Wonder Women (1973)

I admit, I DO wonder about the women in this film.

Wonder Women (1973)
(a.k.a. The Deadly and the Beautiful)
Directed by: Robert Vincent O’Neill
Written by: Robert Vincent O’Neill, Lou Whitehill

There have been several great baseball movies and a handful of memorable football films over the years. Even track and field has inspired pictures like Personal Best and Chariots of Fire. But one sport above all is indisputably made for the big screen: Jai alai. Just imagine the thrill of plunking down $8.50 to watch two guys play catch with raisin scoops, and you can understand the excitement with which I viewed Wonder Women. Alas, the jai alai match that opens this film is a classic piece of bait-and-switch, and before long we find ourselves knee-deep in a Ross Hagen movie.

A jai alai player emerges from the championships in Manila, and is promptly shot by a tranquilizer dart. The audience expects him to be radio-tagged and released to continue his migration; instead, he’s abducted by two hot babes disguised as Joey Bishop.¹

The twin Joeys rendezvous with two sinister confederates—a blonde dressed like Heidi and a black woman whose Afro was apparently designed by R. Buckminster Fuller. In a hideous scene reminiscent of The Premature Burial, the victim is sealed inside a coffin while peppy calliope music plays on the soundtrack. The coffin is shoved into a hearse, and the kidnappers roar off at high speed. Random shots of a Ferris wheel increase the tension.

Meanwhile, at Super Villain World Headquarters and Community College, mad doctor Nancy Kwan is performing surgery while dressed in John Travolta’s Saran Wrap suit from The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. Back at the kidnapping, the Gal Joeys perform a striptease in the back seat of the hearse to the accompaniment of the song “Wonder Women.” Random shots of bra straps and breathable cotton panels increase the tension.

The coffin arrives, and Dr. Nancy, who has changed into a nun’s habit from The Sound of Music, examines the victim. She is seeking immortality, and has developed a serum that will startle the scientific world by allowing her to transplant the brain of a jai alai player into the body of a snooker champion.

Meanwhile, ex-CIA agent, ex-LAPD detective, and all-around tough guy Ross Hagen arrives at the airport and immediately acquaints himself with the gaily-festooned jitneys of Manila. Lloyds of London hires Ross to find the missing jai alai champ, who was insured for millions of dollars against fire, theft, collision, and unwanted brain transplants.

Nancy meets with a dirty old man in a wheelchair. For an exorbitant price, she will transplant his brain into the body of the kidnapping victim, thereby creating a dirty old jai alai player.

Back at the dorms, the Gal Joeys are debating whether Dr. Nancy’s “brain sex” is superior to intercourse, since it eradicates both emotional dependencies and the wet spot. The discussion becomes heated, and the girls nearly come to blows. Random shots of chess pieces, bikini bottoms, and maple syrup increase the confusion.

To settle the issue, they go to Nancy’s storehouse of previous abductees, defrost some men without brains (the popular but stupid Australian pop band), and have sex with them.

Meanwhile, Ross is attacked by Nancy’s hired thugs, sparking the most lethargic foot chase since T.J. Hooker.

Our next stop is a cockfight. While the soundtrack swells with music stolen from a porn movie, the viewer pauses to marvel. Jai alai. Cockfights. Why doesn’t ESPN broadcast from the Philippines 24 hours a day?

Dr. Nancy, who’s now dressed like Raquel Welch in Fathom, takes a stroll through the frozen Hunk section of her grocer’s freezer, and selects one for transplant. But Gal Joey Vera wants to have sex with him before he completely thaws out. It’s the third time this week, apparently, but Vera is addicted to the practice, as it allows her to act like a slut while still remaining frigid.

One of the Joeys walks into a bar, and Ross—who has apparently acquired a hot comb, since his hair is now fearlessly exploring the limits of the Dry Look—gives her his foolproof pick-up routine: He hands her a glass of Tang, then seductively eats a maraschino cherry to symbolize his hopes that he’ll be losing his virginity tonight.

Soon, Ross is snug beneath the covers while the girl kneels on the bed in her underwear and pecks at his face in a wan effort to arouse him. Meanwhile, the director tries to set a sultry mood by blasting the theme from Sanford and Son on the soundtrack.

Naturally, this all culminates in the girl trying to shoot Ross with a tranquilizer gun, but Ross would rather jump on the bed and have a pillow fight. When she kicks his ass, however, our hero tries to shoot her in the back with a sawed-off shotgun. Predictably, he misses and falls down a flight of stairs.

Ross and his jitney-driving sidekick take the captured Joey back to the Island of Dr. Nancy. As they disembark from the canoe, Ross pauses for a boring argument with the sidekick. The girl takes this opportunity to make a break for it and saunter to freedom. When the two men finally look up and discover she’s gone, Ross is dumbfounded. The sidekick is moved to observe, “She’s very tricky.”

Meanwhile, an army of Joeys pour out of Evil Junior College, armed with machine guns and outfitted for jungle warfare in saffron mini-dresses. They race into the bush and proceed to hunt Ross down like a snipe. Ross runs away; stumbles; fires aimlessly into the foliage, and looks perplexed. Random shots of the Rorschach-like sweat stains on Ross’s leisure suit increase the queasiness.

The Gal Joeys capture Ross and take him at gunpoint to the Banquet Room of the Route 46 Ramada Inn in Teaneck, New Jersey. Dr. Nancy, who’s now dressed like That Girl, explains her evil scheme while Ross is forced to eat a party hat.

They tour the facility, and for some reason, Ross begins to sashay, his elbows and wrists bent and fingers splayed, as though waiting for his nail polish to try. Despite this, Nancy slaps an air filter on his head, and the two of them have “brain sex.” At last, we’re finally able to see what this mysterious erotic technique looks like. Unfortunately, Ross can’t get his brain up.

Eventually, the sexual tension reaches a fever pitch as Nancy falls asleep, and Ross squirms obscenely on a vinyl loveseat until he soils himself.

Sticky but undaunted, Ross escapes and corners Dr. Nancy, who destroys herself in a spectacular explosion of Gold Medal flour.

Safely back in Manila, Ross gets a $100,000 check from Lloyds of London, and promptly blows it all on a drunken hooker. Living up to his well-established reputation for virility, Ross spends the rest of the movie playing chess with the well-compensated prostitute, while she stares uncomprehendingly at the board and fondles a pear stem.

Random shots of rooks, bathrobes, and wax fruit increase the tension headache I’m getting. The End.

As this movie has shown us, in the future people will no longer have sex the old-fashioned way, with their bodies. No, they will just link their brains together with Framm Air Filters and think each other to ecstasy. The periodic table of the elements will become an aphrodisiac. Women will waste their money on Mark Eden Brain Developers. Stephen Hawking will become the ultimate sex symbol.

In fact, Dr. Nancy was a far-seeing visionary, as well as a mediocre and cut-rate super villain. Her primitive brain sex technology was later perfected, and by 2032, it was in common use, at least according to the 1996 film Demolition Man (which also predicted Arnold Schwarzenegger’s election as governor of California). The hot cerebellum-on-cerebellum action allowed Sylvester Stallone and Sandra Bullock to have a sex scene in which they both remained fully clothed, and on opposite sides of the room, an act of mercy for which we still send the filmmakers a yearly gift basket of smoked holiday meats to express our undying gratitude. Unfortunately, we were again cheated out of seeing just how this technology works, since Stallone’s synapses fired prematurely, and their brains just decided to cuddle instead.

Still, the course of future events is clear. Eventually, society will rely solely on technology not just for pleasure, but for procreation too. As foreseen by Zager and Evans, in the year 2525 (if man is still alive) we will find our son, find our daughter too, at the bottom of a long test tube (whoa, whoa). So have some sex today, before it goes out of style, and can only be found at ridiculously marked-up prices on Ebay.

1. Obviously I mean each girl is individually dressed like Joey Bishop, not that they divided him up like a pantomime horse, with one girl wearing the front half, and one the back half of Joey Bishop.