Doctor G y su máquina de bikinis

Diabolically hammy mad scientist Vincent Price (as Dr. Goldfoot) has a dozen beautifully-shaped young female robots. They wear gold bikinis for underwear and are not shy about parading around for the camera. Lead "robot" Susan Hart (as Diane, #11) succeeds in Mr. Price's mission, to seduce handsome millionaire Dwayne Hickman (as Todd Armstrong). Also turned on by Ms. Hart, rival agent Frankie Avalon (as Craig Gamble, #00 and ½) tries to foil Price's plot to mate more millionaires with his sexy robots. The Supremes sing the title song, but do not appear. A couple of cameos help liven up the dungeon sequence. When compared to the infinitely better "Get Smart" TV series created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, this spoof of "James Bond" spy films fell flat - fortunately, the women weren't.

*** Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (11/6/65) Norman Taurog ~ Vincent Price, Frankie Avalon, Dwayne Hickman, Susan Hart

Our little group saw this on our own "Bad Movie Night" and speculated that this was a sly homage to San Francisco's gay community. Certainly there was no obvious reason to film it there, besides the fun involved in careening down Lombard Street between Hyde & Leavenworth (allegedly the crookedest stretch of paved road in the USA) during the chase scene.

Why? Because Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman seem almost disinterested in Dr. Goldfoot's sex-bots at first, and, once they find each other, they hold on to each other for dear life. Vincent Price camping it up in silk smoking jacket doesn't help. All of us viewing in this session were straight, so those of you with acute pre-Stonewall Hollywood Gay-dar should check this out to see if we're just a clueless bunch of breeders. There may even have been clues we missed.

A few things that make us go "Hmmm": Why would someone who obviously has the means to construct an opulent underground lab with fancy decoration and fabulous machinery need to use it to soak rich guys? Why does Igor look and act like just a normal schlub pulled off the street, rather than a revived corpse (did the SFX budget run out after all those gold bikinis)? How does making her scrub the floor punish a robot? (Unless she's Marvin the Paranoid Android.) What ever became of Igor's impersonation of the SIC chief visiting the local department? And why does a movie that advertises "killer sex-bots" have little violence, and essentially no sex, in it -- not even of the off-screen early-60s sex-tease sort?

Aww, so the hell what? IT'S A REALLY STUPID MOVIE ALL ROUND. ***, one of them just because Vincent Price is simply mahvelous.

Dr. Goldfoot has:

1. Vincent Price having a field day hamming it up like John Barrymore on scotch and speed!

2. Harvey Lembeck as Erich Von Zipper in a hilarious 10-second cameo!

3. The titanic teaming of Dobie Gillis and Frankie Avalon!

4. One of the finest "second bananas," the late Jack Mullaney as Price's Mad Scientist henchman, Igor!

5. Tons of young American International babes!

6. The Supremes singing the title song!

7. It's directed by Elvis' #1 Man, Norman Taurog!

8. It's written by the Three Stooges #1 Man, Ellwood Ullman!

WOW!

What have you got: Only the greatest film since "Gone With The Wind," "Citizen Kane" and "The Bicycle Thief"! Okay, perhaps not - but it is a ton of zany low budget screwball fun,'60s American International-style.

I really liked it.

Vincent Price looks like he's having a great old time in this preposterous film Dr. Goldfoot And The Bikini Machine. For a classically trained actor like Price the chance to do a whole film around a Snidely Whiplash type villain must have been impossible to resist. Of course he got the money up front.

Dr. Goldfoot has invented an army of robots who look like cover girls in bikinis and his mad plan is to get them married to the richest people in the world and take over their money. Such a one played by Susan Hart he's targeted Dwayne Hickman with. But her programming got messed up and she goes after Frankie Avalon a would be secret agent who is the cause no doubt of his uncle spymaster Fred Clark's baldness.

Nothing wrong with seeing all these statuesque beauties, put your mind on them and you'll forget the inanities of the story. However Price and his assistant Jack Mullaney will give you a few chuckles. They remind me of Jack Lemmon and Peter Falk in The Great Race.

It's excruciatingly dumb, but also very funny.

MASTER PLAN: marry off rich bachelors to female robots and get rich. Of all the films attempting to capture the absurdity and success of the James Bond craze of the sixties, this one is the most ridiculous. This one combines the weird plots of the Bonders with some elements of the stupid beach movies and campy horror of the decade, complete with dungeons and threat of torture (genuinely if mildly amusing). It's an odd mix, to be sure. Then-popular teen idol Avalon, most famous for his beach blanket bingo pics, is an agent (number 00 & 1/2) of S.I.C. (Secret Intelligence Command), based out of my old hometown of San Francisco - nice ___location long shots and a focus on the winding Lombard street. He's a hapless dope who becomes involved with a femme fatale robot (Hart) accidentally. She's one of several creations originating from the warped brain of Goldfoot (Price), the mad doctor of the title. He's somewhat typical of a Bondian villain wannabe, but Price is best known for his mad scientist roles in typical horror films of that time, so he's kind of a combination of both. Though a mad genius in the comical sense, his goal is nothing more than making some bucks off his robots, so he's actually a futuristic pimp, running a wild & crazy con artist/prostitution ring.

The plot is pretty amusing and Price hams it up shamelessly, mugging for the camera and even indulging in that cliché - the sinister mad chuckle. His assistant, Igor, is a complete idiot, a further parody of the mad scientist's aid from the "Frankenstein" movies, existing solely as an ego-boost for the mad scientist, to make him look even smarter - presumably why Goldfoot 'returned' him to life (see also the Luthor/Otis relationship from the "Superman" movies). How much a viewer likes any of this depends on how much patience one has for all the slapstick stunts and silly overplaying by the actors. Igor is the most extreme example, but everyone else also behaves like an idiot. The one surprise is actress Hart, who, besides being easy on the eye, proves to be quite talented, required to act with several different accents, besides other things. She virtually disappeared from the movie business soon after this, unfortunately. The entire premise of robotic babes, a commentary on male attitudes of that period, was repeated in later similar fare - "Some Girls Do" for example, not to mention the obvious "The Stepford Wives" in the seventies. Also note the use of musical sound FX in one scene from a couple of famous sci-fi pics of the fifties, "War of the Worlds" and "Forbidden Planet." Goldfoot and S.I.C. would return in the Italian "Dr.Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs" the following year. Hero:4 Villain:5 Femme Fatales:7 Henchmen:3 Fights:3 Stunts/Chases:4 Gadgets:5 Auto:4 Locations:6 Pace:5 overall:5