The Swingers
                                                   
Director: George Sidney
Year: 1966
Rating: 4.5
Groovy like an old time movie. This is so vapidly idiotic that I stared at it the whole time like I would a group of squirrels reciting Shakespeare in drag. With my mouth open, aghast and yet hypnotically fascinated. I kept thinking it can't really be this bad, can it? And who thought this was a good idea? Surprisingly sleazy but at its heart as conservative as The Heritage Foundation. It is like an 80-minute episode of Love, American Style that had lost its mind. But it was from the same director who helmed such well-regarded films as The Harvey Girls, Annie Get Your Gun, Show Boat, Scaramouche, Kiss Me Kate, Pal Joey but now it was the 1960s and George Sidney seemed overwhelmed and confounded by the youth culture and perhaps enamored by one of its curviest new sex stars, Ann-Margret.



Sidney had directed her in Viva Las Vegas along with Elvis and in Bye Bye Birdie with Dick Van Dyke. Now he makes a film that for all intents is nothing more than a paean to the beauty of Ann-Margret like she is a modern-day Aphrodite.  It is like flipping through Vogue magazine and watching her go through a myriad of campy 60's outfits, be used as a giant paint brush, do a strip tease, two montages of photos of her going through various expressions and performing a few songs. And that soft husky talking voice that is like a purr of a contented house cat. She is magnificent. The film is dreadful. One critic said it came close to destroying her career.



A sex symbol almost by accident but a very talented one - she could dance and sing (I have her Best of album and its great) and as time went on, she gained real acting chops and won five Golden Globe Awards, was nominated twice for an Oscar and won six Emmy Awards. She had so much energy and appeal that Colonel Tom Parker had the filmmakers cut out two of her three duets with Elvis because she was all you could look at. I can't imagine what she thought of this film when she was making it. Bye Bye Birdie had been a big hit and so she likely trusted her director but she must have wondered if the tight fitting or revealing clothes and situations he put her in was the fantasy of an old man. You have to wonder if the lecherous old man in the film who chases his secretary around his desk is a stand-in for Sydney. He was only to make one film after this.



That lecherous old man is Sir Hubert Charles (Robert Coote) who has come to America to publish a men's magazine where his office is filled to the brim with attractive women in various states of undress. His office can at the touch of a few buttons be converted into a den of seduction as a bed suddenly emerges from the wall, soft music begins to play, the lights dim and drinks with ice magically appear. His number two man is Ric (Anthony Franciosa) who is engaged to the old man's daughter (Yvonne Romain) and has a smile so wide and toothy that he could play the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. When Kelly Olsson (Olsson being Ann-Margret's last name - she came from Sweden originally) comes through the door he immediately tries to set her up for a photo shoot but she isn't there to model but to have her stories published. She is an aspiring writer who lives in an artistic styled commune of cool cats. But she is a very bad writer and keeps getting rejected. Not for this men's magazine she is told.



So, she goes home and writes a raunchy book of the sexual adventures of a young woman and claims that it is based on her life. Which in reality is like a virginal Girl Scout selling cookies - but then she has to act it out when he visits the commune - becoming a paint brush for the group as they swing her around and pretending an orgy is in the making. Ric is shocked and decides to reform her by stashing her at his aunt's. A scene of her on the bed pretending she needs a drink in a bra and panties is enough to keep you warm all winter. Then he finds out it is all a ruse and decides to pay her back - by pretending to rape her in motel room. That was so creepy and is especially awful because it is played for laughs. What were they thinking. Times have sure changed. This was like the 1960's on a bad acid trip.



She sings a few songs, one being over the opening credits on a swing and trampoline that was penned by Dory Previn of all people. Years back, I went through a Dory Previn phase - her albums are like no one else's - Reflections in a Mud Puddle is remarkable - anyway it made me happy to see her name listed. Next up for Ann-Margret was Murderer's Row with Dean Martin as Matt Helm. As bad as I remember that series being, I am tempted to re-watch them.