Gregg (Sergio Regules, who was also in the first movie, but playing a different character) is a struggling television writer who picks up a sexy stranded motorist named Carolyn (Barbara Mills) on the highway and brings her back to her swinging Palm Springs mansion. She tells him all about how her studio honcho hubby is in the closet and denies her much-needed sexual affection. Gregg and Carolyn hit it off and soon become lovers. Their bliss is short lived when she is raped and kidnapped by a gang of thugs.
As with Sex and the Lonely Woman, this was directed by Ted Leversuch. It was actually made BEFORE the first one (as The Perfect Arrangement) and was just retitled here in America. They’re totally unrelated, other than the fact that they’re both about Regules banging unhappily married women. The first one was sort of a variation on an Armando Bo movie. This one feels like a low budget version of a Joe Sarno flick. You know, the whole “Sexual Misadventures of Well-to-Do Housewife Stuck in a Loveless Marriage and Imprisoned in Her Boring Domestic Life” bit.
Mills is very good at playing the lonely longing wife and is quite sexy. Sadly, Regules is kind of a dullard this time out. To make matters worse, he doesn’t have a whole lot of chemistry with Mills, which causes the sex scenes to be more fizzle than sizzle. The good news is there are a lot of them in the second act, including a bathtub scene, a slow motion underwater skinny-dipping sequence, and even a From Here to Eternity-inspired sex scene on the beach.
The big problem is that the third act is needlessly convoluted and downright mean-spirited. In fact, it seems more like a knee-jerk moralistic punishment from the screenwriters for the heroine’s free love lifestyle than a realistic extension of the story. It’s especially weird that even though he’s top billed, Regulas virtually disappears from the narrative after the second act. Oh, and if you thought the ending of the “first” one went on forever, wait till you see Part II’s longwinded (and dull) finale.
AKA: The Perfect Arrangement.
No comments:
Post a Comment