The Doll Squad (1973)

dollsquadAfter an American rocket is blown to smithereens shortly after launch, an IBM computer so big that it fills a room suggests the “most capable” persons to call upon in this time of government crisis would be … The Doll Squad!

Leading that bevy of big-haired, big-breasted beauties is redhead dynamo Sabrina Kincaid (Francine York, The Centerfold Girls). The president of the United States gives the sexy six exactly two weeks to track down the man behind the deadly sabotage: Eamon O’Reilly (Michael Ansara, It’s Alive), an impotent madman who lords over an island compound. With the help of many rats and agents with skull-implanted silver disks, he’s plotting to take over the world via bubonic plague.

dollsquad1Because Sabrina and her fellow Dolls (including Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!‘s Tura Satana, The Thirsty Dead‘s Judy McConnell and The Corpse Grinders‘ Sherri Vernon) do the snoop-and-shake thing, writer/director/producer/editor Ted V. Mikels long has claimed that his Doll Squad was ripped off by ABC’s Charlie’s Angels. I fail to see concrete evidence of theft, but The Doll Squad already feels like a TV series of its own, given the presentation of its credit sequences, the bargain-bin effects and dialogue that calls back to previous (nonexistent) episodes, i.e. “Sabrina! I haven’t seen you since the blasted U-2 affair!” Then there’s Nicholas Carras’ brassy, blaring theme song that paints the illusion of more action than actually exists.

Mikels wrings production value out of two major elements: blood and boobs. The former carries the color and consistency of Campbell’s tomato soup; the latter is accentuated by having Sabrina appear in a different outfit every couple of minutes, most of which are cleavage-driven. This changes for the island siege, for which the Dolls don matching green jumpsuits (the uniform idea fits since only Sabrina was given a personality); victory is celebrated with bikinis, as it should be.

Keep in mind we’re talking Mikels here, but those things combine to make the flick his most accessible. It certainly goes down easier than his other stab at portraying the adventures of a girl group, 1982’s 10 Violent Women. —Rod Lott

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One thought on “The Doll Squad (1973)”

  1. I doubt Aaron Spelling had ever heard of the Doll Squad, let alone seen it, when he created Charlie’s Angels. I’m not saying Angels is an original program. Hell no, it’s a blatant rip-off of the Angie Dickinson NBC hit series Police Woman.

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