The Panther Squad is a 1984 French–Belgian–Liechtensteiner[1] action comedy film directed by Pierre Chevalier and starring Sybil Danning, Jack Taylor, Antonio Mayans, Karin Schubert and Donald O'Brien.
Danning plays the head of an all-girl commando unit pitted against green activists, who have been manipulated by a South American dictator into sabotaging an international space program.
Dan Simon, producer and director of foreign sales for his father Marius' Eurociné company, saw in her the marquee name that could open doors to key markets, particularly Anglo-Saxon ones which had proven averse to his typically European brand of post-synchronized B-movies.
[3]: 34:23 Part of the mutually beneficial arrangement was a co-producer credit for Danning, which she and manager S.C. Dacy desired as it would lend credibility to their ongoing efforts to branch out into production.
[5]: 1:03 [11] Daniel Lesoeur went through a scare when Karin Schubert, who had a four-day break in her schedule, left for her native Germany without informing the crew, sparking fears that she had bailed out on him.
Although it was only connected to the film by a few stock shots of the Ariane satellite launcher, Aerospatiale was prominently thanked for its collaboration in the French credits, which was derided as a desultory attempt to acquire some cachet by namedropping a high tech company.
wrote that it was "bound to be a disappointment for Sybil Danning fans" as "the action scenes are poorly photographed and edited", while, "in stepping into a co-producer role in addition to starring, the statuesque actress has deleted the sexy elements of her earlier work.
He too noted that Danning "doesn't give us a modicum of titillation [...] Her fans will weep as they dream of her lavish figure hidden beneath the fatigues, and will cry additional tears about how poorly this was directed by Peter Knight.
[12] Genre critic Joe Kane found that Danning "endangers her hard-won standing as a quality B-movie icon not only by starring in but by co-producing this pathetic, spliced together mess.
[20] In his Horror and Science Fiction Films compendium, Donald C. Willis deemed that this "[g]lib, tacky, no-style femme-jock material makes weak vehicle for Danning’s physical attributes.
Marcel Burel of French action film magazine Impact found that The Panther Squad "piles on risible dialogue, sloppy and plodding fights, lame supporting characters, shabby locations, antediluvian clichés, and old stock shots".
[14] In a Sybil Danning career issue, enthusiast publication Ciné Zine Zone dismissed it as an effort that "beggars belief" and represents "the pits" of the actress' filmography.
[5]: 12:13 Sybil Danning later joined a similar project, Commando Squad, for Trans World Entertainment, but resigned after the company reduced her role to make room for their new contract star, Playboy Playmate of the Year Kathy Shower.