When the Girls Take Over (1962) User Reviews

Misleading title for deservedly obscure film

[gridoon2024 · 3/10 · 8 October 2011]

For the first hour of "When The Girls Take Over" there is only one girl with any significant screen time, and even in the last 15 minutes, when more girls appear, they hardly "take over"; they just party with some soldiers and distract them while the male heroes take care of business. So the title is misleading, but besides that, this film is hard to sit through. The antagonist is clearly modeled on Fidel Castro, who had recently overthrown Batista from the Cuban government, but the film lacks both the wit and the budget to be a successful topical political satire. And to make matters worse, all the prints currently available appear to be in black & white, robbing the film even of its potential visual beauty. * out of 4.

An Unfunny Unwatchable Mess

[Brainy-2 · 1/10 · 4 October 2008]

Discussing the plot of this indecipherable mishmash of bad acting, phony accents and glued on facial hair would be completely pointless. Filmed shortly after Fidel Castro had risen to power, somebody must have thought that having a cigar smoking guy in a beard and flat-topped hat, barking out orders in a Colonel Klinkish manner, would be funny enough in itself to sustain an entire hour's worth of entertainment. Needless to say, it isn't.

Although this film is listed as being in color, the public domain version I checked out at the library was in black & white. This probably diminished the one thing it had going for it...some nice scenery.

Finally, I should mention that the title has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the plot. No "Girls" are "Taking Over" anything. I guess the only way they could think of to promote this pile of crap was to emphasize the fact that it does include a few pretty señoritas in bare midriffs.

A real mess

[Wizard-8 · 27 September 2014]

"When the Girls Take Over" was not the first American B movie to be inspired by Fidel Castro's revolution, but it has to be the first one - maybe the ONLY one - to make it a comedy. That's certainly a new angle, but the end results suggest why it wasn't done again, that being that the movie is extremely unfunny. That alone is enough to kill the movie, but the movie manages to make things even worse. The script is a mess. The story is often confusing, and feels like they are making things up as they go along, such as the fact that important characters are off screen for extremely long periods of time. Add some slipshod production values (such as the prominent shadow of the cameraman at one moment), you end up with one real mess of a movie. Is there anything of merit to be found here? Well, the location shooting on the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico does occasionally give a visually interesting backdrop. Though since all current prints of this shot in color movie are in black and white, viewers won't be able to get the full impact of the visuals.

Weird Low Budget Comedy

[Scott_Mercer · 2/10 · 31 August 2013]

I'd put this in the same bag as Roger Corman's "Creature From The Haunted Sea," a low-budget, quickie, unfunny comedy taking off on the then fairly recent takeover of Fidel Castro in Cuba. One thing though. Corman's film, as bad as it is, is a freaking masterpiece compared to this fail fest loaded with phony accents (at least we get both bad Spanish and French accents...and the Fidel Castro doppelganger sounds like he's channeling Bela Lugosi half the time), bad costumes and worse fake beards. Corman's film was written and shot in about three days with leftover money from another movie (and seems like it)...and it's not quite as bad as this one. (Gee, Jackie Coogan can add this to his pile of roles in horrible movies like Mesa of Lost Women.)

I agree that the title is totally pointless. There are a few pretty girls on board, but they are clearly there only for eye appeal and quite tangential to the silly plot, what there is of it.

If you must complete your collection of unfunny broad comedies based on Fidel Castro, then by all means, check this out. Otherwise, you can stay the blank away.

Saw it online, and it is most likely public domain, so it should be available for free if you are a masochist.

Too Topical in the Tropics

[wes-connors · 2/10 · 7 July 2010]

Inspired by Fidel Castro's success in Cuba, similarly-bearded Robert Lowery (as El Maximo Toro) pretends to kidnap his own busty blonde lover, as she is also the daughter of French "Millionaire" Prime Minister Marvin Miller (as Henri Degiere). Mr. Lowery hopes to become dictator of "Hondo-Rica", a sugar-producing Republic somewhere east of Cuba. Mr. Miller is assisted by comic concierge Jackie Coogan (as El Captaine Toussaint), and Lowery by sidekick speech-writer Gabriel Dell (as Bill Henderson). A few neighborly Americans, including "Dixie" soundtrack-swelling Jimmy Ellison (as Axel "Longhorn" Gates), decide to become involved. Bad decision.

** When the Girls Take Over (5/62) Russell Hayden ~ Robert Lowery, Marvin Miller, Jackie Coogan, James Ellison

About as funny as an exploding Cuban cigar.

[mark.waltz · 2/10 · 23 March 2016]

I recently suffered through the Errol Flynn disaster "Cuban Rebel Girls", and if I thought that one was pointless, this one put an explanation point at the end of pointless. Ideas already proved able to be funny of ridiculing enemies s of the world were perfected by several comic geniuses in World War II, but they were clever rather than moronically juvenile in this spoof of Castro and allegedly third world countries. Too stupid to be offensive, it is filled with cartoonish attempts at Spanish accents (of the Speedy Gonzalez variety) and it is obvious to me that many of the attempts at the accents are by non-Hispanics.

Several B movie names head into Z territory with their career nadirs, suffering through juvenile humor that filled out the worst "Gilligan's Island" and "Hogan's Heroes" episodes, including equally similar music to give it that laugh track feel. The title refers to a handful of scantily clad broads who pop in and out to provide a bit of T&A, and really has nothing to do with the nonsensical plot and tangled convoluted structural mess.