Commando Squad is a 1987 American action film directed by Fred Olen Ray, starring Kathy Shower, Brian Thompson and William Smith.
Shower stars as a tough U.S. cop who travels to Mexico to help her ex-boyfriend and fellow crime fighter, who has run afoul of a drug cartel led by a disgraced colleague.
Jensen sends a desperate message to his ex-girlfriend and former partner Kat Withers, herself one of the CIA's leading operatives in the war on drugs.
[1]: 92 [2][3] In 1985, the project was retooled as a girls with guns film starring Sybil Danning and Israeli actress Anat Atzmon, with Fred Olen Ray now attached to direct.
[9] Although Norris' name was absent from the promotional poster of the Danning-led reboot, he maintained that he would start filming Commando Squad in July 1986.
[3] However, the male lead instead went to Brian Thompson, who was coming off supporting role in TWE's Catch the Heat, and claimed to have been offered a five-picture deal by the company.
[12]: 14:35 Although Tané McClure's manager husband had placed one of her songs in Ray's earlier film Armed Response, her casting in Commando Squad did not stem from that and she just showed up for the audition on her own.
[16]: 0:50 Mexican landscapes were represented by several Los Angeles area locations frequently employed by the movie industry, such as Agoura's Paramount Ranch[17] and Bronson Canyon.
[1]: 43 A stunt went wrong when one of the vehicles veered off course and started rolling down towards a parking lot, forcing one of the stuntmen to overtake it and block the road with his own car.
Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times conceded that "[c]inematographer Gary Graver gets some nice shots and director Fred Olen Ray gets in cynical humor and a few interesting villains".