Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966)

Wonderful character development!

As Good As It Gets

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Although his car plunges over a cliff at the end of the previous movie, "Dr. Goldfoot" (Vincent Price) does not die. Instead he reappears in this sequel and begins using female robots with bombs attached to them to blow up NATO generals all over the world. His goal is to start a war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact so that he and his Chinese partners can take over the world. Fortunately, a disgraced agent for S.I.C. (Security Intelligence Command) by the name of "Bill Dexter" (Fabian) recognizes something sinister is afoot and with the help of a young woman named "Rosanna" (Laura Antonelli) sets out to investigate the matter. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that I didn't particularly care for this movie for a number of reasons. First of all, for a comedy it just wasn't that funny with the two bumbling Italian agents "Franco" (Franco Franchi) and "Ciccio" (Ciccio Ingrassia) being especially annoying. Likewise, the script was equally horrid as well. To make matters even worse, although this movie proudly boasted of having a number of sexy, young ladies in skimpy bikinis, only Moa Tahi (as "Hardjob") and the aforementioned Laura Antonelli were even remotely attractive. In short, this movie turned out to be a very poor sequel and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.

With this film, I unceremoniously brought my Mario Bava retrospective – commemorating the 30th anniversary of his passing – to a rather undignified close due to personal familial difficulties. Incidentally, having watched – and been appalled by – it years ago on late-night Italian TV, I had actually added this title to the Bava mini-marathon at the eleventh hour (in fact, I only acquired it a couple of days before viewing!); with this in mind, I regret not keeping the VHS recording of that broadcast since I now have had to make do with a vertically stretched copy which boasts forced English subtitles to boot! The film is a genuine oddity in that a sequel is made not merely by hands other than the original's but by a different country altogether (though it still featured the same star and would be distributed, post-dubbing, by the company behind the first film anyway), considering that the titular figure is not a brand name a' la Tarzan, Zorro or, for that matter, Fu Manchu – where, for instance, the fourth and fifth entries in the Christopher Lee/Harry Alan Towers series of the 1960s eschewed British directorial involvement for that of notorious Spaniard Jess Franco (to the franchise's ultimate detriment, I might add)! To cut to the chase, I have to admit that I was not as intolerant towards the film as I had been on that preliminary viewing: ironically, I used to lap up vehicles by the comic duo of Ciccio (Ingrassia) & Franco (Franchi) as a kid but, somehow, I could not picture them in the same frame as horror icon Vincent Price or 'submitting' to the direction of a technician and master stylist like Bava (in any case, their work has not withstood the test of time all that well, pretty much in the way of the Abbott & Costello comedies – with the one most readily given to mugging, Franco, even supplying the rather noisy song over the opening credits)!; having perhaps checked out the just-as-campy original (called DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE [1965], by the way) in the interim may have softened my opinion of the sequel to a certain extent (though it is still a toss-up with the horrendous make-over job that became THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM [1975] in constituting the nadir of the Bava canon). The film sees Goldfoot (flanked by a Chinese acolyte named "Hardjob", in clear emulation of Harold Sakata's character from the James Bond extravaganza GOLDFINGER [1964]) upping the ante by being intent on world domination (with the female robots turning combustible, hence the U.S. title – since the Italian original is a parody of John Le Carre''s "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold", brought to the screen the previous year, and puts the emphasis on the movie's star comedians!) rather just misappropriation of funds as in the first entry. To be honest, one is still embarrassed to associate the picture with either Price (especially when disguising himself in a nun's habit!) or Bava (and it is particularly lamentable that the two only managed to collaborate on material clearly below their standards and talents!) but, taken on its own merits (if such a term can be applied here), there are certainly some mild pleasures to be derived from the ensuing concoction – with the most inspired ideas being Ciccio & Franco picking up artillery items from the F.B.I. arsenal as if they were on a supermarket spree, the fact that the voice artist assigned to dub their burly and flustered Chief (remember that Italian films at this time were generally shot M.O.S.) is the same one who does Oliver Hardy in the Laurel & Hardy vehicles (I wonder how it sounded in the English-dubbed version?), and a rather brief reprise of the classic mirror gag devised by Max Linder (albeit most famously adopted by The Marx Bros.' DUCK SOUP [1933]) involving Price and Ingrassia! In the same vein, the finale partly recreates the conclusion of DR. STRANGELOVE: OR, HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1963); for what it is worth, then, soon-to-be erotic diva Laura Antonelli plays the obligatory-but-insignificant damsel-in-distress here (alongside Fabian's straight-man hero, who fares somewhat better).

Mario Bava is one of my all time favourite directors, and Vincent Price is one of my all time favourite actors; so despite the fact that I didn't like Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine at all, I still felt almost as if catching this needless sequel was a duty I had to fulfil. Before making this film, Bava had already directed a number of classics including Black Sabbath, Black Sunday and The Whip and The Body, while Vincent Price had completed his work on Roger Corman's Poe Anthology along with several other classic films. I can only assume, therefore, that the pair had decided to take a break from making good films as this is a million miles away from the best that the two men can do! Well, either that or they both just wanted to spend some time with scantily clad ladies, and I can't really blame them if that was the case! Anyway, the plot has something to do with dubious 'assassin' Dr Goldfoot building an army of robot bombs that look like pretty girls (will be familiar to Austin Powers fans!), and he uses them to eliminate some of Nato's world leaders...or something.Mario Bava's best work was in the horror genre and as such a lot of what I like about his directorial style is relative to the genre; but he has proved on many occasions that he's capable of delivering good films in other genres, but you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise based on this film! There is a lot of nonsense happening in the movie and this undoubtedly distracts from the directing; but it's clear that Bava wasn't really trying. What a shame that this is the only film he and the great Vincent Price made together! The film was obviously intended to be funny; but all the humour if of the very goofy variety and I honestly did not laugh even once during the film. At a struggle, I could only really think of two good things to say about this film; one is that Vincent Price is entertaining (although he could read out a recipe book and it would be entertaining) and the other is that some of the girls featured are nice to look at. The first Dr Goldfoot film was terrible, and this one is worse. They couldn't even think of a catchy jingle to go over the title sequence! I wouldn't recommend this movie to even hardcore Bava and Price fans...

The 1960's produced a lot of silly movies. This is one of the farces that centers around girls in bikinis. It has its moments that are just plain silly, like its segment that resembles the silent movies. But I consider it a nice little piece of cheese.