Angel of Death (1987)

Original title: Commando Mengele

Director: Andrea Bianchi

Writers: Georges Friedland, Marius Lesoeur, Jesus Franco

Composer: Norbert Verrone

Starring: Christopher Mitchum, Suzanne Andrews, Fernando Rey, Howard Vernon, Jack Taylor, Dora Doll, Jean-Claude Lerner, Shirley Knight, Antonio Mayans, Anthony Parker

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The blood of millions is on his hands...The power of evil is on his side.

Plot: A Jewish commando unit hunting Nazi war criminals tracks down the infamous Dr. Mengele in the jungle, and find that he is torturing nubile young virgins and performing horrible medical experiments on the locals. They prepare to battle their way past Mengele's hordes of fanatic Nazi bodyguards in order to get to him.

My rating: 5.5/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

This might be an amateurishly made picture in many respects, complete with some bad acting, dialogue, fight scenes and so on, it's not boring and that's partly due to the poor quality of the movie.  The director and three writers went under pseudonyms (even Jesus Franco) and none of them are known for anything that's good except for Franco who had a couple of decent credits among the 200+ he directed.  This is a so-bad-it's-good movies but not so much that you'll have a great time, even with friends and bottles of liquor sauce.  The first third has A LOT of flashback exposition that drags the modern story down but there's a lot of unintentional laughs within it with the acting, dialogue and so on.  I try to find something positive in everything and with this picture it's the music and the last five shocking minutes.  With the ending you could tell they couldn't wait to show you.  It's batshit and fun but it's also too late because the previous hour and a half isn't good.  But still, I'll take it over a typical bland ending any day.  As for Norbert Verrone's synth score, it's his second of only two films he made.  All I can find online about him is that he played synthesizer on an album in the 80s and he has a net worth of $250k.  His music for this picture isn't unlike most low budget 80s synth scores except he's got some catchy tunes that don't get old after hearing them for the 20th time before the picture ends.  I rather enjoyed it.