Mystery Science Theatre 3000 was more than just making jokes at the expense of movies, as there were also the wraparound segments. In the Trace Beaulieu years, he was evil scientist Dr. Clayton Forrester, who had an assistant first played by J. Elvis Weinstein and then Frank Conniff. Not that these characters had any real depth, but I enjoyed the interactions.
Many movies have such a duo, but I was reminded of this especially in 1965’s Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine. Vincent Price stars as the titular character (Goldfoot, and the not the machine, thank you) and Jack Mullaney is his literal Igor. Mullaney was brought back from the dead by Price, the kind of detail which repeatedly factored into the sketches between Beaulieu and Conniff on MST3K. The machine cranks out female robots which are custom make to seduce and marry various important men around the world for Price to then use them for various purposes.
The girls wear gold lamé bikinis while walking around Price’s cavernous lair deep under the ground beneath a funeral home, as if this is some weird comedy set in the world of Phantasm. I’m not sure why the bots dress like this, as Price’s character is high camp and scans as more than a bit gay. At least, this is a guy who is comfortable wearing gold lamé slippers styled like a genie’s, complete with bells on the toes. It is telling that Mullaney’s role feels like something Paul Lynde might do, and the actor even bears a superficial resemblance.
Susan Hart is the only one of the bots we see out in the field, and she wears more clothing when doing so. At first, it is just a trench coat over her bikini. Topped with a fedora, she still looks awfully strange when walking around on the streets of San Francisco in warm weather. She definitely doesn’t know how to blend in, and she doesn’t react when a car runs into her and the vehicle is damaged while she walks away unscathed. Next, she’s walking past a bank when robbers run out onto the sidewalk and inexplicably empty their revolvers into her. Once again, no reaction.
This is the setup for a gag where she goes into a cafeteria, downs the glass of milk on Frankie Avalon’s table and arcs of it shoot out from the bullet holes. She will then mistake Avalon for Dwayne Hickman, the target of her assignment. He will be seduced by this obvious femme fatale, asking her, “What’s a rotten girl like you doing in a place like this?” Price is outraged Hart has latched onto the wrong guy, that Avalon is a nobody, though Price knows the guy’s name. Seems strange to me Price would be aware of some ordinary schmo he hasn’t met before.
Price has seen all of this, and everything else Hart will do outside the lair, from remote monitors. I tried to turn my brain off for this picture, except I couldn’t help but wonder where these cameras were that they could see this and why the shots were from the same angle we see everything ourselves. That’s because everybody here is shot on sets that are about as restrictive as those used on TV at the time, and so there weren’t many other angles from which it could be shot.
Almost every aspect of this endeavor feels like something for television. The acting is roughly mugging. The powers Hart demonstrates are like something out of Bewitched, with her inexplicably being able to walk through a door at one point as if she is a ghost. Many of those in the cast were familiar from TV, such as Hickman, as the title character from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and Fred Clark, who was on everything from Bonanza to F Troop.
When it isn’t channeling the boob tube, this American International picture is a weird mashup of the Corman Poe series and the Beach pictures that did with Avalon and Annette Funicello. She will have a great cameo here as somebody imprisoned in the stocks in Price’s dungeon. There are other cameos by actors from that series but, as I haven’t seen any of them, I was baffled by what were obvious references I wasn’t getting.
Speaking of boobs, this G-rated movie has a fair amount of innuendo, such as this exchange between Hart of Hickman, regarding her flat tire: “Thanks goodness you came along. I’m completely flat.” Hickman, looking at her chest: “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Later, he is obviously frustrated when there obviously hadn’t been any action on their honeymoon night and she says, “But, darling, my batteries weren’t charged.” When it appears he will finally find relief, a champagne bottle pops open on its own, similar to the milk bottle gag in The Girl Can’t Help It, but not as funny or shocking.
Some of the other humorous moments are mildly darkly humorous, with Price largely riffing on the characters he played in those Poe films, such as saying of his guillotine: “It will give you a haircut right down to your shoulders.” The film is bold enough to repurpose footage from The Pit and the Pendulum. Then there is Price’s consolation to Hart when Avalon accidentally tears off her left hand: “I have two crypts full of spare parts.” I wondered if Avalon has any uses in mind for Hart’s appendage that would make access to the rest of her redundant. I also speculated about the extent of Price’s mayhem, whether he did anything with the bots such as substituting garbage disposals for their vajajays. Admittedly, a bit with opera glasses that shoot spikes into the users’ eyeballs was a step too far, even if that had already been an element of 1959’s Horrors of the Black Museum, as that movie wasn’t a comedy.
We’ll never know, and we definitely won’t find out in a deeply terrible sequel helmed by Mario Bava, of all people. That one would replace Avalon with Fabian, which you wouldn’t think would make much of a difference, but it does. Even worse was the decision to sideline even Price for Italian comedians Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia. The humor of other cultures is often an acquired taste, but I hope to never acquire one for this duo, despite them being incredibly popular in their homeland.
Bava didn’t direct the first installment, which was actually helmed by Norman Taurog. That he directed many Elvis pictures may give you pause. That he directed some of the better Martin and Lewis titles is a better indicator of how he would handle this material. Basically, this is Austin Powers decades before that series.
I enjoyed this movie more than I expected, though not as much as I secretly hoped I would. Admittedly, if it wasn’t for Price, this would be an endurance test. There is a quirky innocence to the entire production, even with the more suggestive moments and the dollops of black humor. It is the cinematic equivalent of how we in America have come to regard Halloween: fun and a bit campy and nothing genuinely scary. Perhaps the creepiest element of this is the look on Hart’s face when she suddenly receives new orders while in the middle of a mission, as she looks like somebody having a stroke.
The highlight is the opening credits, which I was surprised to see is clay animation done by Art Clokey, the guy behind Gumby. It was really odd to see a claymation head of Price. Over the titles is a theme tune sung by none other than The Supremes. I can’t imagine what circumstances resulted in that group doing this song, but they do this odd, slight number justice.
Perhaps the strangest aspect of Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine isn’t that it is so campy, but that it so blatantly wears its gay heart on its gold lamé sleeve. In the end, Hickman and Avalon on a flight to Paris together, for a vacation paid for by Hickman. I had the strangest feeling Hickman as going to score better in gay paree than he did on honeymoon with Hart.
Dir: Normal Taurog
Starring Vincent Price, Frankie Avalon, Dwayne Hickman, Susan Hart
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray