When rocket Starflight 12 explodes just after launch from Cape Kennedy and a mysterious saboteur takes credit via radio broadcast, only top notch secret agents can handle the job of tracking him down. A CIA boss asks a giant computer named Bertha to determine the best agents for the job, and like AI giving a bullshit answer to a tricky question the names of—duh duh DUH—The Doll Squad are spit out. While the movie looks like a typical grindhouse feature thanks to its nice promo poster, we’re pretty sure people who ponied up the cash to see this effort went away disappointed.
The Squad is led by Francine York, and the saboteur turns out to be a man from her past, someone she romanced in Germany. But he’s turned bad, and his simple goal now is to spread bubonic plague around the globe. This isn’t just because York broke his heart. He wants money. Scads of it, which he’ll get by blackmailing governments into paying. Or as he puts it, “All of this will make us rich, once my rats are nibbling on flesh throughout the world.”
But the only thing that gets a meal is an antique broadsword on his left ventricle, which is a lesson to all you aspiring supervillains to never leave things like that sitting around. If we sound nonplussed by the movie, we were. Is there anything worthwhile here? There’s a groovy opening credit sequence, lots of psychedelic scene dissolves, and some nice matching jumpsuits, but the elements you desire in a film of this sort are all missing. There’s no humor, no camp, no good action, and no nudity—unless you count a pair of pasties on Tura Satana’s nipples.
Probably the biggest surprise with The Doll Squad is that some of the girls get knocked off, but they come in waves, so it doesn’t matter. As an action lead York is pure ham, though we can’t say she’s substantially worse than Caffaro or Gemser or other names from this niche of cinema, but everything around her in this third tier action caper definitely is—from the rice paper thin plot to the superimposed explosions. Proceed if you dare. The Doll Squad premiered in the U.S. today in 1973.
