The Doll Squad

This rollicking predecessor to Andy Sidaris’s movies, as well as the television series Charlie’s Angels, which debuted three years later, offers a strikingly trashy paraphrase of spy movies, as it delightfully overflows with predictable twists, diabolical schemes, stiff action scenes and, mainly, conspicuous cleavage. Mikels made a virtue of the insufficient budget and unabashedly served up comic-book tricks with explosions, which go perfectly with the hopeless anti-choreography of the film’s martial arts passages. The whole thing is fundamentally enhanced by the titular “Doll Squad”, particularly their leader, Francine York, who appears in a different multi-coloured stylish outfit in every sequence. Thanks to her and her colleagues, including the iconic Tura Satana, The Doll Squad fulfils its potential as a deliberately cheap spectacle with playful stylisation and a pin-up aesthetic, which the director occasionally spices up with a dash of unexpectedly ultra-naïve moments. (14.11.2021)