Best movie of this year hands down!

Good movie but grossly overrated

Fresh and Exciting

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

Written by the legendary Jess Franco and directed by Andrea Bianchi (Burial Ground), Angel of Death (AKA Commando Mengele) is a dreadfully inept Euro action flick that is nowhere near as sleazy, gory or trashy as it should have been given subject matter and the 'talent' involved, and which consequently bores for almost its entire runtime.The film stars Antonio Mayans as Marc, a Nazi hunter on the trail of the notorious German doctor Josef Mengele (Howard Vernon), who is alive and well, creating mutant monkey men in his laboratory. Assembling a team that includes an explosives/weapons expert, a martial artist, a circus acrobat, and an electronics wizard, Marc must gather evidence before launching an attack on Mengele's heavily guarded fortress.Incredibly uneventful for most of the time, I kept telling myself that it must get better eventually, but that simply wasn't the case. After lots of excruciatingly dull Nazi nonsense, with not a single credible performance from the entire cast (a chimpanzee steals the show), the film finally gets to the action packed finale in which almost everyone dies. Sadly, an opportunity to go overboard with the blood and guts is sorely missed, most of the extras simply falling unconvincingly to the ground with red paint on their shirts.

ANGEL OF DEATH is one of those cheapo Eurocine productions made to cash in on the rage for Italian action/war films in the late 1980s. It was made by the unholy pairing of the infamous Jess Franco with Andrea Bianchi, the man who bought us BURIAL GROUND, and impressively enough it was filmed in Uruguay so it has visual authenticity. The plot is nothing special, involving a commando squad sent into the jungle to track down and kill the infamous Nazi doctor Mengele, and it's mostly an excuse for regular shoot-'em-up scenes of henchmen being shot with arrows or blown up. The film also has an impressive cast of low-rent appearances, chief of whom is Chris Mitchum in a sweaty turn. Howard Vernon is well cast as the sinister doctor, and Jack Taylor plays a good guy for a change. Fernando Rey has also been roped into taking part in the mayhem. With Franco's influence, expect plenty of scenes of young women in distress and wearing very little, and not much in the way of quality.

Name-brand actors co-star with clowns who often worked for Jess Franco in this Dr. Mengele story; the end result gives THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL no competition whatsoever. Fernando Rey and Jack Taylor are Nazi hunters while Christopher Mitchum is a crippled American mercenary employed by Mengele (Howard Vernon.) The pretty young agent who infiltrates Mengele's stronghold is played by an actress named Dora Doll–I kid you not! She gets to see the pathetic results of Mengele's genetic experiments before being beaten and thrown in a cage. The only mutant we get to see is a chimp-man who probably could have made a better movie. Taylor and friends attack the compound in an assault that tries, without success, to match the finale of THE WILD BUNCH. Director Andrea Bianchi apparently had a surplus of blood-squibs; the bullet holes are big and bloody and the red stuff sprays through the air by the gallon, literally painting the screen crimson. However, guns are aimed at soldiers' chests and they suffer head wounds, and Taylor walks out of an exploding building without a scratch. Too bad the real Josef Mengele didn't live long enough to sit through this howler—such torture would have been partial payback for his crimes against humanity.

Doctor Mengeles, the famous nazi butcher, is still living somewhere in South America, torturing innocent young virgins and being played by Howard Vernon. A jewish commando is set up to hunt him and punish his cruel war acts, but the avengers face the wrath of the nazi lunatics, and the battle rages on until Mengele's bodyguard, a kung fu adept, gets killed. Such plots are common to Jess Franco, but this sometimes talented director should have learned that those movies aren't funny or breathtaking... They're just BORING. After all, Jess's a veteran, but he's done WAY better. Fans be warned, this ain't a good one, and if you don't know Franco, don't try to get familiar with him with this one, try something else, like Faceless or Bloody Moon.