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Jenna Ipcar3.0

Holy shit, just when you think there's nothing left to be discovered here comes an impossible to find film in which a leather-clad Pat Boone, a circus performing Nancy Kwan and a sexy lady ventriloquist dummy end up in a love triangle! I don't know how to rate this movie because on one hand it's pure fluffy insanity, and on the other hand, dawg this is pure fluffy insanity!!!!Pat Boone is a runaway American rebel (??) in Italy who follows an attractive woman named Gina (Mai Zetterling) back to her trailer one night after getting fired from his restaurant crooning gig. Turns out Gina is a ventriloquist in a small circus, and hires Boone to be a part of her act which includes a ridiculous buxom dummy that basically does its best Mae West impersonation (!!) while Pat just stands there and looks purty. The circus is owned by a married couple, the wife of whom has a younger sister named Tessa (Nancy Kwan) who does horse tricks. Boone and Kwan hit it off in a really chaste normal "nice to meet you" way and all hell breaks loose: Gina reveals herself to be a drunken jealous mess, pulling a 12 inch knife (!!!) on Boone who ends up in a scuffle with her ex husband who runs to her defense and then falls on said knife (!!!!). Meanwhile Kwan's brother in law decides he's in love with her (!!!) and tries to basically rape her (!!!!) until her sister stumbles onto this scene of her husband and her sister and they both go running. So Kwan and Boone independently decide to run away and end up on the same bus to the alps where, attempting to flee a police check point, they break into an empty house and 'fall in love' – not knowing that the government is about to shoot a bunch of rockets into the mountains to trigger a controlled avalanche (!?!?!) which is why the house was empty to begin with.Having watched all 31 Elvis movies, I gotta tell you this is legitimately something else. I have never seen a hornier PG film in my life. Constant, constant double entendres and one-liners and come hither looks. CONSTANT. Between Gina and her dummy and Boone trying to be bad but then busting into the corniest kindergarten appropriate songs AND the most simplistic 'Italian' love songs at the same time while then using and losing women but refusing to ever go past some tame making out with respectful hand touching I don't even know what is happening here Letterboxd. That this is all shot on location and has weirdly excellent pacing and a fun cast makes it even more confusing. All the funnier is how apparently Boone was horrified by how he came across in this film and tried to wiggle his way out of it and then spread rumors about how many racy scenes were cut. I'm dying, the dummy gets about as much action as Boone does in this. Love it. Five stars.

Alex Vlahov5.0

1. seen on IB Technicolor at The Vista2. truly an oddity that Pat Boone tried to suppress due to erotic scenes between him & the amazing Nancy Kwan; loaded with double innuendo (“You’ll make some bareback rider a good wife.”) or frank dialogue on adult relations when secluded (“But what if the people who live here come back?” “I’ll tell em to go away.”); with the European setting, this feels like an American teen bop picture in a melodramatic stretch3. features Mai Zetterling doing therapy via ventriloquism & drinking alone with the dummy4. starts in the circus, ends in an avalanche 5. the human hurdle stunt is horrifying; Nancy Kwan’s stunts are impressive in this, also the main jingle is pretty catchy

Scott Nye

This is deeply fascinating stuff, really shows how quickly the European New Wave stuff got under Hollywood's skin. Technically a British production but produced under a distribution deal with MGM (and starring Pat Boone, so the American audience was a big goal), THE MAIN ATTRACTION breaks all the rules of Hollywood filmmaking at the time - very few master shots, a lot of inserts and handheld camerawork that breaks up space, and loads of sexuality. Mai Zetterling runs away with the film as the ventriloquist who draws Boone into the circus (with the aim of making him her kept man), but Nancy Kwan is damn charming (as part of a horse act with her sister and leering brother-in-law).The big hitch is that the final act - during which Pat Boone goes on the run from the law after believing he killed a man - is completely insane. He and Kwan hole up in an abandoned house in the snowy Italian mountains...only to find it's abandoned because the government is planning to avalanche the whole area! What????Any attempt to use nature to mirror the characters' interior turmoil (a la, well, much of Italian cinema over the prior two decades) completely falls on its face, especially as it still has to be a big Pat Boone feel-good movie you can take the family to. So it doesn't really "work" the way a movie should, but the conflict between Hollywood and the oncoming cinematic revolution is completely on display, so if you're into that sort of thing, it's a pretty rich experience.