Dr. Goldfood and the Girl Bombs (1966)

Dr. Goldfood and the Girl Bombs

“It was the most dreadful movie I’ve ever been in. Just about everything that could go wrong did. At one point, they even lost the soundtrack to the whole movie! They literally lost it!”

Vincent Price

While many critics agree with Price’s opinion on Mario Bava’s “Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs”, I found it strangely entertaining. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating that Bava’s film should knock “Vertigo” off Sight and Sounds top one hundred list, but any film that is bold enough to title itself on a terrible pun like Dr. Goldfoot (get it, its like “Goldfinger”….but a foot) deserves recognition.

The plot revolves around Dr. Goldfoot, an evil mastermind who is trying to get what all men with mustaches want..the world. The only thing that stands in the way of Dr. Goldfoot  are a dozen gullible military generals. In order to eliminate these unsuspecting men, Goldfoot creates walking bombs that are disguised as beautiful scantily clad women. These women robots (who closely resemble the killer robots made by the evil magician in Bava’s earlier film “The Wonders of Aladdin") main goal is to seduce generals and as the generals become aroused something happens chemically and the bombs explode. And that is about as much of a scientific explanation we get inside the film. As the tagline of the film states “ Meet the girls with the Thermo-Nuclear Navels”. Now that is a plot! 

Like all of Bava’s films the cinematography is top notch and actually cleverly alludes to other American films. Most notably, Bava has his Abbot and Costello-like agents fall out of a plane while clutching onto a nuclear bomb that is being dropped over Russia. It’s interesting to see that Kubrick’s imagery inside “Dr. Strangelove, or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” was already being spoofed only two years after the release of the film. (On a side note, the titles of these films are really beginning to take a bite out of my 500 word limit) 

Now that we’ve discussed the positive elements of this film, let’s discuss Italian comedy. I just don’t understand it. I thought Price’s opening to the film was genuinely funny and most of Price’s scenes are entertaining. In opposition to this any time the Italian comedy team of Franco and Ciccio loudly erupt onto the screen with their juvenile and slapstick-style comedy I tend to stare blankly at the screen in boredom. The style of comedy would be dated even for early silent cinema. They truly stand out just as you would imagine two bumbling Italian clowns would in a sixties era Bond film.

While this film is certainly not perfect, it successfully keeps the viewer entertained throughout its brief eighty minute runtime. Yes, the jokes, characters, and most of the acting is terrible, but it is never boring. I’m sure there is some kind of thesis to be written about the political awareness of the characters in an early cold war era film, but come on this is a film about sexy girls who self detonate in order to assassinate generals. Just watch it for entertainment and leave “Dr. Strangelove” for the political analysis.