Day of the Panther is a 1988 Ozsploitation/Martial Arts/Action movie that reminded me once again of exactly why I started his channel and why I love doing what I do. Because; y’see. Day of the Panther is arguably one of the balmiest action productions i’ve encountered in a good while. And if you havent seen this movie, you REALLY need to change that as soon as possible.

Its actual production was almost as strange as the film, the entire concept of the movie was to create a vehicle for martial artist turned actor Edward John Stazak. Initially pitched as a single movie, plans quickly expanded to become a multi picture deal with Stazak taking on the role of a “cooler than thou” charismatic martial arts “Panther”. “Day of the Panther” and its equal/sequel “Strike of the Panther” were both shot back to back through 1987 and after the first few days of production the director (for whom this project was their first dallience into feature films) had to be replaced by a more experienced film director Brian Trenchard Smith. Production was turbulent to say the least, but both films were completed and released in 1988 across a 12 month window. And the results are…well. This films basically “Best of the Best 2” by way of “Garth Marenghis Darkplace”.

We open in Hong Kong and after a few sweeping cross fades of the city, we arrive at the “Temple of the Panthers” the main headquarters for the order of the “Panthers” an ancient secret organisation created to preserve good morals and positive societal standings, members are selected both for their incredible strength, agility and martial artistry. But also for their Zen like calm and dedication to a positive mentality.

Its here we’re introduced to Jason Blade (Seriously, take a shot everytime they say his name, you WILL be paraletic by the 2nd act) and accompanying him is his partner in fighting the tyrannies of crime and evil Linda Anderson. We’re also introduced via narration to one William Anderson, Lindas father, who explains that he’s spent his life working under the order of the Panther and today is a momentus day for two reasons. It’s his final day in the position of an “Official” Panther before he retires. But it’s also the day that Jason and Linda take their final test for initiation INTO the order. And with a moody and bizarre “Final test” in which the pair must brand themselves with the “Seal of the Panther” Both Jason and Linda are in and ready to fight the good fight!

While on foot patrol around the city they overhear what sounds like a dodgy deal taking place, $500k in exchange for a large amount of Heroin. The pair sneak into the meeting, take some photos of the guilty parties and head out to take the photos to the authorities when they’re spotted by one of the guards and a full scale turf war erupts as one faction thinks the other faction has double crossed them. Jason and Linda manage to make it out of the carnage and hop in a car where they race to the nearest airport.

Linda catches a flight out of Hong Kong to Perth to follow up on something one of the gang members mentioned in passing during the meeting and Jason hangs back in Hong kong to tie a few things off with the hopes of joining her. Before he can though, Linda calls Jason to say that she’s found out where the heroins being stored and processed and that she wants to go down there to get more evidence and maybe even take out the operation entirely. Jason advises hanging back and that he’ll be with her in a few hours then they can then go together. Lindas impatient though and abruptly hangs up on him.

Jason gets worried by this and pretty much races to the airport to go and catch up with Linda before she gets herself into serious trouble. Linda meanwhile’s already gone down to the site and begins staking it out, it doesnt take long for her to be spotted by guards patrolling the facility (the Panthers are supposed to be stealthy…jesus.) and a prolonged Chase and fight sequence breaks out in which Linda is chased by guys wearing halloween masks brandishing weapony, she goes across two facilities and a highway fighting these guys and just about manages to defeat them…until she runs into Baxter, the lead henchman of the person shipping the drugs, who beats the crap out of her before flat out murdering her.

Jason arrives in perth and is almost immediately clocked by our comic relief for this movie, two bumbling cops who’ve caught wind that Jason was heading in and have decided to stake him out after news of the full blown turf war in hong kong made its way to australia and Jasons been tied directly to it as a main suspect. They believe it was HIM who was organising the drug deals and murdering people and they fully intend to take him in…one bumbling fuck up at a time.

Jason gets to his hotel, books in and recieves a call informing him of Lindas murder. And naturally; he’s devastated. The police however immediately assume Jasons behind it and add it to his imaginary charge sheet. Jason decides to head over to a small temple in some backwoods where William is now residing in peaceful retirement. The pair connect and express sadness over Lindas death. During this time, Jason is introduced to Williams Niece Gemma and through them we also learn about our main villain for this film, one Damian Zukor. A man who’s pretty much taken over Perth, with operations in illegal gambling rackets, drug smuggling, bribery, you name it, Damians into it. He owns most of the police force, a fair few of the judges in the city and was responsible for the drug deal in hong kong …basically if Damian has a problem with you, he doesnt.

So! Jason tries to do the best thing he can given the situation, he rocks up at a boat showroom on the local marina where he knows Damian’s hanging out and asks him point blank if he can have a job on his naughty illegal operations business. Damien responds by sending a load of his thugs to kick his arse, but Jason beats them up while practically yawning, before re-asking Damien for a job before giving him his home address and then wandering off back to his hotel.

After the fight Jason decides to go and chill in the hotel swimming pool and spots Gemma again, the pair get a little hot and heavy on the words front before our bumbling cops arrest Jason and take him to the station on the charge of beating up all those blokes down at the marina and possibly murder too (it’s not made all that clear) ANYWAY; while down at the station the chief takes Jason to one side and basically tells him he knew that him and Linda were “special ops”, that he knows Jason didnt murder her, but he warns him against exploding Damiens activities as it’s a beyond dangerous business and better cops have tried and failed to nail him. Jason doubles down saying he’s asked Damien for a job and is basically just waiting for the phonecall. Jason leaves, and shortly thereafter the chief informs the cops to perform a 24 hour trail on him. He doesn’t want Jason out of sight.

Later, Jason gets back to the hotel and receives a phonecall from Damien, he’s prepared a boat for him, and would like Jason to attend a party. Jason gets over there and Damien more formally introduces himself (all the while the cops are trailing him poorly in a lil putt putt boat) Up front, Damien tells Jason that if he crosses him in ANY way shape or form, he’s dead… He offers him a “delivery” job. He’s to take a package to a drop off point and exchange it for a briefcase, the parcel contains heroin, the suitcase contains $500k. Jason heads over there only to discover its an ambush and the party he was supposed to be trading with attack him. Jason beats them up and escapes the building but drops the package. Which the cops then find and take back to the station as evidence that Jason’s drug smuggling! Only…it’s not drugs. It’s barely even flour.

Jason at this point realises Damiens set him up, so he heads back to Damiens house beating up anyone along the way who tries to stop him. Damien pretends his attempt to murder Jason was REALLY just a test to see how he’d handle a stressful situation. Which he passed! (yeh right…) anyway; as a reward for passing the “We didnt get to murder you” challenge Damien pairs Jason up with Baxter who is suspicious as FUCK about Jason and tells the pair they’ll be working together making deliveries and checking on the operations. Damien then heads off to go get laid…no really.

Anyway…blah blah blah extended gym sequence…blah blah blah blah blah Gemma asks Jason out…blah blah blah Jason cant because he’s working that night, and then he pretty much heads out to meet up with Baxter. And it’s here that the film really sets up it’s final act as the pair head to an amphitheatre that Damien owns for reasons that arnt immediately explicit. Baxter heads down to under the stage of the theatre and emerges with a mysterious suitcase and after some probing Jason becomes convinced that the drugs are either being made or stored there. That night Jason tells William and Gemma what he saw and they both inform him that the Amphitheater is one of Damiens biggest money spinners. He holds an annual gladiatorial tournament in which he invites a hundred or so contestants to fight it out to see who the “best of the best” is. William was invited in previous years, but declined. And for the last three years Baxter has won the tournament.

Thats because the tournament is rigged. Yes on top of it being a powerhouse for illegal gambling. Damien has been fixing fights and rigging his own tourny in order to increase his capital substantially. And this year he wants Jason to take part and beat Baxter (or rather…have Baxter throw the fight) to shock the gamblers and make maximum profits on his earnings. And…with that we enter our 3rd act, as Jason goes to the cops to tell them what he knows, but without concrete evidence they’re powerless to help him, leaving Jason to summon the panther within to save the day! In a thrilling silly finale! Will Baxter figure out Jasons true identity and take him out before he spoils all the fun!? Will Jason Blade find someone stronger than Jason Blade to fight and kill Jason Blade!? (Jason Blade!) And will the bumbling cops ACTUALLY get closure? Or will they just be forgotten about in the 2nd act? All this and more will be answered if you check out. “Day of the Panther”.

And honestly? I just had WAY too much fun with this one. Its got the perfect balance of weird and wonderful moments with solid structuring behind it to produce a movie that works as a technical piece, but is absolutely barking mad in terms of what it’s trying to tell.

The script is actually relatively simple. Guy infiltrates crime syndicate to take it down from the inside in vengeance for murdering his partner is one of the most generic action movie tropes the genre has produced. And because of that, with these kinds of movies, i’m more inclined to judge them on their execution rather than their originality. And man, this film executes the trope in a way thats just…PERFECT for the weird and cult aficionado in me. Theres a clean 3 act structure with nice smooth transitions between the acts, the pacing is breakneck right up to the 3rd act where it does start to wobble a *little* bit and begins to struggle with padding. But it sticks the landing for me and ultimately delivers an absolutely wild ride.

The film basically has 2 modes, serious action fodder and “Uneasy comedy” and it seems to violently flick back and forth between the two at random never *quite* settling on what it wants to be, and in some cases unintentionally the two cross over resulting in serious scenes that LITERALLY feel like they’ve been written and read like lines from Garth Marenghi. Some critics would scold the film for lack of clear vision in the script, they’d admonish the film for not “Picking a lane” but y’know what? It works, it creates a film that mixes heavy topics and high kicking action with moments that border on loony toons level comedy. The shot that sticks in my mind is the scene when Linda goes to explore the warehouse and, for NO reason at all they have her EXPLODE through a wooden wall to fight the baddy. She wasnt even NEAR a wooden wall, but, they wanted her to have a cool action shot and BY GOD. they’re gonna give her a cool action shot.

And that really is this movie tonally to a tee. It’s not about making sense ALL the time. It’s not about coherency (though, they do take care to not go COMPLETELY off the rails) it’s about telling a story. But not shying away from going completely batshit if they feel it’s possible to get away with it. And I love this film for that.

While the opening act is an absolute thrillride of high kicking action, bumbling incompetence and decent character and plot developement, and the second act is a slow burning, but rewarding character growth session intercut with some of that pounding action punch to remind us that this IS an action movie, my only gripe here really lies with the 3rd act. Which does seem to lose its way a little bit before ultimately just about managing to pull it back for the closer. While padding is present in the first 2 acts, it’s non intrusive, it’s not there to such an extent that you feel annoyed by the slowdown. In the third act, some of that starts to creep in. part of it is down to the fact it has to resolve both the Jason/Tournament plot line, the Damien being a bastard plot line and the Cops/drug bust plot line…and with the best will in the world, that shit takes time to do. But because this film isnt really clever enough to SHOW rather than tell, it means we do get sucked into longer form conversations that are insightful but do slow it down.

The other issue is that I think they realised if they just went straight to the raid of the theater, that the film would run under by about 10 minutes, so they had to create some subplots. Things like Gemma being kidnapped, Baxter breaking into williams house to look for clues about Jason’s true identity and other scenes that…aren’t exactly blatant padding. But just…weren’t as pacy as before. These two issues combine creating a third act thats gone from floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee to floating like a rock and stinging like…a rock. The endings a little bit open ended as well but…with them shooting “Strike of the panter” back to back with this, they knew a sequel was coming so I guess they kind of felt the need to wrap EVERYTHING up wasnt all that necessary. But as a self contained movie, it did kind of leave me wishing they’d just gone that extra step and properly tied it off…mainly because I don’t think they pick up where they left off in the sequel.

As for the dialogue, its something else, we’re talking fresh out of writing school level complexity. Dialogue that feels like it was written by a teenager. It tries SO hard to be cool and actioney. But because it’s trying SO hard, it just ends up coming across as cringey, awkward lacking ANY kind of distinction because it feels like it was written after someone binged their local video shops action section and when combined with performances that feel like “Fresh out of the gate/first time on camera” deals…Because they are. Well; the results are just spectacular to me. It’s not *quite* Champagne and bullets level weird awkwardness (We’re not in “Adiosy Bela Lugosi” territory JUST yet…) but it’s not far away from it, and that’s the scary part.

All in; barring a bit of a wobbly 3rd act, this film manages to capitalise on what works in its script and has somehow managed the alchemy of making what doesnt work so entertainingly bad that it’s looped back round again and become the main selling point for me. It’s simple, quirky and somehow totally mesmerising. It’s ace.

The script was written by Peter West and David Groom, Peter has 4 writing credits including the 2 panther movies, his last credit was in 2008 and really…he’s more of a stuntman with over 150 credits under his belt in that field. As for David? He has 2 writing credits, one for “Day of the Panther” and one for a film called “Dangerous Game” so quite literally when I say this feels like someones first attempt at writing…well…IT WAS.

The film was directed by Brian Trenchard Smith who was drafted in within the first couple of days of production after the initial director Peter West who, again had limited experience in the field, found himself struggling to maintain the set. Brian stepped in and basically had to gut the project, rebuild it and shoot on the fly saying, and I quote “If they didnt it’d be like pouring good money after bad money” He’d more than cut his teeth in the field by this point with 62 directing credits to his name as of the time of recording with titles including “Dead End Drive in”, “Turkey Shoot” and…”Leprachaun 4”…I mean…I’d say those titles went against him…but given the script, this was the best possible scenario.

Because the direction is PUMPED UP. We’re talking stylised, fast paced martial arts tomfoolery almost IMMEDIATLEY off the bat and from there it just keeps building and building until it quite literally doesnt have anywhere else to go. This is the perfect example of how, with less you CAN sometimes achieve more IF you have the right people on hand. Look at “The American Ninja 4” as an example, both this film and that one have similar “final fights” but how the directors chose to handle those scenes are night and day quality wise, Ninja 4’s final fight was largely shot wide, the director wanted to focus on the grandness of the scene, on the location, on the army of ninjas which…totally defuses the fact that this is THE FINAL FIGHT WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR FOR 80 MINUTES! Almost punctuating the fact the director knew the scene wasnt much cop, they put a random explosion in there for what I can only assume was “Banter”.

Day of the Panthers final fight is a MUCH tighter experience, Brian gets RIGHT up into the action working closely with the cast on the choreography and with the cinematographers to deliver a fast moving, layered experience that focuses less on the location and more on seeing our characters FINALLY duke it out good and proper. Hell Brian seems to be having SO much fun with it he even starts weaving subplots into the finale, like William tracking Damien and Gemma avoiding recapture.

It’s clear Brian was experienced at what he was doing and the end result is a product that feels effortlessly confident in it’s ability to make something look and feel FUN. which I really have a lot of time for honestly. Even the slower more conversational scenes don’t feel too bad, like they could be better. But I didnt clockwatch at all for this entire film. Which I see as an absolute bonus here.

The fight choreography itself is a solid endeavour too, we run with soft contact and masked shots for the most part, it’s not the most mindblowing choreography in the world (though it absolutely has it’s moments) but its just a rock solid piece of work. Theres rarely any moments where the lack of focus on the direction means contact shots get missed. Weaponry gets implemented periodically with mixed to positive results and brian uses the direction to make every toss, tumble and smash FEEL weighty! You arnt just watching someone leap through a window, Brians work makes you FEEL like you’ve just leapt through a window. Honestly it’s a stunning piece of work.

On the cine front, Im a bit torn honestly. While shots do follow traditional compositional rules for shooting, and here IS some experimentation present, not to mention that there are even just some nice shot types like pans and tracking shots and crash zooms in play here. It does come across as somewhat lacking… That’s by NO means saying that this is an ugly film…I just, had moments here where I didnt get on with the creative decisions. Particularly with the conversational scenes where it would quite often be a 2 camera set up. A mid wide cutting to close ups of whoever was talking, often with under dressed sets. I mean; It does the job, but it just…felt a bit lifeless in places. Kind of, going through the motions so we could get back to the punching.

When the cine here is good, its border iconic, but a lack of consideration for the slower scenes expose a weakness here. Which is only enhanced by a choice to light the film largely using natural light with the occasional bit of filler to back up darker locations. The temple scene in the opening of the film is gorgeous with warm set lights, torch light and ambient darkness being used well. But night shots are a bit bland, shots in offices or on location really lack that level of pop and the whole thing just kind of feels…lacking. Maybe with a more stylised colour grade or just a bit more experimentation with coloured lighting gels would have sorted this, but yeh…Id say the cine was the weakest element of this production.

Performance wise, it’s bad in all the right ways. This is low BUDGET ozsploitation. LOW BUDGET OZPLOITATION starring a core cast that, at this point in time hadnt really done a lot. Which means a LOT of the performances only really have two modes. Muted, and muted but LOUDER. It’s quite the spectacle because, given the dialogue reads like someones college drama piece on the dialogue front. To see these australians fucking TEAR through the script with all the bluntness of a train cutting through rice paper is just…phenominal. It only enhances the ropey dialogue to a higher degree. To a point where its just. Hilarious and endearing to sit through. That goes pretty much for the entire cast. They’re all ridiculous and I love them all dearly for opting into this big dumb goofy action movie.

Edward John Stazak as Jason is astounding. Take that blunt dialogue and marry it up to some genuinely impressive martial artistry and a TOTAL lack of physical performance in any capacity outside of that very impressive martial artistry and you have a frankly bizarre performance thats two parts muted to one part John Travolta in Saturday night fever. Its astounding honestly.

Michael Carman is decent enough as Damien Zukor in this, he chooses to play the role quiet and confident which I think suits the tone perfectly. He’s hammy at times which is always nice to see in these kind of action flicks. I think he was a pretty solid choice honestly, as was James Richards as Damiens “Jaws” style henchman “Baxter” hes a strong silent muscle type, who despite actually having a lot of dialogue here, doenst actually feel like he gets all that much to actually say…which I found odd…in either case our trio of headliners suit this kind of fillm down to the ground and I absolutely loved them in this.

And finally; the soundtrack and my god this thing would give “Miami Connection” a run for its money. It’s synthy rocky and at times hair metally goodness that absolutely fits the bill for a film like this and the sooner they put the score out on download and vinyl the better quite frankly. It’s obscenely good for a film of this calibre. MUCH better than this movie deserved and I loved it loved it loved it!

Day of the Panther was released in the UK direct to video in rental shops in 1988 by Guild home video, it arrived on dvd courtesy of LLC in a “dumped on disc” format in either 2003 or 2004 and thats pretty much the end of the road for it, Umbrella entertainment released both “Day” and “Strike” of the panther as a double feature release on Bluray in australia in 2019, but…I don’t know if its out of print or what…but they want nearly £30 for it, with postage its over £30 which is WAY too much for a release like this…£20? And we’re in business..but £30 is way too rich for my blood. That being said if any boutique lables (Vinegar Syndrom, 101 Films Im looking your way) wanted to nab this for a deluxe release at a reasonable price. I think it’d be a day one purchase for me. It’s just…SO good.

I loved “Day of the Panther” it’s cheap, cheerful, eccentric and just downright awesome in places. While the 3rd act wobbles a bit and there are a few minor issues on the cine front here and there. This is a movie I can wholeheartedly recommend and I cant WAIT to check out “Stike of the panter” at the next available opportunity. GO FIND THIS FILM. if you havent seen it your wasting your time on inferior action movies. HIGHLY recommended and definitely worth your time.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/day-of-the-panther/2/