By Keri O’Shea
Damn it, I have to admit – I do love a bit of 70s glamour. Oh, sure, we have the hairpieces, the false eyelashes and the ‘fuck the natural look’ make-up in spades today, but it just doesn’t look as…charming, somehow. Perhaps that feeling is exacerbated when you sit down to watch a film like The Doll Squad whilst wearing one’s obligatory, inexplicable check pyjamas (I bet 70s gals weren’t beset by either cartoon animal-bedecked or plaid nightwear on their Xmas mornings) but whatever, get the likes of Francine York and Tura Satana into a film, and you’re bound to fondly miss the good old days, all acres of glossy, possibly synthetic hair and tans which look like the sun may have made them, something which seems as rare as hen’s teeth in our cancer-savvy times, tans these days coming as they do in dysentery beige only and through a nozzle, or not at all. All in all though, the world was a gentler place back then – ladies in hotpants, pigeons carrying microfilms, henchmen in island paradises, exploding rockets…
Yup. Director Ted. V. Mikels (better-known for his involvement with a lot of ‘B’ movie horror fare, either as director or as producer) cuts to the chase quickly here, giving us a set up which, like a lot of underground cinema, doesn’t play it shy with the stock footage. It’s launch day, and as one Senator Stockwell watches the big event on the TV in his office, all of a sudden the signal is scrambled. He’s warned by a mysterious male voice that he should have played ball – and then the rocket blows up mid-air. He evidently has an enemy with influence – but who can find and take down this enemy, within the two-week time frame available to him?
Cue the Secret Cervix…no, sorry, cue the so-named Doll Squad, a group of female secret agents led by the consummately professional Sabrina (York), a woman who when requested, immediately sets about gathering her troops to track down that mysterious voice – though quickly losing two would-be dolls early on, which all goes to show the level of influence that this bad guy, whoever he is, has. It just so happens that once Sabrina has assembled her squad, they track down an interesting lead which will take them out of the US and to a remote island off the coast of South America. Now add all of the double-crossing, spy gadgetry and peril you might imagine.
However, The Doll Squad is an odd film because although it presses a lot of buttons – more or less every scene has something variously improbable, quirky or OTT – it doesn’t really feel like it’s doing so cynically. Rather, the screenwriters seem to have done their best to make the film entertaining for its own sake, something they’d enjoy watching on its own terms as a piece of entertainment, rather than just crowbarring a lot of things in there because a jaded audience would probably expect it. Maybe audiences just plain weren’t jaded forty years ago? Anyway, this quality also gives the film an odd air of innocence: this is pre-Charlie’s Angels, remember, so the concept of an all-girl group of undercover agents is rather unusual on its own, but even though our plot follows a group of ladies who moonlight – for instance – as erotic dancers when they’re not blowing shit up, or wear midriff-revealing booby tops to the shooting range, it’s surprisingly exploitation-lite in terms of the unholy trinity of nudity, sex, and violence. I’m not sure if our American readers will know and use this adjective, but there’s not really a better one: The Doll Squad is what we might describe as ‘saucy’. It has explosions aplenty and the shortest shorts known to man, but it alludes to many things rather than showing them, and this goes for the aggression on-screen as well, which is never that bad even at its worst. As Editor-man Ben pointed out to me when he handed the screener over, this is one film 88 Films could far more realistically release as part of their ‘Grindhouse Classics’ collection – but it’s also in many ways too gentle for that tag.
Still. It doesn’t matter what you call it, really: The Doll Squad is in its way quite charming, entertaining and easy to watch, with plenty going on and that old time capsule goodness about it too. I think it’s fair to say that none of the 88 Films catalogue is likely to change your life, but here’s one of their films which allows you to laugh with it rather than at it. This is quite a nice release from them too, with an audio commentary and a ‘Making Of’ documentary included, as well as the standard array of trailers.
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The Doll Squad will be available from 88 Films on 17th March, 2014.