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Dr. Goldfoot And The Bikini Machine
[MGM]
1965; color
Directed by Norman Taurog
Starring: Vincent Price, Frankie Avalon, Dwayne Hickman & Susan Hart
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I'm guessing Dr. Goldfoot And The Bikini Machine must have been a welcome break for Vincent Price in 1965, considering he'd spent pretty much the better part of the decade starring in horror movie upon horror movie. This comedy, which ventures into slapstick on occasion, is a strange cross-pollination of sci-fi, spy-fi and romantic comedy; it's dated, both knowingly and unknowingly kitschy and, despite it's potential crossover appeal to teen audiences of the day, it still works. The movie pairs former up teen idol Frankie Avalon with former Dobie Gillis star Dwayne Hickman as two single guys who both become obsessed with the same woman. A woman who happens to be a robot. But there's much more to it than that. Price plays Dr. Goldfoot, a mad scientist of sorts who creates a race of gold bikini clad women (with his bikini machine, natch) in the basement lab of his mortuary / funeral home, located in the appropriately named Goldfoot Memorial Park. (The greater plan is to program the ladies to hone in on, snag and marry the world's richest and most powerful bachelors; so that the girls then, in turn, can use their feminine wiles to get control of the wealth and power of attorney of their new husbands and turn everything over to Goldfoot.) Avalon plays Craig Gamble, a guy who works for Secret Intelligence Command ("I'm a SIC man!"), who mistakenly hits on by a robot named Diane. (Played by Veronica Hart who was also the ghost in Ghost In The invisible Bikini.) Before he can make heads or tails of her though, she's stopped by Goldfoot and put on the trail of millionaire executive Todd Armstrong (Hickman). Within hours of meeting Todd, Diane has him signing a marriage certificate and most of his life away. Craig is still obsessed with Diane and manages to meet up with Todd entirely by accident. Later the two of them set out to figure out what the hell is really going on. Through a typically preposterous series of events - are there any other types of events in a screwball comedy? - they end up meeting Dr. Goldfoot and eventually try to stop him. Do they succeed? Do you care? Does it matter that Mario Bava directed the almost-impossible-to-find Italian sequel (Dr. Goldfoot and the Girlbombs) to this American flick? If you answered yes to any of these questions you're using entirely too many brain cells to analyze it all; some movies are supposed to be nothing more than escapist fun and this is one of them.
—the Kommandant
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