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DR GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE
Rating: 
USA. 1965.
Director – Norman Taurog, Screenplay – Robert Kaufman & Elwood Ullman, Story – James Hartford [James H. Nicholson], Producers – Samuel Z. Arkoff & James H. Nicholson, Photography – Sam Leavitt, Music – Les Baxter, Music Supervisor – Al Simms, Special Effects – Roger George, Art Direction – Daniel Haller. Production Company – American International Pictures.
Cast:
Vincent Price (Dr Goldfoot), Frankie Avalon (Craig Gamble), Dwayne Hickman (Todd Armstrong), Susan Hart (Diane/No 11), Jack Mullaney (Igor), Fred Clark (Uncle Donald Penny)
Plot: In San Francisco, the mad genius Dr Goldfoot has created an army of female robots, which he is sending to seduce the world’s wealthiest men into marrying and then signing their money over to them. Due to Goldfoot’s assistant’s bumbling, one of these robots accidentally goes home with Craig Gamble, who is Agent 00½ with the Security Intelligence Command. When Craig’s uncle, the section head, treats his story of female robots as crazy, Craig teams up with Todd Armstrong, one of Goldfoot’s intended targets, to stop the nefarious plan.
Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine is a totally gonzo film. It has been slung together in large part as a spoof on the James Bond films – Vincent Price’s mad scientist is named Goldfoot and wears gold slippers in clear parody of the title character of Goldfinger (1964). (It was one of a number of almost entirely terrible Bond spoofs made around the time). Dr Goldfoot was made by AIP and seems fairly much construed as a send-up of everything they were making at the time too – Vincent Price is spoofing his roles in particular in the Edgar Allan Poe films made at AIP by Roger Corman – there’s a parody of the pendulum sequence in Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and the various portraits of Goldfoot’s ancestors are of Price as Roderick Usher from The House of Usher (1960) and Verden Fell from The Tomb of Ligeia (1964). The film also features Frankie Avalon from various AIP Beach Party films – and his frequent co-star Annette Funicello makes a cameo imprisoned in stocks in Goldfoot’s lair.
Unfortunately Dr Goldfoot is pretty lame. The director is Norman Taurog who made a lot of musicals and comedies going way back to the silent era, as well as several Elvis Presley films. It is all directed with a slapstick tone – cars crashing in the streets, someone getting pinned in a foldup bed, Fred Clark tripping over and banging his head in his too-small office. There are lame puns – “I’m flat,” a girl with an amply proportioned chest says (referring to her car tire), “Not from where I’m looking,” replies Frankie Avalon. Followed by “I’ve got a jack in the back,” “Three’s a crowd.” Not to mention a lot of puns derived from Frankie Avalon announcing he is “a SIC man.” It all climaxes in a very silly chase sequence through the streets of San Francisco in cars, motorcycles, cable cars, hearses and sports cars. Dr Goldfoot feels like a film that should have been a lot funnier but only emerges as rather leaden.
The sequel was the Italian-made Dr Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
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