The Doll Squad (1973)
Hi there, Nate here. A while back I reviewed Hell Squad, about a group of hot girls with machine guns fighting crime, which turned out to be a terrible insult to humanity and a tragic disappointment (because it had no boobs). Similar to that, The Doll Squad is also about a band of blandly pretty girls who put down their cans of Aquanet and pick up assault rifles to battle goons and henchmen and minions of an eeeevil dude. Sadly, this one also ended up being a terrible insult to humanity and a tragic disappointment (again, NO boobs...).
Kelby does not understand my love of boobs...
The "plot" is thin as wet tissue and has just as many holes. A rogue ex-CIA agent is blowing up moon rockets and blackmailing sitting US senators and doing his best 12 Monkeys impersonation with plague-infested rats, all because he didn't get any love and affection from his mother so he has erectile dysfunction and hates women. That last bit is taken directly from an actual scene in the movie, because script.
Evil guy in red (not that it matters at all).
The government decides for an unfathomably stupid reason, to NOT go after this guy with the full force of the US military and law enforcement arm, but instead to entrust the safety and security of the nation (nay, the entire world once the diseased rat thing comes out) to a vacuous redhead and her handpicked team of completely incompetent women. Why is this? Because script. And because the girls are young, skinny, and cute (and white), and this is a movie that's designed to appeal to the furiously-masturbating 17-year old boy in all of us.
The Doll Squad.
That said, there is very little in this movie that ventures even into PG-13 territory. No one gets naked, no one gets their head chopped off, no one plays hide the salami, virtually nothing happens that you couldn't see on network TV in the early 1970s. Cut out a couple of blood splatters and trim a bit on a dicey maybe-rape scene and this could be a PG movie, which is exactly NOT what horny teenage boys want to see. I don't understand at all why no one attached to this movie (or the people writing the checks) didn't see it as a problem to tease and let down your movie's sole audience demographic. Did they think that they were making a good film? Did they actually believe that their write-on-the-fly script and hurried location shoots around the LA area would be why people paid money to see it? Not likely, I've seen the lobby posters and they unfairly promised some skin.
Stop choking that girl.
I've seen more skin in a Toyota Camry commercial.
Anyway, so the Doll Squad assembles, five girls plus the redhead leader. The redhead has to hit the phone and the cabs and track down the other girls on her own dime for some reason. And where are these "highly trained expert spies" hanging out? It seems they are semi-retired or maybe just on retainer, because they have regular jobs that they have to take time off from to go and save the planet from evil. What are those jobs, you ask, desperate for some sort of excitement and titillation from this movie. Well, one is a librarian with an Amish wig, another is on the type of "national swim team" that practices at a dirty hotel pool, another is a pasties/tassels nearly-topless dancer at what looks like a Reno airport Denny's, the fourth might be moonlighting as a car thief, and the fifth girl is (I shit you not) a carnie, working the cotton candy and tilt-a-whirl ticket booth at some two-bit county fair. Who wrote this script?
Hope she's gives discounts.
Supplementing her CIA check?
The last half of the movie is the Doll Squad attacking the evil guy's island lair (conveniently located off the SoCal coast). They get captured, they escape, they get captured again, the redhead makes a deal with the devil and then recants, guns are fired, stuntmen fall down, and the sound effects team works overtime trying (failing) to sync the gunshots with the muzzle flashes. I'd detail the battle more but it's filmed at night by moonlight and is often so criminally dim that you can't tell whose shooting who. I know there's a remastered blu-ray of this out there but that would cost real money and I'm not about to drop a penny on something I'll never watch again (please god don't make me watch this again...). In the end the evil dude is electrocuted, shot, stabbed, and blown up along with his house in spectacular fashion. The world is saved, huzzah.
He has a spotlight in his bedroom?
Captured and chained.
Blahblahblah none of this matters because this movie is 110% all about the redhead's wardrobe changes. This is one of those movies where the lead actress' outfit changes in every single scene she's in, even if it makes no sense for the plot. In one particular scene she's wearing one thing as she captures the evil dude's mole in the office, and then apparently stops by her house, dragging her captive along, to change outfits so she can wear something completely different when she brings him to the authorities. You can't make this stuff up. So, in the interest of entertainment and a time-trip to the clearance racks of Barney's circa 1973, here are the redhead's outfits in visual form...
Sorry, James, this is the best I could do!
The End.
Written in April 2015 by Nathan Decker.
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