Pink Motel

My review was written in June 1983 after a Times Square screening.

"Pink Motel" is an interminably dull attempt at sexploitation situation comedy. Filmed last year under the title "Motel", film's opening credits actually read only "Motel", but in pink lettering, indicating the distributor didn't bother to make the title change on the prints.

Cheap about sums up this annoying, unfunny picture. Slim Pickens and Phyllis Diller portray the owner-managers of a small California motel. The film recounts the brief stays one night of five couples, using sluggish cross-cutting between them in a vain attempt to hold the viewer's interest. Format and content resemble the 1970 tv series "Love -American Style", but production values are inferior to most hardcore porn films.

The attractive cast of familiar thesps is okay, but burdened with unplayable cliched roles: a massive fullback who is still a virgin, bedding down a hooker; adulterous lovers quibbling over the chintziness of the motel; a conceited young stud who could give even porn star Jack Wrangler lessons in smug, ham acting.

Writer M. James Kouf Jr. Has delivered a nonstop stream of banalities in his talky script, directed by Mike MacFarland in static, extended shots or catatonic series of reverse-shot choker closeups. Though there is a modicum of nudity, "Motel"'s few sight gags don't come off and it lacks the raunchiness which has allowed many schlock comedies recently to ride the box office coattails of "Porky's".

Tech credits are unimpressive, with murky color.

Phyllis Diller (comedian) and Slim Pickens (from Dr. Strangelove) are husband and wife who run a cheap motel in Southern California. Since it's called the "Pink Motel", they wear matching pink shirts. According to Wikipedia and the LA Times, there really is a Pink Motel in Sun Valley, California, north of Burbank, and has been used many times as a filming location over the years. We can still see it with the same sign out front ("Air Conditioned... by Refrigeration") on google maps! We watch the various couples arrive, and there is a confrontation in the parking lot..... which never turns into anything. The only conflicts occur within the couples that check into each individual room. I kept waiting for a big blow-up ending, Three's Company style, where Diller would tell Pickens to go investigate that racket, and they would all get kicked out, or the police called to the scene, or some such Hollywood ending, but it never happens. Everyone ends up going their separate ways, some happy, some sad.

I'm sure glad I didn't pay to see this film in a theater....Too much talking, too little plot, and less than stellar acting and directing. There IS female nudity. The only big names in this are Diller and Pickens, and the writers didn't even give THEM any good lines. Those interested in seeing actual photos of the landmark Pink Motel can find them on flickr.com. And the credit for the theme song Pink Motel shows performed by NILE; acc to wikipedia, the rock group Nile wasn't formed until 1993... which is a little odd, because the film was made in 1982, and the VHS tape from Thorn EMI appears to have been distributed in 1991.... or maybe it was performed by Willie Nile ? I think if the film were more interesting, I probably wouldn't care about this other trivia. Its also interesting to note that the children's book "Pink Motel" by Carol Ryrie Brink was written in 1959 (!) and is also still available on amazon.... I wonder if her family had stayed there at one point, or maybe she lived nearby...

This movie has the look, feel, and cheesy music of a triple X rated flick from the 80's. Oddly, around this time there were a few flicks like this that nabbed some known actors and threw them into a racy senario.

I don't remember the title, but one was supposed to star the Three Stooges but Larry got sick and the Ritz Brothers were tagged. Yvonne DeCarlo from the Munsters was in that one too. It was practically x rated.

This is Slim Pickens last flick and he doesnt look too good. He's not slim either.

It's a very dumb movie with silly corny jokes and one liners. I will say Phyllis Diller isnt bad as a actor. But that's not saying much in this flick.

Eight o'clock on a Friday evening several couples rock up at the cheap, but welcoming Pink Motel, with one thing on mind. You got two teenagers looking to further development their relationship, a couple whose affair seems to be wailing, a star running back of a local university football team enlisting the help of a hooker to overcome his virginity and two supposed studs looking for a one-night-stand.

Some films seem to come and go without making much of a scene. Usually there might be circumstances surrounding it. "Pink Motel" is one of those films that are never talked about. Coming out around that period when teen sex comedies were the in thing. I guess "Pink Motel" just didn't cut it for most and I can see probably why? It's a sex comedy that's more concerned about telling a story, focusing on its characters and thoughtful narrative arrangement with the sex shenanigans becoming seconds to the every growing drama that's developing. Sure it can be silly, but I found amusing. Characters come and go with the action being limited to the hotel rooms. For some it could be too talky, but I found the writing to be clever and the dialogues sharp and punchy. It's not all that daring or raunchy, but consisting of a sweet charm. The cast are mainly no-names with the likes of Phyllis Diller and Slim Pickens (who share are great rapport as the hotel owners and this would be Pickens final film) being the headliners, but they're not in it all that much. The rest of the cast give acceptable performances with the busty Kathi Sawyer-Young being the pick of the lot. What's going on behind these doors differ and the circumstances surrounding them bring their own unique laughs.

"Pink Motel" is about a motel that four different couples use to have sex.

Sample dialogue: "Do you think the romance has gone out of our affair? We're the only people who smoke BEFORE we have sex."

One couple features a football player who triumphantly describes a touchdown he scored to his date, who strips as he goes, as uninterested in his tale as he, apparently, is in her body. This scene just goes on and on, and then the movie cuts back to it later, with a close-up of the girl's impassive countenance, if we hadn't yet gotten the point of the scene. It is then revealed that she is a prostitute. The football jock (character actor Tony Longo) wants to "get to know" the girl before they do it. She, as a working girl, isn't interested in this.

It is revealed that the jock is a virgin, and hence uncomfortable about sex.

In another scene, a rat-faced yuppie type feels a woman's breast and guesses its size. She feels his groin and does the same. Earlier, there was a strange scene where the yuppie seems to be threatening and physically dominating the woman, holding her up against a wall, but the scene seems to be played for laughs.

The dialogue is a little smarter than I expected, but I doubt I'll remember anything about this movie once it is over.

The couple who provided the dialogue at the beginning of this review are revisited, but their problems don't change and aren't developed. She thinks he isn't making enough of an effort.

Neither were the screenwriters. These couples are introduced, and some of even register as distinct from the others, but then the movie does nothing with it.

The rat-faced yuppie guy is only notable because, when he strips off, he wears leopard print briefs. The other guys in the movie wear striped boxers.

There is yet another couple, with a guy who reminded me of a third-rate Michael J. Fox. This one doesn't register either, there's nothing to say about it, and nothing to set it apart.

When the cheating guy asks, "Is it over?" I was hoping his mistress would answer, "Yes," and we would be done with their storyline. Predictably, it went on and on, with more dialogue that did nothing but show the actors could handle a sitcom.

I thought it might be a plus that some of the characters in this movie actually stand out from the others, ie. the virgin jock, the cheating husband and his disaffected mistress. The trouble is that they are not developed at all and quickly become tedious, and I started to dread seeing them on screen.

Three of the four women involved in these four couplings appear topless, but typically, there's not a hint of pubic hair. Why was that considered beyond the pale?

Oh, and the elderly man and woman who own the hotel are played by Phyllis Diller and Slim Pickens. You'd think the screenwriters would have given these two showbiz legends something to do.