Saturday, December 31, 2005

Movie review - "Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine" (1965) ***


Silly, really fun AIP film with Vincent Price having a fine old hammy time in the title role, a mad doctor who creates a machine that produces beautiful women. He tries to get the women to marry rich men (in particular Dwayne Hickman), but when one accidentally cracks on to a secret service agent (Frankie Avalon) he finds himself in trouble.

I loved this film as a kid and it still holds up well, with jaunty Les Baxter music, a bright theme song sung by the Supremes, Price on good form, ditto Jack Mullaley (as Igor, Goldfoot's assistant), Fred Clarke (as Avalon's uncle and boss of the secret sertvice), Avalon and Hickman (they form a strong buddy duo - its a buddy comedy as much as anything), and even when the gags don't really work (which is often) they keep coming and it is all rbight and likeable.

AIP fans will find this a smorgasbord: not only does the cast feature AIP regulars like Price, Avalon, Hickman and Susan Hart (the beautiful robot who marries Hickman and who in real life would marry AIP co-founded James Nicholson), but there's music by Baxter and art direction from Dan Haller, the film pokes fun at the Poe series especially Pit and Pendulum, there is a final silly chase very much like many of the Beach Party films, and there are cameos from Deborah Walley, Annette Funicello, Aaron Kincaid and Harvey Lembeck - all promoting, according to the end credits, a film called The Girl in the Glass Bikini, which presumably became The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini.

(NB was Kincaid really a big enough name, even at AIP, to warrant a cameo? Probably not - but he had been signed to a seven year contract with AIP in 1964, who hoped to build him into a star. He's in the v beginning of the film, as is Walley - the other two come at the end.)
 
Avalon and Hickman use the same names of the characters they played in Ski Party. There was a sequel, Dr Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs - plus a 30 minute TV special, The Wild Weird World of Dr Goldfoot, with Price, Hart and Tommy Kirk.

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