Lightning Bolt

Just about every Eurospy film that got made during the craze that began right after the death of peplum and right before the rise of spaghetti westerns got made because of the success of the James Bond films, and most of the Eurospy movies aren't shy about wearing their influences on their sleeve. For some, it was by way of casting one of the many European actors who played a villain or a love interest in a Bond film. Thunderball's Adolfo Celli appeared in several Eurospy productions, as did Bond girls like From Russia With Love's Daniela Bianchi. Bernard "M" Lee and Lois "Miss Moneypenny" Maxwell actually both starred as characters very similar to their Bond characters in a Eurospy film starring Sean Connery's younger brother, Neil, who was passed off as 007's brother in a way vague enough to avoid being sued by the producers of the Bond films. For most, however, it was simply a case of repeating the formula and mimicking the ad campaigns.

Lightning Bolt is particularly obvious about its intentions to compare itself to Thunderball, which came out in the same year, right down to the tagline, "Lightning Bolt -- He Strikes Like a Ball of Thunder!" Which makes even less sense than just the word "thunderball," which already doesn't make any sense. What the hell is a thunderball? But hey -- that was just for American audiences, right? It's like when shifty distributors insisted on forcing Bruce Lee's name into the title of every kungfu movie ever made during the 1970s. You can't blame the filmmakers for that, right? Sure, except that the original Italian title for the movie makes the Bond exploitation even more obvious. The main villain is straight out of Goldfinger with a dash of the Matt Helm film The Ambushers, of all things, thrown in. The original Italian title, in fact, works as hard to recall Goldfinger as the American one does to recall Thunderball. Unless you think Operacione Goldman is a coincidence.

The plot -- in which a nefarious arch villain is using laser waves to misguide and blow up moon rockets launched from Cape Canaveral, is actually quite similar to the plot of the Nick Carter novel, Operation Moon Rocket, which was published in 1968. Although it seems unlikely that an obscure Italian spy movie would have been an influence on the Nick Carter novels, it's certainly still a possibility. The Nick Carter stable of authors was varied, after all, and they were drawing ideas from everywhere. So here we go. NASA is in trouble. Every moon rocket they've tested has exploded into a great, fiery ball, though whether or not it's a thunderball remains debatable. The scientists are convinced that computers and technology behind the rockets are sound, so the only answer must be sabotage.

Lt. Harry Sennet (American actor Anthony Eisley) is called in to get to the bottom of things. His cover, naturally, is that of a rich, womanizing playboy looking for good times and big boobs along Florida' coast, which has been visited by just about every 1960s spy from James Bond to Matt Helm. Assisting Sennet on his mission is bombshell Captain Patricia Flanagan, another genre stalwart who had appeared in everything from The Awful Dr. Orloff to Superargo and the Faceless Giants. In between gratuitous but welcome scenes of Sennet cruising around the bikini-clad babes lounging about the hotel swimming pool area and frequent grainy stock footage of rockets from NASA, our tale of intrigue is woven, and it leads to a powerful, um, beer brewer (thus the Matt Helm movie similarity).

But this is a Eurospy film, and one of the wackier ones at that, so this particular evil brewmeister (who bears more than a passing resemblance to Gert "Goldfinger" Frobe), has a laser he uses to blow up rockets from his -- get this -- space age underwater lair where he keeps his biggest enemies frozen in a state of suspended animation so he can thaw them out from time to time, taunt them, and get them up to speed on the success of his mad, evil schemes.

Although the production is cheap and the plot is outlandish, this is actually a pretty fun little adventure. Anthony Eisley looks tough and handsome, and he's probably one of the few spies in any of these movies who begins his mission by trying to buy off the bad guys -- with a check! Imagine Sean Connery asking Robert Shaw how much money he'd need not to kill Bond, then saying, "OK, mind if I write you a check?" The women surrounding Eisley are ridiculously gorgeous, which is one of the things even the cheapest of Eurospy films could get right. The set designs are actually pretty impressive considering the budget and have a swanky 1960s pop art feel to them. There's plenty of fist fights, lots of clumsy sexual innuendo, shoot outs, sea plane flying, and then the whole finale in the undersea fortress.

Eurospy films are like any other continental knock-off of a popular American or British genre. Some are very good and lavish, managing to rise above small budgets to deliver a slick looking little thriller full of beautiful women, sets, and locations. Others are threadbare pieces of junk that will bore you to tears. And some are utterly bizarre and incompetent in the most wonderfully enjoyable of fashions. Lightning Bolt falls closer to the last description. A lot of the film's energy undoubtedly comes from director Antonio Margheriti, possibly the most prolific of all Italian action and thriller directors. Margheriti, who was often renamed "Anthony Dawson" when his films were exported to America, directed his fair share of clunkers, but the bulk of his career is filled with perfectly acceptable genre films, and a few genuine classics. Lightning Bolt, like most Eurospy films, is completely ludicrous, but it's not as if anyone involved with the film doesn't seem aware of that. There's a playful sense of fun, almost tongue in cheek, that makes the film a great deal more entertaining than it might otherwise be.

MVT: The set design. For a movie that had a tiny budget, they get the most out of matte paintings and cardboard when they designed the villain’s underground lair. And even the worst Eurospy productions were usually full of cool suits and bikini models.

Make or Break: The hero attempting to end all this intrigue by offering to buy the villain off with a check. If you can’t roll with that concept, this movie will try your patience.

The Doll Squad (1973)

What the fuck happened to the Space Race?  It was only forty-five years ago that we made it to the Moon (let’s take for granted that the Moon landing wasn’t faked, shall we?).  There were some satellites launched (actually, A LOT of satellites launched), and we even put that Moon-Patrol-looking thing on Mars, but we as a collective nation (speaking only for America) have seemingly lost the desire to move ourselves into space.  Why?  Well, if I had to venture a guess, I would say it’s because space travel became sexy enough for entrepreneurs to want to monetize it (and naturally discounting the collapse of the Soviet Union, our big competitor).  Unfortunately, it also became unsexy enough for our tax dollars to fund it (and that’s about as political as this review will get; relax).  So, the odds on you or I jetpacking around the universe with a woman proportioned like a Wally Wood or Frank Frazetta bombshell have pretty much evaporated.  But maybe whatever billionaire who weekends on Uranus (which I now and forever will pronounce “Your Anus”) will want to take you along sometime.  And maybe Michael Ansara will fly out my ass.  Outside of my wild Science Fiction fantasies, though, I honestly can’t say I’m all that disappointed.  Number one, humans have always had a habit of turning whatever pristine environment they come upon into a junkyard.  Number two, I don’t like flying.

Senator Stockwell (John Carter) and Victor Connelly (Anthony Eisley) sit down to watch the latest space rocket launch, but a mysterious phonecaller upbraids the Senator for not heeding his previous (unforeshadowed) warnings and the rocket explodes.  The two men make their way to the room-sized computer “Bertha” to find out who they can send to bring this villain down.  “Bertha” spits out The Doll Squad, and before you can say “Jack Robinson,” team leader Sabrina (Francine York) is collecting her team members.  Will this be the squad’s toughest assignment yet?  Sure.  Why not?

Ted V. Mikels’ film is a melding of the Superspy and Assemble The Team subgenres, with the twist being that the team consists solely of women.  The first thing most folks would think of then (okay, maybe just me) is whether this is a feminist film or not (and I’m not the world’s foremost scholar on feminism, so let’s allow for some wiggle room here, hmmm?).  I think I can honestly say, to absolutely no one’s astonishment, that it really isn’t.  It has feminist elements in it.  The women are all strong and treat their jobs with the same sort of calculated precision an audience would demand of something like The Dirty Dozen or Le Cercle Rouge.  None of the women are man-crazy or defined by their desire for a man to want them.  The women all make free choices to decide their own fates.  Sabrina can even shoot skeet as well as or better than her male superiors.  Nevertheless, she is in charge of her team, but men are in charge of her.  Also, there is an abundance of scenes featuring all of the girls in bikinis or skintight jump suits.  Of course, this is for the benefit of the more lusty audience members and has no purpose other than to appeal to the prurient interest, and it does so quite well.  Had the group dressed in fatigues and been loaded down with equipment, the film would have had a different flavor entirely, but it also likely wouldn’t have made a penny at the box office.  I don’t mean to imply that the only way for women in films to represent equality is by dressing them sexlessly, but it makes an interesting point:  Would an audience take these characters more seriously had they dressed in a more masculine fashion?  At the end of the day, I suppose the point is moot.  Mikels knows his audience well enough to not let it bog him down.

Now that I’ve successfully misinterpreted an entire civil rights/societal movement for the purposes of a film review, let’s move on to how this stacks up in two of its respective subgenres.  In the realm of Assemble The Team movies, it hits all the numbers, and it even starts off the process with a nice twist which I won’t ruin here.  You have the initial recruitment scenes, where we are introduced to the various agents.  Intriguingly, all but one does something completely unrelated to their Doll Squad work in their civilian lives, and that one is, arguably, the most intellectual of them (maybe not most intelligent, though).  Aside from seeing Lavelle (Tura Satana) doing a little burlesque dance and revealing some rather fetching tassels, these scenes aren’t very engaging dramatically.  None of the women puts up much resistance to joining the mission, except for one, and it’s token resistance at best.  Also, the women don’t really have specialties the way we would expect of them.  Consequently, they’re only slightly distinguishable from one another, though the differences between their non-government identities and what they contribute to the team is much more noticeable.

 So, how does The Doll Squad…um…stack up as a Superspy film?  Well, you have a sort of Bond-ian villain with Ansara’s Eamon.  He, in turn, has a sort of Bond-ian villainous plan.  One of the baddies (okay, his squeeze) infiltrates the squad with a lifelike disguise.  There is a large compound manned by faceless lackeys in uniform (you would never confuse any of them with any of the protagonists regardless, I assure you).  There is a briefcase loaded with improbable gadgets and weaponry.  The antagonists, ostensibly, threaten the safety of the American Space Program, so it’s not a localized menace.  If nothing else, it’s an ambitious premise.  It’s also on a miniscule budget, but that doesn’t keep Mikels down, and in fact, aside from the pulchritude, this is the biggest appeal of the film.  Every explosion is done in superimpositions.  There is a flamethrower effect done in (you guessed it) superimposition.  The men get gunned down but appear to fall even before guns are fired.  The action scenes are executed with a nimiety of ease and a paucity of suspense or tension in that telltale style reserved for friends of the filmmakers who are being paid in ham sandwiches.  And ham is the name of the game.  Now, I love ham, and this is pretty forgettable ham, but it’s still tasty. 

MVT:  There wouldn’t be The Doll Squad without the dolls, and they are the main attraction at this sideshow.  Mission accomplished, ladies.

Make Or Break:  The Make is the assault on Eamon’s compound.  It’s fun and keeps the pace up, despite its various shortcomings.  There’s just enough violence and red-paint-loaded squibs to keep butts in seats.  And did I mention that it’s all carried off by pretty women in tight jump suits.  Well, it is.

Score:  6/10