Ted V. Mikels, director of such epics as Girl in Gold Boots, Astro-Zombies, and The Corpse Grinders, churns out pretty much the same thing with 1973's The Doll Squad — badly written, poorly acted and ineptly edited Z-budget fare that's stuffed to the gills with padding. Touted by Mikels himself as the (stolen) blueprint for the TV jigglefest Charlie's Angels, the comparison is more apropos to the films of Andy Sidaris... only without the tits.
    A less-smarmy-than-usual Anthony Eisley (Dracula vs. Frankenstein) plays Vic Connelly, CIA security expert in charge of protecting U.S. space missions. Only moments before a top secret rocket launch is sabotaged, an influential senator (John Carter) receives a pirate broadcast. It's message: Hand over America's classified missile plans or else face further calamity. Vic runs some punch cards through supercomputer "Bertha" to determine the best team to track down and take out the culprit. Thus Agent SQ-1, Sabrina Kincaid (Francine York), is called into action. As head of the crack all-gal commando unit The Doll Squad, she's to assemble her team and uncover the criminal mastermind behind the sabotage. Sabrina thinks the voice sounds familiar, but she's not sure.
    She does know the villain — used to boink him, in fact — only she doesn't realize it yet. After some 40 minutes of convoluted stupidity, including the assassinations of two of the Doll Squad, the good guys finally deduce that the evil mastermind was once among their own ranks. Former agent Eamon O'Reilly ('60s TV staple Michael Ansara) has gone bad, with his own private agenda for world domination. Blofeld this guy ain't, however. He commands his private army of machinegun-toting thugs from a palatial compound (the interiors of which were shot in a hideously-decored suburban home) on a remote island off the coast of Venezuela. (Actually the Southern California desert.) His soldiers are loyal unto death; twin evil scientists have surgically installed radio control disks in their necks. O'Reilly plans to unleash plague-infected rats upon America and the rest of the Free World if his blackmail demands aren't met. Okay...
    Sabrina finally assembles her surviving teammates — who include a psychiatrist, a librarian, an Olympic swimmer, a carnival ticket clerk (!) and a stripper — and sneak onto the island. She and some of the gals get captured, of course, but are rescued by the others. Then Sabrina gets captured again. The rest of the squad kill about 150 guards and blow everything up while Sabrina gets the best of the amorous (and downright stupid) O'Reilly. That's about it. And none of the ladies get naked, either. Tura Satana in pasties doesn't count.     So the movie's chief assets aren't to be found among any profuse displays of female flesh. Most of the good stuff comes in the form of ineptly staged action scenes barely a step up from the silly chop-socky shenanigans of Dolemite — all set to classic '70s wah-wah pedal guitar riffs. I certainly got a few chuckles out of seeing these "tough" female commandos gamboling about in skintight jumpsuits, vainly attempting to run in their high-heeled go-go boots and involuntarily flinching whenever they fire their weapons. (These dames are cold-blooded, though. Just about every bad guy who gets Kirk-chopped/fu-kicked into unconsciousness is given the coup de gras with a round or two from a silenced pistol.) The sequence in which the karate instructor member of the team is assassinated by O'Reilly's hitmen proved as hilarious as it was surprising; there should've been a "Most Overwrought Death Scene" Oscar for the actress that year. Watch in amazement as Sabrina fries a guy's face off with a cigarette lighter flamethrower in a crowded restaurant — the other patrons barely take notice of the three-foot jet of fire or the man's screams. Then there's the exploding vodka the Dolls trick some of O'Reilly's guards into drinking...
    Yet the ladies of the Squad are courteous enough not to hog all the glory. (Or is it infamy?) Supervillain Eamon O'Reilly is one of the most pathetically dumb Dr. No-wannabes ever. And not just because his master plan is both stupid and incoherent. Most of his expenses apparently go to a huge payroll of totally incompetent bodyguards, some of whom patrol their master's island by clinging for dear life to the hood of a slow-moving Land Rover. Justifiably, Michael Ansara seems very embarrassed to be in a movie by crapmeister Mikels. So worried was he that someone might actually see this thing that, in his first appearance in the film, Ansara is visibly drenched in sweat, sporting huge armpit stains — though the other actors in the scene are calm, cool and collected. He gives a terrible performance, best exemplified by the laughably stupid manner in which O'Reilly is tricked and done in by Sabrina. ("So you want to drown me with martinis, eh? Oh, ho ho ho ho!") We don't really blame the guy... not too much, anyway. He made a great Klingon commander on classic Star Trek and he didn't write Doll Squad's script. (He could have told Mikels "I'm not gonna say this shit!" though.) I suppose Ansara's effort was in direct proportion to the size of his paycheck.
    A thoroughly bungled attempt at a campy action-adventure film, The Doll Squad has its share of mirth-inducing scenes but it's just not as fun as Mikels' Astro-Zombies. Its lack of goofy monsters or the presence of a cult star with the cachet of cranky ol' John Carradine relegates it to the "close, but no cigar" ranks of "So Bad They're Good" flicks.