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.
