Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine

My teenage son and I have been catching up on Vincent Price films thanks to cable TV. Most have been those cheesy Poe horror flicks from the 60s, but this one was something out of the ordinary! My son and I laughed all the way through, and at the end he declared, "This is probably the worst movie I've ever seen in my life!" This film gives Vincent Price a chance to spoof his own persona and he does it with relish. His comic timing is great, although his sidekick Jack Mullaney is disappointingly unfunny and un-Igorish. (If you want to see Mullaney in his creepy mode, find the BELFRY episode from the first season of Alfred Hitchcock.) Avalon and Hickman turn in their usual likable performances, and Susan Hart impresses with her varied accents and comic mugging.

The Supremes sing a horrible title song slightly off-pitch, and that theme dominates Les Baxter's jolly score. Various other beach party favorites make cameo appearances (and advertise a movie...THE GIRL IN THE GLASS BIKINI...which was never released). San Francisco looks great, with all the usual hillside chase clichés. The plot is so thin (actually full of holes) that it hardly bears thinking about.

It was also refreshing to be reminded that the standards for female beauty used to be more substantial than in our anorexic age.

The opening animated titles and the closing blackout dance sequence are also worth mentioning. All in all, a pleasant way to spend 90 minutes, if you miss the goofiness of the 1960s.

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.

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.

"Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine" is one of those campy'60s movies that are, basically, an excuse to show bikini-clad girls in a movie. Vincent Price stars as the mad scientist Dr. Goldfoot, with an insane plan to rob all the world's richest men. Frankie Avalon plays a bumbling secret agent trying to foil Dr. Goldfoot's evil scheme, and even pokes fun at his "Beach Blanket" history. This movie has a ridiculous story, but it has some good qualities. For one thing, the animated opening credit sequence is fun and eye-catching. For another, the chase scene is a good laugh. And, if nothing else, is has better production values than its sequel, "Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs"!

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.