Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine
1966
Directed by Norman Taurog

Taking over the world a go-go! Like dig it, Vincent
Price, is a mad scientist who uses hot go-go girls in
gold bikinis to lure powerful males to financial ruin.
Do you follow, man? Are these groovy sirens robots?
Are they androids? It doesn’t matter. The super
vixens come straight from a boxy machine—a bikini
machine that even dresses them during creation—and do
the bidding of Price, who is delightfully over-the-top
evil here, especially when he’s wearing gold elf
slippers that curl up at the toes. No! Not the elf
slippers!

Price arms the girls with some really cool weapons to
use on the girlfriends of their targets, including a
pair of binoculars that ejects spikes if one holds
them to her eyes (sorry, no eye gouging shown; this is
a family comedy despite the sexual innuendo discussed
below). When the bikini girls have nothing nefarious
to do, they break into hot go-go dancing. Evil!

The plot, daddy-o, centers around bikini girl Susan
Hart who gratuitously cockteases two horny male
virgins (Frankie Avalon and Dwayne “Dobie Gillis”
Hickman). Ok, Frankie and Dwayne don’t come right out
and say they’re virgins but they are so sexually slow
and ineffectual that they have to be inexperienced in
the ways of the flesh. This is a G-rated film from the
‘60s, but BOY, there’s a lot of subtext going on
underneath; you can watch the “family” film as is, OR
you can watch it like I did where sexual frustration
is everywhere. Frankie and Dwayne are HORNY and Susan
doesn’t put out, because she’s a robot-thing, baby, so
the guys are walking cases of blue balls. The film’s
latent sexuality gets even weirder as the guys get
close to each other, bound by their sorrow over their
unrequited lust for go-go girl Hart, and the
relationship takes a homoerotic turn. You just want
to turn a hose on these guys and send them back to sex
ed class so they can at least learn how to masturbate
their frustrations out. Instead, they drink. Avalon
drinks A LOT, as one should do in any family film.

For more kinky sexual fantasies, Annette Funicello
appears in bondage in a cameo role. Trashy go-go
music permeates the madcap action, which culminates in
a wacky race through San Francisco. Don’t ALL wacky
races occur in San Francisco? That’s why Lombard
Street was built. Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine
is a lightweight trash outing recommended if you like
Frankie and Annette’s beach blanket movies. Try not
to let the male virgins annoy you and concentrate on
all the hot babes in bikinis. Just don’t sign your
stocks over to them. You never know if Vincent Price
is lurking nearby in those pointy slippers. Radical!

-Zzilly Gutbuckets (aka Lizz Fisher)