Commando Squad (1987)

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Most people will never give a break to any former Playboy Playmate trying to make it into the movie business, but IMO Kathy Shower does a pretty good job in this film. She's no Dona Speir (whom I consider a perfectly credible action actress), but she doesn't embarrass herself either. She has presence, she has attitude and she has self-assurance, and remember: sometimes how you sell what you can do is more important than what you can actually do. If it seems like I'm focusing too much on Kathy, it's because the rest of "Commando Squad" is an utterly routine actioner, with Brian Thomson as the token male lead and William Smith, Sid Haig and Ross Hagen as the trio of slimy villains. But considering the low (as usual) budget that Fred Olen Ray had to work with, the results are at least passable. (**)

Brian Thompson (Wonder why he always plays support in Van Damme movies, here is why) stars as commando who is kidnapped by a bunch of Latin drug-lords who are no match for him or his girlfriend (The hopeless Kathy Shower) and her team of DEA agents. This was made to capitalize on Andy Sidaris' type of movies that for some reason have proved to be popular among genre fans. (It must be the playmates and their boobs) The movie is very badly made with scenes that make little sense and the action sequences are done very poorly. I never was a fan of the action flicks from Andy Sidaris since the truth of the matter is that I can always rent a porno, still even fans of the bimbo action movie are better off with Andy Sidaris' pictures then wasting their time here.* out of 4-(Bad)

I thought that this movie seemed kind of cool when I first heard about it, but when I watched it, I was pretty disappointed.I thought that Brian Thompson was going to go out there and do some good ol' fashioned ass-kicking, while hauling this chick alongside him. But instead he was just a prisoner getting tortured during the most of the movie, and even had to be saved by that little chick!(Kathy Shower)I thought their "fake love-scene" was funny, and explosions are always funny, but this reminded me a bit too much of a long TV-episode of "the A-Team" or something like that.. lots of explosions, shooting, jumping around and making (un-funny) jokes... in fact, I would rather watch an episode of the A-team than watching this movie once more....I think that Brian Thompson was much better in "Three Amigos!" and "Terminator", even though he didn't get as much playtime in those films. And Kathy Shower looks better on a poster than in an action-movie.If you watch this movie and think it was robbed at Oscar-time, then you should probably get your head checked or something....It would sweep all the awards at the raspberry awards, I think.But the Crappo-Squad still was an okay "one-time-watching" experience, so just go see it anyways... but no more than two times... your brain could take serious damage of watching movies this bad! Well, now I'm exaggerating a bit perhaps...it would've been very good, if it had been a TV-series. But not as a full-length movie.I would give it 4/10, and *½/****