ThiefHott Too much of everything

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

Derry Herrera Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Ortiz Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Wizard-8 "The Battle of the Last Panzer" was a co-production between the countries of Spain and Italy. Despite two countries collaborating on the movie, it seems that they weren't able to raise a decent budget. Although the events of the movie take place in France, the filmmakers stuck to filming in the Spanish countryside, which looks nothing like France. Also, the French village in the movie is obviously a thinly dressed set used for a spaghetti western! However, the tacky look of the entire enterprise wasn't what sunk the movie for me. There are two big problems in the movie. The first is that none of the characters is sufficiently fleshed out enough so that we can care about them (or hate them). The second problem is that the movie is pretty boring. There's far too much talk and not enough action. And the little action there is in the movie is poorly directed so that there isn't the least bit amount of excitement. Too bad, because despite the low budget you can see the potential the premise of the movie had.

cal reid A German panzer brigade is smashed to bits by Americans ( who are wearing stupid Nazi helmets , what ? ) but one crew survive and must repair their m47 Patton , sorry , tiger in order to get back to their own lines before being captured or killed. The plot sounds interesting but when the film gets started it delivers bad acting , poor action scenes and an array of weapons that are from the 1960's , come on every war film still manages to get the correct uniform and weapons ( besides tanks ). Don't even watch this film sober otherwise you will go to a neighbouring farm and shoot yourself with the farmers shotgun. A poor movie in every aspect and i am shocked that TCM were the ones who showed this on TV.

zardoz-13 "La Battaglia dell'ultimo panzer" is a standard issue World War II actioneer made on a dime-store budget with countless of anachronisms, but it isn't as awful as some of the critics here contend. First,this drive-in style movie probably was never intended to be shown in the United States, and its producers were willing to do whatever it took to get their movie made so they cut numerous corners. Second, like every World War II movie made since the 1950s, a lot of the physical elements are clearly wrong. The infamous Nazi Tiger tank is in fact an American M-47 Patton tank, but what else could the producers have done? All Tiger tanks were destroyed in World War II, and this was before the age of digital effects wizardry? Indeed, it appears that the filmmakers turned to the Spanish army to get all those tanks. Unfortunately,unlike their air force with its scores of vintage Nazi training planes, the Spanish military didn't have any Tiger tanks to loan them like they did with their aircraft in "The Battle of Britain." Look at all those American World War II movies since 1945, they have M-48 Patton tanks clanking through them. The chief difference between the M-47 and the M-48 is in the shape of the turret. Yes, I'd have to agree that the U.S. uniforms are rather lame, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do to get a movie made. Nevertheless, I'd say that the story about one enemy tank caught behind Allied lines after D-Day was a pretty interesting departure for any war movie. Guy Madison of TV's "Buffalo Bill" plays an American commander who thought that he had destroyed all of the Tiger tanks. Predictably, with all its errors, "La Battaglia dell'ultimo panzer" presents itself as an easy target to eviserate for most serious-minded movie consumers who think that they have the critical credentials for the job. Naturally, the dubbing is execrable, but again the producers—like those on the ten-thousand abominable kung fu movies churned out in China—had to work fast. Remember,however, the late 1960s were still the time when most American movie audiences couldn't stand to read subtitles. I remember watching the historically accurate but lackluster "Tora, Tora, Tora" and the white subtitles used to translate the Japanese leaders, except that these white subtitles got lost in the picture when they appeared against the white Japanese uniforms. Yes, at times the music sounds straight out of a spaghetti western, but it does have the usual drumbeats that mark a military movie. Remember, these producers probably couldn't afford to pay for the likes of Jerry "Patton" Goldsmith, Elmer "The Great Escape" Bernstein, or Ron "633 Squadron" & "Where Eagles Dare" Goodwin to score the movie. The idea that the U.S. Army would disguise a German tank to get sneak into enemy lines wasn't so bad either. Similarly, portraying the French resistance in such an unsavory light is at least DIFFERENT! Like a lot of late 1960s Spanish/Italian war movies, "La Battaglia dell'ultimo panzer" qualifies as an anti-war movie. Indeed, most war movies are anti-war, but you have to have the blood splattered butchery of warfare to get that point of across. While the Nazi leader (Stan Cooper) is your run-of-the-mill, foaming-at-the-mouth Nazi fanatic, the other Germans emerge as less gung-ho. I like the German war correspondent who wanted to murder the tank commander. You don't see stuff like that in every W.W. II movie. At one point, the movie makes the legitimate statement that nations aren't good or bad but that people can be good and bad. Now, on the serious side, upon learning that the Americans are arriving in their French village to liberate them, a blonde innkeeper babe with the wrong era hair style observes pungently that the Americans liberate everybody except Americans. This was a legitimate complaint that real Nazi propagandists made about the U.S. during World War II about our hypocritical treatment of African-Americans. You don't hear that kind of stuff in "The Longest Day" or "A Bridge Too Far." Granted, "La Battaglia dell'ultimo panzer" is not designed for short-sighted, authenticity-oriented, armchair historians who bring unrealistic expectations to every film that they see. As an historian with a Ph.D. in World War II movies, I have seen virtually every World War II movie ever made and I'd prefer this lamentable but off-beat epic to one of those pretentious piles of junk with budgets out the butt that make the same mistakes with uniforms, armored equipment, and small arms that this one makes. As a colleague of mine at the university where I work is prone to say: "Remember, it's just a movie."

Steve Nyland (Squonkamatic) This one could have easily been called LITTLE LOST PANZER ON THE RANGE, and is a nearly brain dead but nonetheless enjoyable Spaghetti Western masquerading as a war thriller. Since Spaghetti Westerns are essentially cartoons for grown-ups, I can see how BATTLE OF THE LAST PANZER has confused many viewers into thinking it a failure. There are no "good guys" in this movie (a quality shared with Spaghetti), but there are no real "bad guys" either, which is perhaps the movie's biggest flaw -- it's hard to figure out whom exactly one should be rooting for, but one of the characters helpfully states straight out the movie's agenda: There are no good or bad nations, only good or bad men. A worthy and romantic conclusion to be sure but in direct conflict with the traditional role that Germans play in mainstream WW2 movies, which is to be the villains. Just ask Steven Spielberg.So like Umberto Lenzi's DESERT COMMANDOS, here is a low budget pre- DAS BOOT war movie that asks us to consider the German soldiers as people with the same kind of good/bad dualities that exist within even the most noble of us. "Stan Cooper" plays a more or less straight-laced young German Lt. in command of what is portrayed as the last functioning Panzer tank still fighting World War II, cut off from German lines after a devastating ambush knocks out all of the other Panzers in his column retreating from Normandy after the allied D-Day invasion, the German war effort obviously lost beyond any hope & the Nazis in a near panic as defeat looms. The majority of the film depicts Cooper and his crew roaming the faux-French countryside -- which will look eerily familiar to anyone who has seen at least three Spaghetti Westerns, since most were filmed on the same Spanish exterior locations -- encountering various indigenous locals, fighting off allied elements, and contemplating the meaning of service, loyalty, the value of life, and the price of failure to follow orders. The usual stuff, competently staged & filmed by true professionals. Whether or not the tanks or other equipment used are historically accurate is irrelevant: get over it. This is a well made movie, even if incredibly stupid if you stop to think about it.Regardless, all of that works pretty well until the film stumbles when the element of a woman is arbitrarily interjected, and Cooper finds himself falling in love with a hostage (blond Erna Schürer, a classic beauty in every sense of the term) who has volunteered to lead the wayward tank crew back to German lines. Skirmishes with odd looking war surplus garbed Partisans and headline Gringo star Guy Madison's ineffectual American brigade kill time and raise the body count, punctuated by a fascinating combat sequence where director Jose Luis Merino -- best known for his Gothic Horror thrillers -- colors his film with nearly opaque red and blue filters. Another interesting moment comes when Cooper is allowed access to the body of his new lust-thang and the thought of his men, his mission, and the danger they are in causes a certain amount of post traumatic stress disorder coitus interruptus, much to the annoyance of his would be squeeze. The romance subplot is perhaps the film's other major flaw but it does allow for some dimension to be added to the character of this zealous, ultra-loyal German officer and leads to the eventual cracking of his surface to let some of the humanity come through.But the ending is almost an unforgivable cop-out, a seemingly arbitrary "War Is Hell" moment added to show viewers the futility of it all, in case we missed the point on our own & were having fun. In the end Merino's message seems to be that war isn't fun but it can be entertaining for others to watch, especially if you can get your hands on a big, cool looking working tank, a pretty girl or two and some moments of choreographed destruction. The final tank battle is actually very reminiscent of a show down on the streets of a dusty Western town between the hero & the villain, and Merino chose to have the two tanks be identical to sort of tell us that one is just like the other, like Radio Raheem's LOVE and HATE knuckle dusters from DO THE RIGHT THING. It's not the most profound insight into human character ever to pop up in a war movie, but in this case it will have to do.All in all the movie goes on for about 10 minutes longer than it should have, and while the story is involving for sure it never really resonates on the emotional level that the subject matter would usually endow on a film. So it really is almost a pure example of how the Euro cult genre directors re-tooled their Spaghetti Western approach to ape war movies for the brief period of time (1968 to 1970 or so) that this strange little "Euro War" genre was all the rage, and stands as an instructive example of the process at work. Fans of the Euro B-movie scene from the 1960's/1970's will be well served by taking a look, but anyone in search of a history lesson might want to just see what's on the History Channel. That's not what these movies were made for, and holding it accountable for failing to rise to a standard imposed upon it by a future generation with different social mores isn't fair.7/10; look for it on one of those bargain priced multi-disc DVD box sets for about $9, and make up your own mind.