Change Your Image
oltarsh
Reviews
Session 9 (2001)
Idiotic for the simplest reason
I am familiar with a number of people who loathe this film, but not one who loathes it for the most obvious reason. A crew of five men is hired to remove the asbestos from the walls of an abandoned old mental hospital in one week's time. The problem is, we can tell from the exterior shots of this hospital that it has something like two hundred rooms, and so it is perfectly clear that the job would never be able to be done by a crew of five men within a week. If the hospital had twenty rooms, then I would bother discussing the various inanities in this film, but since the film is so incredibly stupid within the first few minutes, why should I bother?
The Pleasure Seekers (1964)
Idiotic and insulting to one's intelligence
*Contains spoilers*
In "The Pleasure Seekers," three young American women, played by Ann-Margret, Carol Lynley, and Pamela Tiffin, share an apartment in Madrid in 1964. Notice how each of their bedroom doors are lined up in a row, and just happen to open onto one huge living room, making it so convenient for the filmmakers to film the girls scooting in and out of each others' rooms.
Ann Margret, whose character speaks virtually no Spanish, actually works, and supports herself, as a night club singer!
When Carol Lynley is en route to the airport to pick up Pamela Tiffin, and her taxi is involved in an accident, she just happens to be spotted by Pamela Tiffin who is in another taxi!
When Pamela Tiffin goes to a museum, she is picked up by Tony Franciosa (struggling to play a Spaniard), whose character just happens to have had an affair with Carol Lynley!
And why is Tony Franciosa even in this film? Imagine if his role of a Spanish heartthrob had been played by Francisco Rabal. That is, if Rabal would have been willing to appear in such garbage.
At the finish, we're expected to believe that Franciosa is ready to give up his sex addiction and marry - and remain faithful to - the sweet virgin Pamela Tiffin.
Carol Lynley plays a sarcastic, pseudo-sophisticated and pseudo-jaded "bad girl" - the most fully-developed character in the film - but she does it in such a way as to annoy the living daylights out of the viewer, and Gardner McKay looks as if he were struggling with some kind of eye infection throughout the making of the film.
A particularly sickening line: Franciosa's mother says to Pamela Tiffin: "Why you're American! How charming!" Is it really "charming" to be an American?
The horrors of Spain under Franco are unseen throughout the entire film.
Ann-Margret, however, is sexy, beautiful, and undeniably talented; the music is good, the lyrics are clever, and some of the scenery and photography is impressive.