Brain-dead jiggle-fest? Why, yes indeed, you've come to the right place.
Angel's Revenge/Brigade is basically "Charlie's Angels" with twice the number of cast members (six women - plus a 'high school teenager' - instead of three) and approximately 1/10th of the talent. Would be first time viewers should adjust their expectations accordingly.
Look, no one is ever going to list Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, etc., among the great actresses of the '70s, but the original Angels had a lot of charm and charisma, and they could deliver their lines, interact with each other, do their stage business and blocking, and hit their marks like the professionals they were. It was all facile dreck, but it was professional level dreck.
On the other hand, "Angel's Brigade" features seven of the stiffest, most unconvincing and grating actresses on the planet. The women are moderately hot (except for the lanky black actress, who is saddled with a huge afro that makes her look like a human dandelion ), but they simply C-A-N-N-O-T deliver convincing readings of their lines. The director seems to realize this, and so he dumbs down the proceedings in an attempt to avoid making the girls show any kind of recognizable human emotion...and the resulting screenplay is so bad, so lame, that it takes genuine talents like Jack Palance, Peter Lawford, and Arthur Godfrey (and several longtime character actors like Jim Backus) and simply embarrasses them with idiotic throwaway parts that completely waste their talents. Lawford, Godfrey, and Backus, especially, all appear to be hammered out of their skulls..it's as if they couldn't be bothered to sober up long enough to appear even in the briefest scenes.
God, the whole thing is just so inane...I know this thing is not meant to be taken seriously, that it is just a goof, but it's so damned careless and annoying. One Angel disables a thug by opening a beach umbrella in his face. Another Angel takes out a thug with a back-fist accompanied by a Hanna-Barbera 'BOINK!' sound effect.A third Angel takes a hit to her, um, talents, but she has a life raft tucked under her shirt which protects her and she makes an indignant face and pulls out the raft and bonks the thug over the head with it...it's not funny and light hearted, it's just STUPID.
MST3K struggled mightily to have fun with this one, and their commentary is almost enough to turn this into a watchable experience. I can't imagine trying to watch this one 'straight'.
Avoid the original version like the plague. Even the jiggles and the jumpsuits aren't compensation enough for the pain of the performances and the screenplay.
