds of Kilimandjaro, and Sinfonía Erótica). Ilona (played by: Sybil Danning from The Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf, Hercules, Nightkill, Battle Beyond the Stars, Julie Darling, Chained Heat, They're Playing with Fire, Malibu Express, Reform School Girls, LA Bounty, The Phantom Empire, Grindhouse, and Halloween) who is known as The Panther leads a squad of female mercenaries. When a famous astronaut is held captive by a group of murderous environmental extremists known as Space Clean, the desperate world leaders turn to The Panther Squad. These dangerous women go on a search, rescue, and destroy mission to save the future. Can they succeed during this risky and brutal job????

Panther Squad is kinda a shocker and not really in a good way. You would think something like this would be loaded with sleaze and nudity but there's actually none here. It has decent action every once in awhile but it's a little slow and boring for the most part. The action featured here is a little tame compared what was being made around the same time from this sub-genre. It has some classic Eurocine choppy editing and it's very low budget in every possible way when it comes to the production so those features kinda add to it's bad movie charm. I did enjoy the classic 80's style score and it's cheesy rock theme song. Panther Squad is definitely one of those 80's action flicks trick you with it's cover artwork and plot that's promised on the back. It just doesn't live up to anything to be real. Cult actress Sybil Danning gets one of her rare leading roles in Panther Squad. She's probably the best thing about this mess. She still looks great here and the other woman tease some eye candy but nothing ends up happening with this sexy cast of women. It has a few familiar faces in this that includes Jack Taylor (Pieces, Angel of Death, and House of Cruel Dolls), Donald O'Brien (Emmanuelle and the last Cannibals, The Sect, and Zombie Holocaust), Karin Schubert (Emanuelle Around the World), Jean-René Gossart (Maniac Killer), and Antonio Mayans (Angel of Death and Diamonds of Kilimandjaro). Panther Squad has a few solid moments but for the most part it's just a bad movie. This might be a good one to hang out with some friends and play a drinking game with. It's worth checking out at least once but definitely don't get your hopes up for it. If you are still curious about it, it's available on Tubi right now.
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8/10
Entertaining piece of 80's action trash
Woodyanders16 April 2020
Warning: Spoilers
An astronaut gets abducted by a radical group of environmental terrorists. It's up to a group of female mercenaries led by the insanely foxy Ilona (almighty B-movie goddess Sybil Danning in fine two-fisted form) to save the day.

Man, is this one really silly, but still enjoyable flick: The ham-fisted (mis)direction, extremely inane story, chintzy (not so) special effects, ineptly staged action scenes, the furiously pumpin' score, a groovy 80's rock theme song, and an amusing sense of campy humor all give this honey a certain loveably tacky charm. The familiar cast of Eurosleaze cinema faces helps a lot: Jack Taylor as the laid-back Frank Bramble, Antonio Mayans as the flamboyantly evil General Carlos, and Karin Schubert as the feisty Barbara. Alas, there's no nudity, but the gals all look nice in their bikinis and Sybil seriously rocks her gnarly leather outfit. A schlocky hoot.
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Wimpy Sybil Danning vehicle
lor_12 March 2023
My review was written in July 1986 after watching the movie on Lightning video cassette.

"Panther Squad" is bound to be a disappointment for Sybil Danning fans as, in stepping into a co-produce role in addition to starring, the statuesque actress has deleted the sexy elements of her earlier work. Feature, filmed last year in Spain and Belgium, is a direct-to-videocassette release.

A dumb sci-fi storyline has an anti-pollution group called Clean Space terrorizing the space program of New Organization of Nations (a followup to the UN). Clean space sabotages a launch of NOON's futuristic Space Jeep and kidnaps the female backup astronaut in order to prevent a second mission.

NOON calls in female commando Ilona (Sybil Dannig) who brings in her six femme assistants to free the astronaut and put Clean Space out of business.

Not only is there no nudity and no sex in the picture, the action scenes are poorly photographed and edited. Sight of Danning and her minions in campy, bare-midriff leather outfits easily disposing of male cast members is silly wish fulfillment executed on a G-rated level. Sci-fi content is limited to Danning using a disintegrator gun in the final reel.

Actors speak English slowly and clearly, allowing for acceptable post-synched dialog, but the lines are stupid, such as Danning confronting a megalomaniac general's soldiers, yelling: "Surrender or I'll blow your Nikes off!". It's sobering to find out that the environmentalists are portrayed as the bad guys.
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10/10
Clean Space Power!
erikwmark4 May 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Kalidescope vision in the firing range. Journalists at the globalist space press conference write notes like their fingers are broken.

Clean Space are eco terrorists determined to stop the launch. Hubristic jerks mess everything up. A convoluted kidnapping.

Sybil Danning runs the merc squad tasked with taking out Clean Space, along with acting the gumshoe and beating up would be rapists.

It's a Latin American made up city. Yankee go home but she's Norwegian. The rest of the babes who are dressed like rock groupies arrive and promptly go swimming. Jack Taylor as always inebriated assistant.

Windsurfing hot bikini chicks distract the guards, then beat the others to a pulp. If you're guarding something and inappropriately dressed hot ladies come out of the jungle and want to make it, they probably have ulterior motives.

The villains all have speech impediments. Clean Space is being taken over by some weird cartel and or tinpot dictator, so apparently they were just naïve environmentalists and not bloodthirsty killers bent on world domination. Ah well.

Clean Space Power!
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Just a good b-movie
timkeunglee28 October 2001
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.
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