Angel's Brigade

Even watching this from the relative safety of MST3K, I felt offended at the events being shown. Jack Palance running around in that suit! Alan Hale, never being able to escape the role of The Skipper, and Mr. Howell er, Jim Backus, throwing away whatever dignity he had. Then there's our main characters. A very broad (no pun intended) range of just about every ethnicity, job, stereotype that you could think of. Very bad acting from our leading ladies here. I would like to think that Jack took this role on advice from his agent, who was probably drunk, and then quickly fired him. On a slightly different note, the cinematographer was one Dean Cundey. He has since gone on to bigger and better films such as Apollo 13.

Brain-dead jiggle-fest? Why, yes indeed, you've come to the right place.

Angel's Revenge/Brigade is basically "Charlie's Angels" with twice the number of cast members (six women - plus a 'high school teenager' - instead of three) and approximately 1/10th of the talent. Would be first time viewers should adjust their expectations accordingly.

Look, no one is ever going to list Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, etc., among the great actresses of the '70s, but the original Angels had a lot of charm and charisma, and they could deliver their lines, interact with each other, do their stage business and blocking, and hit their marks like the professionals they were. It was all facile dreck, but it was professional level dreck.

On the other hand, "Angel's Brigade" features seven of the stiffest, most unconvincing and grating actresses on the planet. The women are moderately hot (except for the lanky black actress, who is saddled with a huge afro that makes her look like a human dandelion ), but they simply C-A-N-N-O-T deliver convincing readings of their lines. The director seems to realize this, and so he dumbs down the proceedings in an attempt to avoid making the girls show any kind of recognizable human emotion...and the resulting screenplay is so bad, so lame, that it takes genuine talents like Jack Palance, Peter Lawford, and Arthur Godfrey (and several longtime character actors like Jim Backus) and simply embarrasses them with idiotic throwaway parts that completely waste their talents. Lawford, Godfrey, and Backus, especially, all appear to be hammered out of their skulls..it's as if they couldn't be bothered to sober up long enough to appear even in the briefest scenes.

God, the whole thing is just so inane...I know this thing is not meant to be taken seriously, that it is just a goof, but it's so damned careless and annoying. One Angel disables a thug by opening a beach umbrella in his face. Another Angel takes out a thug with a back-fist accompanied by a Hanna-Barbera 'BOINK!' sound effect.A third Angel takes a hit to her, um, talents, but she has a life raft tucked under her shirt which protects her and she makes an indignant face and pulls out the raft and bonks the thug over the head with it...it's not funny and light hearted, it's just STUPID.

MST3K struggled mightily to have fun with this one, and their commentary is almost enough to turn this into a watchable experience. I can't imagine trying to watch this one 'straight'.

Avoid the original version like the plague. Even the jiggles and the jumpsuits aren't compensation enough for the pain of the performances and the screenplay.

For a very long time I've wondered if a lot of bad movies would eventually get what they deserved... AND THIS heap of crap got it! A good Thrashing from our pals on Mystery Science Theater 3000! I'm so utterly disgusted by the acting on the part of the women in this movie that the only way I could stand it was while Mike, Crow and Tom Servo throw great jokes at the stupidity and insanity on the screen. To be frank, can't we just destroy every copy of this film and pretend it never existed?

Let's see. There was the idea that seven women without any sort of training of any kind would bring down a drug kingpin. There was the fact that none of these women ever thought to call in the police. There was the drug kingpin who stored millions of dollars of drugs in a ludicrously unguarded "processing compound."

There was this famous pop star who can apparently get around Los Angeles completely unrecognized. There was a "Vietnamese" character with a Japanese name. There was this high school girl hanging on to the trunk of a Caddy, uncommented upon by other drivers, as it sped through LA.

There were appearances by such actors as Jack Palance, Jim Backus(if you watch MST3K's version, Angel's Revenge, you can actually hear Mike and the bots groan when Backus makes his appearance), Peter Lawford(Tom Servo: "Do you think Peter Lawford even knows where he is?") and Arthur Godfrey. And there were plot holes aplenty and lots more awfulness besides this.

All of this and more make for one of the worst movies ever made by anyone. That anybody thought this was a good idea and that actors of the caliber of Jack Palance agreed to participate is mind-boggling. Watch the MST3K version which is one of their best efforts.

In a desperate attempt to capitalize on "Charlie's Angels", this movie pits seven (six, really) buxom, bejumpsuited beauties against the evil forces of Peter Lawford, Jack Palance, and some oily guy, all three of whom are pushing drugs on kids (who weren't getting paid for speaking roles). Lawford and Palance were probably down in the wine cellar for most of the filming, but where else can you see Pat Buttram, Alan Hale, jr., Jim Backus AND Arthur Godfrey all drool over the same women in one flick? One of the best MST3Ks.