Review #113: 'The Pleasure Girls' (1965)

Set in 1960's 'Swinging' London, The Pleasure Girls follows a group of free-spirited bohemian-type girls who share a flat. Sally (Francesca Annis) is a new arrival, and soon hooks up with bad-boy Keith (Ian McShane) and the two begin to fall in love. One girl has to put with her gambling-addicted husband who pawns a brooch heirloom for a poker game and ends up losing the money amongst other things. And another girl dates the successful and rich flat landlord Nikko (Klaus Kinski) who gets himself into trouble with a gang of thugs. And that's pretty much it really.

Released as part of BFI's 'Flipside' collection that has recently come to DVD and Blu-Ray, the collection is there to show an alternative side to British filmmaking. Alternative they most certainly are; good they are generally not. I watched The Pleasure Girls a couple of days ago and can barely remember a scene. The film certainly serves as an interesting time-capsule, and it's nice to see a more innocent and forward-thinking time where style dominated the youth and sexual liberation was in its early stages. It also has two promising young actors in McShane and the incomparable Kinski. But overall, the characters are annoying, the plot plodding and uninteresting, and a title that was a titillating disguise for a rather desperately dull film.


Directed by: Gerry O'Hara
Starring: Francesca Annis, Ian McShane, Klaus Kinski
Country: UK

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie