eelb The previous reviewer apparently thinks The Swinger is intended to be a social commentary on the 1960's. This is not that deep of a film. I would say that since the film was produced in 1966, it is reflective of the times. The fashion and music of the movie is indicative of what people were wearing and listening to in 1966. The Woodstock era and the follow on Easy Rider type films were several years away. In 1966, psychedelic was a term more associated with loud colored fashion, and also alluded to a promiscuous lifestyle, rather than LSD. This film is in touch with the lifestyle of the majority of young people in 1966.The Swinger was a daring film for 1966, as far as innuendo and scanty clothing are concerned. The nudity portrayed later in the decade and on into the 70's, was not present in American film yet. By today's standards for mainstream film, the clothing (or lack there of) of Ann-Margret is far more daring than what you would see a female star do today. This is a very sexy movie for the period, with Miss Margret performing two elongated song and dance numbers (one as a stripper) in which she gets down to bare essentials. This probably had a lot to do with the films box office, as it was probably a bit too risqué for middle America at the time.This film is shown often on AMC, but the version shown now is an edited one, in which a couple of the dance scenes have been cut short. I have not seen the unedited version for more than 30 years, and doubt that copies of it still exist.

BrianG "The Swinger" was an attempt by old-line Hollywood to cash in on the "youth movement" by making a movie that was "hip" and "relevant" and that the "young people" could "dig." It fails miserably on all counts. This movie was dated five minutes after it was released, and is now nothing more than a laughable relic of what people who had absolutely no idea of what the '60s were about thought the '60s were about.Tony Franciosa plays a Hugh Hefner-type magazine publisher who rejects a story given to him by writer Ann-Margret about the "swinging" scene, because he doesn't think she knows enough about the subject to have written about it (while he, of course, knows EVERYTHING about it). So she sets out to become part of the swinging generation to show him up. The movie is nothing but leering, smarmy double-entendres, and the whole attitude is "ooh, aren't we being naughty?", which they aren't (as in the laughable "orgy" scene, where Ann-Margret gets her body painted).Ann-Margaret has always seemed to me to be the Pamela Anderson of the '60s--a totally manufactured personality trading on her looks and what passes for sex appeal. Her image was the good girl who would stop just this side of sluttiness, because she was, after all, a good girl--which made her, basically, a tease, and that was what her entire career was built on. This movie is a perfect example of that. She's basically nothing more than a somewhat animated Barbie doll, which is pretty much all that she's ever been required to be.If you want to get a feel for what the '60s was about, this movie isn't it, by any stretch of the imagination. It's fun in a goofball kind of way, but it's basically what a bunch of wealthy, middle-aged men (the people who made this movie) thought "the kids" would want to see. They didn't.

Hermit C-2 Anyone who sees this movie thinking it's about the sexual revolution will likely conclude it was a phony war. Here's a movie about the swinging '60's that was made by people still stuck in the '50's. There's lots of leering and sniggering with enough innuendo for two films, but nothing that comes even close to being arousing. Well, I guess Ann-Margret would be sexy even in a nun's habit, but that's about it. She's a writer trying to sell her story to 'Girl Lure' magazine but the editor (Tony Franciosa) won't buy it, so to get him interested she pretends to be the role model for the story's hedonistic heroine. Margret and Franciosa seem perfectly cast for this movie; unfortunately it comes off like an early version of 'Dumb and Dumber.'There's an attempt to give the film a wacky, madcap ending, but that's not much more successful than the rest of the attempts at humor. Make that intended humor. There are plenty of unintentional laughs. Films like this could give the '60's a bad name. It's hard to believe that three years after this one, audiences were watching 'Easy Rider.'

Progbear-4 "The Swinger" is quite a relic, the film that begs the question, "Is there any emulsified substance we haven't seen Ann-Margret slather her body with?" Dated, with lots of sexist humour and lots of egregiously tacky 60's fashions, it actually has the feel of a Rock Hudson/Doris Day comedy (but not as funny, at least not in the way the writers intended!) but with lots of leering double-entendres. The premise concerns writer A-M trying to sell her stories to a Playboy-type magazine, but editor Tony Franciosa believes her to be too sweet and innocent, so she goes out of her way to portray herself as a "swinger". Only in the sixties! What more can you say about a film that contains not one, but *two* photo montage sequences? The most memorable scene is of course the orgy, the wacky opening and closing credits are lots of silly fun as well.