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There's this "archvillain" who is going to use plague-ridden rats to take over
the world and the Doll Squad has to stop him. The Doll Squad is an "elite band
of female commandos who are as dangerous and deadly as they are beautiful."
They have to go and take on this bad guy at his "isolated island fortress" and
"all hell breaks loose in this explosive action-adventure thriller" that they
compare to Charlie's Angels. 1973, 91 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
In spite of the cool painted movie poster that this one features with its team
of female commandos in form-fitting uniforms leading an assault on enemy
troops while stuff is blowing up in the background and an evil looking guy that
must be some type of power mad mastermind looks on indifferently, I put off
watching this one for close to a year due to the fact that the front of the DVD
proclaimed it not simply The Doll Squad, but as Ted V. Mikels' The Doll Squad.
Teddy was the guy that set us up with the killer cat food epic, The Corpse Grinders and it was one of those low-budget affairs that where cent of its three
hundred dollar funding came from some duped family member. I was scared that since
Ted wasn't able to stretch his dollars very far in a movie where the main
villain was a can of Nine Lives, that juggling an all-girl squad of secret
agents battling against some fruit cake who was intent on spreading bubonic
plague via some rats was somewhat beyond his meager talents.
Finally, I decided that this couldn't possibly be as tediously sleazy as the other Mikels
opus I had on hand looked (10 Violent Women) and I slowly convinced myself that with these new James Bond flops coming out about once a year, I should probably get back in the
practice of watching some deranged madman stand around explaining his plan for
world domination to our star secret agent long enough for him/her to come up
with a cunning escape plan.
Now say what you want about James Bond flicks (out
of date, predictable, video game style stunt work), but at least Blofeld never
walked around his swinging bachelor pad hideout with his shirt unbuttoned
halfway down his chest while it was drenched in his own flopsweat. Uh, if
you're about to take over the world, can't you either get an antiperspirant
that works or at least a fresh shirt, you stinky bitch? Talk all you want
about bringing the world to its knees, but I can't stop gagging at your
Frisbees, sweathog.
As you may have already surmised though, the villain's hyperhidrosis isn't
really the worst part of the movie, it's just the one that will give you that
bitter beer face. Some of you may also experience bitter beer face when you
get a load at the wardrobe selection of everyone involved. Since I was in the
Nam for most of the sixties and seventies breaking in and out of POW camps, the
only outfit I wore was my own blood and sweat, but getting a look at movies
like this, one thing becomes clear: Sears was having a sale on ugly white
belts.
Everyone in this movie was wearing them. You had the Doll Squad with
their very functional tight green body suits (they weren't low cut like in the
poster though - when you're invading the bad guy's split level ranch style
compound in the hills of California, you're going to need a little more support
than that) accessorizing them with gaudy white belts. Not to be
outdone, the army of guys that the villain has on retainer stalking around his
compound are dressed like some banana republic's military junta, but also
decked out with a white belt. Somehow though the master criminal himself - a
pudgy, sweaty guy that looked like he was wearing a rug that would have made
Claude Raines wince - manages to outdo them all as he prances around in a silky
blue shirt (Not buttoned all the up, natch!) and silver studded belt. Hey, Bad
Guy, we'll catch you at Studio 54 later on!
The government guys who sit around
their offices taking calls from the president on their red phone and punching
buttons on gigantic mainframe computers and feeding them punch cards so that
they can tell them to call out the Doll Squad fare little better with their
wide and barf-colored striped ties. Then there was the rainbow colored
jacket that the leader of the Doll Squad wore after capturing the bra-less
secretary of the Senator who was wearing a flimsy lavender one piece thing.
During the actual capturing, Sabrina (I think that's the name of the head Doll)
was wearing a silly looking dark catsuit that was actually different than the
silly looking dark catsuit she was wearing when she invaded the island of the
supervillain (who had the distinctly unfashionable name of Eamon Miller)
Having established that Ted should have budgeted a substantial chunk of change
for some Speed Stick as well as not allowed the stars to provide their own
wardrobe, we should probably get down to business and figure out what exactly
is a Doll Squad, why they are invading a hideout that is alternately described
as being on an island and also located somewhere in the "hills", and why you would
ever go on a commando raid wearing go-go boots.
The Starflight II program
suffers a setback when it blows up shortly after launch and a voice comes over
the television that the Senator is watching it on taunting him about it. Some
guy who is from one of those fake-sounding security agencies that movies like
this use shows up and he summons crack secret agent Sabrina a thing with
gigantic red hair and the hard bitten look of someone that has no doubt been in
these low budget movies for most of the seventies.
They get the president to
give them two weeks to find out who is behind this terrorist attack and when
Sabrina listens to the tape of the guy taunting the Senator, she recognizes the
voice but just can't place it. I immediately identified it as Osama and issued
a thunderstorm warning or turned it up to 11 or went to Code Blue or whatever
we're supposed to do when we get taunted by that slug.
Sabrina decides that
she needs to get the rest of the Doll Squad together, though I was never sure
why before they even knew who was behind this madness that the super computer spit
out the Doll Squad as the only solution and not some Chuck Norris-led team. Or even one head-up by Michael Dudikoff . Oh well, at least it Michael Pare wasn't anywhere to be found.
Anyway, she goes to the local kung fu studio and hospital to let her sister agents know
that their country needs them again, though as a nurse and kung fu instructor
they are already serving their country admirably in civilian life. Two hoods
follow Sabrina around and kill these two chicks after they meet with her,
leading to believe that having a secret agent walking around telling other
secret agents to meet at the local Howard Johnson's later that night is not as
secure a situation as you would have thought.
When she gets to the HoJo's,
Sabrina is surprised to find a hood there taunting her about all this and she
uses the lighter that the bad guy gives her for a cigarette that he took from
the dead nurse agent that was really a blow torch and she fries the guy. Why
he would kill some honey in a busy hospital and stand around stealing her
lighter is something that Eamon Miller will have to worry over.
Sabrina goes back to HQ and uses this magical super computer thing to figure out
that the person behind all this was former agent (though I'm guessing he was never
actually on the Doll Squad) Eamon Miller. Just then, the traitorous secretary
shows up and gets caught by Sabrina. In what some may have been a bit of a
tactical blunder, but a big break for the Doll Squad, the secretary kills
herself after giving up some vital bit of info on Eamon's whereabouts.
Sabrina goes about getting some more Doll Squad members and even though her traipsing
around with "Secret Agent Recruiter" tattooed on her forehead got everyone
wasted last time, Eamon doesn't think to send more minions out to do the same
thing again. Of course, why these losers just didn't kill Sabrina right at the
beginning is something you can ponder along with how an alleged supervillain could get electrocuted after being drenched with a martini and touched with the cord from a lamp
(don't even ask).
We're getting ahead of ourselves
though. Before Eamon's big death scene, we go through a progressively silly
series of incidents like when Eamon's right hand man kidnaps an agent who is
undercover at a carnival and then makes up his own lady to look like her so
that she can get info from Sabrina when Sabrina meets her at the carnival later
that evening. This must be one of those island hideouts with a branch office
near the local parking lot where this carnival is set up or something. When
Sabrina meets with her, this imposter asks all kinds of obvious questions and
Sabrina is able to sniff her out for the faker she is, though she could have
just as likely been smelling the stale urine stench of fat guy sweat that Eamon
got all over her during their more intimate moments.
Using all her secret agent abilities, Sabrina deduces Eamon's location from
where his evil-doctor buddy is living and an invasion is planned! The Doll
Squad rent a boat posing as dumb broads and go out to the island and take a
row boat in to shore. The first mate, Raphael, who is one of Eamon's flunkies
tells the captain to go ahead and leave because the gals said that they would
just hang out on the island for the rest of their lives. The captain has the
wisdom of an old sea dog and questions whether they would really say that
without any food or water and Raphael says "yep, they sure would" and Captain
says okay and leaves, even though Raphael is so high he is almost falling
overboard as he tells the Captain all this.
The Doll Squad muck around on the
island for what seems like hours and shoot about a hundred guards. I don't
know how Eamon pays for all this, where he houses these guys or why no one else
in the area notices the guy whose property is barb wired off and patrolled with
a small army of goobers, but this is an island, right? And what's the point of
an island hideaway if the Doll Squad can just row their boat ashore without any
problems? I was also thinking that maybe once Sabrina figured out where
Eamon's hideout was, she might have just telephoned her boss to let him know so
that he could order a daisycutter dropped on this moron or at the very least
send in a force bigger than five honeys in tight uniforms. Once she learned
where he was living, there was no reason for the Doll Squad to be farting
around by themselves on this island with no contact between them and HQ.
Lots
of shooting and a few pathetic fight scenes pepper the remnants of the movie
before stuff gets blown up. It was an unfortunate choice that Ted made to show
lots of stuff blowing up since he had absolutely no grasp on how to show a
convincing explosion on screen. The Doll Squad themselves weren't very
interesting and none of them had any independent personas other than hair color
and no one did much but run around shooting guns. I was hoping each of them
had some special skill that they could use in an action scene (you know - one
is maybe good with knives, one in hand to hand combat, one kills by sitting on
your face - that kind of stuff), but they just ran around a lot doing stupid
stuff.
A total failure on any and every level that never fails to make you
think you're watching someone who got the neighborhood together to make a
little movie where he couldn't even get the actresses to show some skin (not
that I'm advocating that, but you expect certain things in movies like this).
You do get some small reward though for sitting through it all when Sabrina's
theme song plays over the closing credits. It has this lounge singer feeling
that tries to emulate all those bad James Bond themes and does a pretty good
job of it. Well, of being bad like those James Bond themes, that is.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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