The Doll Squad (1973)

Beautiful, moving film.

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The Doll Squad (1973)* (out of 4) Low-budget drive-in flick about a madman (Michael Ansara) who is threatening to take over the world but there's a group of sexy females who go after him. If you're coming to a Ted V. Mikels film expecting some sort of plot then you're obviously not overly familiar with the director's work. No, THE DOLL SQUAD doesn't have a good plot, any good acting or anything good really but if you're a fan of the director or simply low-budget stuff like this then there are a couple worthy moments. However, if you're not a fan of this type of film then I'm willing to bet a month's pay that you won't make it through twenty-minutes. The film is full of all sorts of bad things and we can start with the editing, which is downright bad at times. I'm sure the lack of money didn't help things but there are some scenes that are so poorly edited you can't help but think they must have been using a dull butter knife. Another problem are the bad performances, which range from horrid to downright awful. It's clear no one was really "trying" but then again, no one really expects good performances. The story itself really isn't anything special but that didn't stop the director going after the Charlie's Angels producers. The biggest problem with THE DOLL SQUAD is the same thing that's wrong with several of the director's pictures and that's the fact that it simply runs out of gas way too early and the running time just keeps going. Even at just 91-minutes the film seems three times as long as there's simply too much padding and not enough items that actually keep you entertained. Fans of cheese with enjoy a few of the bad lines and a couple laughable moments but there's just not enough to keep this thing going.

Did this film inspire "Charlie's Angels" in 1975? TV producer Aaron Spelling must have caught this on the Late Late Show before doing the series. There are too many similarities: an elite band of beautiful, female crime-fighters (including one named Sabrina) engage in lame karate fights, display lots of cleavage, and wear bikinis as often as possible. And, as in the TV series, cheesy graphics are employed to facilitate quick scene transitions. Reportedly, Mikels sued Spelling for stealing his concept. Unfortunately, thanks to a uniformly lazy and inept execution by all involved, the film is far less entertaining than the iconic 70s TV show. Gorgeous redhead Francine York is Sabrina Kincaid, leader of a group of five hand-picked "Dolls" employed by the government for covert espionage missions. This includes cult actress Tura Satana, who, sadly, is given nothing to do. Didn't Mikels see "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!"? It is a crime to waste the dynamic Satana in such a colorless, underwritten role. But this film manages to make every mistake in the book. In fact, it should be screened in film classes to demonstrate how not to make an action flick.Not-so-super villain Eamon O'Reilly (Michael Ansara) is a poor man's Blofeld with silly, implausible plans for world domination. Instead of a fancy high-tech lair, his nefarious secret base looks like it was shot at Mikels' Palm Springs vacation home. The film's total lack of attention to detail is amusing at times (note Ansara's sweat-soaked shirts) and the no- budget special effects, particularly the explosions, made me laugh. Everything about this dull, pedestrian movie is bad -- but not bad enough to be enjoyable as a campy catastrophe. The entire film is a wasted opportunity for what could have been a much better (or at least campier or sexier) effort in the hands of a less conservative producer like Roger Corman. This PG-rated snooze-fest aspires to be a hot exploitation action flick, but has nothing exciting or exploitative (no nudity) to offer. A Ted V. Mikels movie is like watching a vintage porno film after all the nudity and sex scenes have been edited out. All that's left is some dreary, soap-opera style acting, an incoherent story, awkwardly staged fight scenes, and the cheapest special effects this side of an Ed Wood movie. Although Mikels would go on to make many more terrible films, there was a time when he actually showed much promise as in "One Shocking Moment" (1965). See that film instead.

This highly entertaining action flick is from the legendary Ted V Mikels, director of The Astro-Zombies and The Corpse Grinders. The Doll Squad is a laugh-a-minute cheese-fest of the first order. Mikels apparently sued Aron Spelling for nicking his idea and creating Charlie's Angels. Well, I don't know about that, but what I do know is that I would've been perfectly happy if there had been a series based on this movie. The basic premise is one that really you cannot go wrong with – a group of sexy action chicks take on an evil genius and his army of boneheads and save the day. It's a perfect recipe. What makes it so much fun is that the cheese-factor is in hyper-drive.The film is ram-packed with action from start to finish. Lots of machine-gun toting babes, girls high-kicking men in the face, amazingly fake looking explosions and an array of ludicrous gadgetry. We have bad guys who blow up after drinking explosive vodka, an evil character who has his face set on fire by a cigarette lighter flame thrower and an undercover agent with fake face who is unmasked in a hilarious Scooby Doo style fashion. And for some reason the bad guys travel around in cars sitting on the bonnets, while the Doll Squad navigate the rough terrain of the island in high-heeled boots. Everything is accompanied by the most 70's soundtrack ever recorded. The film is just an endless succession of seriously silly events.The only member of the cast I recognized was Tura Satana from Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! fame. She is strangely subdued it has to be said but it's always nice to see her. The rest of the Dolls are completely unfamiliar to me but they all just get stuck in and kick butt at every opportunity. There is a perhaps surprising lack of nudity but it doesn't really matter. The Doll Squad is a blast from start to finish and I strongly disagree with the view held by some that it is boring at all. It's loads of fun.

Being an avid moviegoer and a frequent renter and buyer of DVDs, there's always something intriguing about DVDs of low-budget films made in the 1970's that I've never heard of. Does this film deserve a bigger release? Could this DVD have benefited from more special features? Is it a hidden gem over which the big studios just passed? Above all, though, is the movie worth watching? Sadly, in regards to "The Doll Squad", the answer to all these questions is "No".The DVD copy of "The Doll Squad" is one I found while browsing through a discount outlet, and it only cost me $0.50 to purchase. It was labeled as a "Cinema Cult Favorite", which is a label that can be unfair to quality cult classics. To me, the term "cult favorite" describes a film that, while underrated at the time of its release, has since developed a following of devoted fans that watch the film again and again, and take real meaning out of it. Unfortunately, to some DVD distributors, the term means a film that just hasn't been seen very many times.There are some qualities of this film that, at first glance, make it a potential cult favorite. After all, the film has heroines, not heroes, who kick ass and take names. However, women as action stars means nothing if you don't make the characters interesting, and you don't care about the mission they are pursuing.Such is the case of this movie, which has a plot that is very run-of-the-mill, half-baked characters, horrible actors playing them, and cheap special effects that look cheaper because the foundation of a story makes the house crumble and fall.Watching this film in 2010, the film will lose you in the opening sequence when Senator Stockwell is watching a space shuttle launch. The space shuttle launches successfully off the ground, but once it reaches the stratosphere, it explodes. When this actually happened to the Challenger in 1986, there was a public outcry. In this movie, Senator Stockwell says in a monotonous voice, "Oh no. All those men."Sadly, the explosion comes as no surprise because of a threatening recorded message to the Senator from Eamon O'Reilly (Michael Ansara, who is perhaps the most interesting character in this film), an American terrorist whose quest for world domination also includes injecting the rest of the world with a bubonic plague. Only one team of agents can stop them, primarily because the leader of the group, red-headed Sabrina Kincaid (Francine York), had a prior relationship with O'Reilly.Sabrina works to bring the team together as they work during their day jobs. One woman works as a stripper, another one is a champion swimmer, another works in an amusement park, and there are two more who have different jobs I can't recall. Even though they have different hair colors and occupations, once they put on uniforms and tote guns, they may be a force with which to be reckoned, but their personalities are pretty much all the same. As a result, there's no one about whom you really care.There is a lot of shooting and a lot of explosions. In fact, it's strange how the fire resulting from the explosions looks perfectly round and doesn't completely cover the person or thing that is exploding. It's almost as if the editor just put a match to a frame and printed it that way. There's also a scene early in the movie where a blond woman gets shot through the head, and when she turns afterwords towards the camera, the wound looks more like a bug bite.The writer and director Ted Mikels had something here with women who have power and do justice. The problem is that Mikels focused more on the shooting and killing these women did than the reason why they did it. Action is exciting, but action without a story is like horse legs without the horse.I hate ripping on Mikels for this film because he has made a number of low-budget films up to 2009, and there's something to say about someone being that committed. He's like Russ Meyer with a little less street credibility. If Mikels had collaborated with someone else on this script (perhaps a woman), he would have had something here, and the cheapness of the physical effects would be forgiven. A female writer probably could have told him, for starters, that if you want to make a movie about strong protagonists with two X chromosomes, don't have the men in this movie call them the DOLL squad. It could be why Gloria Steinam stayed away from this film.