The Doll Squad (1973)

THE DOLL SQUAD is a low rent action movie by Ted V. Mikels, a director whose product is generally so bad that this is perhaps a highlight of his career. It's been much discussed that this film helped inspire the creation of CHARLIE'S ANGELS and whether this is true or not, it's certainly one of the earlier 'team of women' action vehicles.The plot sees a bunch of statuesque ladies teaming up to fight saboteurs on behalf of America. They have a fine line in natty costumes and also more than a few karate skills that allows them to dispatch bad guys in some stock low rent action scenes. In other scenes they use their feminine wiles to seduce enemies before taking them out. It's all complete nonsense, of course, and yet it plays out with a fast pace and an appealing kitsch style that makes it a little more bearable than the usual genre films.

Grade Z clunker from garbageman Ted V. Mikels. It's about a band of female assassins led by Francine York who are supposed to save the world from a madman. Cheap boring movie that's nowhere near as fun as you want it to be. A movie like this should be sexy, exciting, and maybe a little campy. But this is a tired colorless affair directed with less flourish than an episode of Marcus Welby. Much has been said about this movie's influence on Charlie's Angels. Except Aaron Spelling got it right. Tura Satana is also in this. She was also in the much superior "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" See that instead. Oh and I hope Jim Steranko knows they ripped him off with that movie poster.

That's what DOLL SQUAD writer\producer\director\actor (guard) Ted V. Mikels must have asked his cronies before foisting this sorry mess upon an unsuspecting world. Ted's intimates were too kind (or too dumb, depending on how you look at it) to answer "Because your mom's friends could more convincingly spoof THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, Ted." Or, "Because it seems your script writers wrote every third sentence--independently of each other, making this story impossible to follow, Ted." Or, "Because some of your musical riffs rip off the actual Bond music so directly, you're bound to get sued, Ted." Or, "Because your 'special effects' are cheesier than a fondue pot, Ted." Or, "Because even the men in your cast can't act or fight a lick, Ted." Or, "If you let anyone besides blood relatives see this mess, they'll think a 16-year-old thought up the whole thing, Ted." Or, "If you film 10 gangs of kids playing 'Spies' in their back yards, 8 or 9 of these films will be better than DOLL SQUAD, Ted." Side note: Mercifully, the print TV channel TCM shows from time to time of DOLL SQUAD has a continuity break in the first half. Apparently it is derived from a print or videotape that had a 10-minute long tangle "lost" in the splicing repair process, yielding a revised running time of 91 minutes, 23.25 seconds (this site says the original length of DOLL SQUAD is 101 minutes). This flick is SO BAD it is not surprising in the least that no one at TCM realized that there was a 10-minute segment in the middle missing!

Perhaps it would take a trained psychotherapist to figure out why I persist in renting out movies by director/producer Ted V. Mikels, after so many repeated disappointments. From bad ("Blood Orgy of the She Devils") to worse ("The Corpse Grinders"), from rock bottom ("The Astro-Zombies") to repugnant ("The Worm Eaters"), the man has let me down time and again. Yet I had to go take a look at his 1973 offering, "The Doll Squad," despite all that, AND despite the fact that I've never been a fan of the overrated '70s TV phenomenon "Charlie's Angels," which this flick supposedly served as inspiration for. Well, the good news is that this Mikels effort may be marginally better than those others; the bad news is that, well, this is still a Mikels film, to which he brings his patented...what's the opposite of "touch of gold"? Touch of crap? The story here concerns an ex-government agent, played by Michael Ansara, who's been blowing up U.S. rockets and is threatening the world with bubonic plague, and the efforts of Doll Squad leader Sabrina (Kincaid, not Duncan) and her kick-ass babes to stop him cold. Though the film's first 15 minutes or so, featuring the gruesome murders of two of the Dolls, are promising, the picture quickly deteriorates into the typical Mikels mishmash of lousy direction, poor editing and awful FX. Though the Dolls are pretty fierce in action, more than willing to shoot their foes in the back or when they're already unconscious, most of that action is confined to murky, hard-to-follow gunplay. Francine York, it must be allowed, is pretty good as the head Doll, and quite a package to look at, as is everyone's favorite pussycat, Tura Satana. A larger budget and a more accomplished filmmaker might have been able to salvage what on paper must have seemed a pretty reasonable entertainment. As it is, if I ever rent out another Ted V. Mikels movie, someone, please, institutionalize me!!!