When the one thing that nearly everyone agrees on about a film is the nice Technicolor, you know there's not a lot to offer otherwise. "The Pleasure Seekers is a somewhat typical early '60s romp -- maybe with the idea of men and women bedding down for the night thrown around quite freely -- but this, after all, is Europe! It's Madrid!
Yes, it's Spain, where at least a couple of Franco's concentration camps were still in business a few years before the making of this film. It's a cinch that the stuff involving wild hip swingin' Ann-Margaret and a passel of Latin lovers was filmed in Hollywood, and not the Spain of the 1960s. Newspaper publishers still faced a good police grilling for running ads for two-piece swimsuits; Madrinellos would appreciate three American women cruising the town, but Francisco and Dona Carmen wouldn't have found it amusing at all.
Still, the movie shows that you can have loads of laughs and love in a country run by a fascist dictator, which really exposes it for the false froth it was then and remains today. It was a tired old formula plugged in to give everyone the idea that Spain under Franco wasn't so bad and, for three footloose and fancy American gals, it couldn't be beat. Just don't pay any attention to the Guardia in the leather hats busting into a door down the street.
Yes, it's Spain, where at least a couple of Franco's concentration camps were still in business a few years before the making of this film. It's a cinch that the stuff involving wild hip swingin' Ann-Margaret and a passel of Latin lovers was filmed in Hollywood, and not the Spain of the 1960s. Newspaper publishers still faced a good police grilling for running ads for two-piece swimsuits; Madrinellos would appreciate three American women cruising the town, but Francisco and Dona Carmen wouldn't have found it amusing at all.
Still, the movie shows that you can have loads of laughs and love in a country run by a fascist dictator, which really exposes it for the false froth it was then and remains today. It was a tired old formula plugged in to give everyone the idea that Spain under Franco wasn't so bad and, for three footloose and fancy American gals, it couldn't be beat. Just don't pay any attention to the Guardia in the leather hats busting into a door down the street.