I was about halfway through Ted V. Mikels’ The Doll Squad (1973) when it occurred to me that it would make a great double bill with David A. Prior’s Mankillers (1987). Both features were made for practically nothing and rely entirely on the charisma of their sexy lady stars to keep the audience invested. Both films also owe something to The Dirty Dozen (1967) in terms of plotting although The Doll Squad is much more a riff on the Sean Connery Bond films of the sixties.
The plot of The Doll Squad is that an evil ex-secret agent (Michael Ansara) has blown up a space shuttle and plans to release plague carrying rats across the globe. Francine York and her “Doll Squad” are dispatched to thwart the evil mastermind and save the world. Women in jumpsuits mow down cronies with machine guns or plot their operations lounging about in bikini tops. The Doll Squad is a film that knows its audience and just goes for it.
Ted V. Mikels is an expert at stuffing his movies with excess amounts of skin and titillating scenarios but he cannot get anything but a wooden performance from an actor. The performances in The Doll Squad vary from high camp to hardly serviceable. Yet, the stilted line deliveries and the intensely committed performances come together to make The Doll Squad a whole lot of fun. There’s nothing consistent in the world that The Doll Squad presents except that all the women are gorgeous and explosions leave no debris behind.
People like myself who are suckers for campy espionage thrillers will just eat up everything The Doll Squad has to offer and there is no shame in that. The Doll Squad isn’t a good movie but it isn’t bad either. No film that is this much fun or this bonkers could ever be called bad because it excels as entertainment.
