The Pleasure Hunters

The Pleasure Hunters, by Irving A. Greenfield

July, 1973  Dell Books

Proving once again that there’s no sleaze like ‘70s sleaze, The Pleasure Hunters is a super-hardcore romp set in Mexico courtesy Irving A. Greenfield, who wrote sleaze novels in the ‘60s and must’ve gotten a chuckle out of writing sleaze for a major imprint in the ‘70s. But while The Pleasure Hunters brands itself as being in the tradition of Acapulco, it really has more in common with the “risque comedy” PBOs Dell was publishing at the time, like Black Magic and Greenfield's own Making U-Hoo, with the caveat that this one’s a lot more hardcore. 

Those books, while promising salacious reads, often turned out to be tiresome, unfunny “comedies” with smutty undertones, and hardly ever were as sleazy as the covers implied. The tone was usually farcical, with goofy characters encountering goofy situations. The same holds true for The Pleasure Hunters, which is a bummer, because I was hoping it would be a slightly more sleazy take on the typical Burt Hirschfeld novel. But then, Greenfield I think was incapable of writing a potboiler like Hirschfeld; Greenfield’s books are usually fast-moving yarns with paper-thin characters and not much in the way of the introspection you’d get in Hirschfeld. What I am trying to say is that Greenfield was a lesser writer, but then he made up for it with much more explicit adult shenanigans than you’d find in Hirschfeld…or really most mainstream authors of the day, save for perhaps Harold Robbins, who usually went to even more extremes than the “in the tradition of”-type authors. 

The Pleasure Hunters actually starts off like a regular steamy ‘70s type of novel, though. We meet young Sergio Martinez, a hunk bellboy in Oaxaca, Mexico, as he goes to an attractive guest’s cottage to “fix her window.” But after some banter it’s clear the young lady, an American tourist, has called Sergio over for something else. The bellboy is quite familiar with such requests and goes about pushing the initially-reluctant young woman into an explicity-detailed sexual escapade. In fact Sergio is so used to such matters that he also expects payment in return for his Latin lovin,’ and is angered when this latest lay doesn’t take the hint that he wants money. So he basically tells her “no more for you” and leaves! This opening gives a good indication of the novel we’re about to read – it’s incredibly raunchy in the exploitation department, and Greenfield pulls no punches. To the extent that I refrrained from excerpting anything for fear of offending any of you! 

But shortly after this a new shipment of tourists arrives at the hotel, and slowly The Pleasure Hunters will transform into one of those “risque comedies” like the other paperbacks mentioned above. One of the guests is a sleazy salesman type named Harry Harris, who has come here as the leader of the group and is a loudmothed type, but he has ulterior motives: a friend who stayed at the hotel months before claims that the bellboy named Sergio has an in-line to an incredibly valuable mural that’s hidden somewhere in Oaxaca. So, per this vague backstory, Harry thinks he can finally strike it rich by taking Sergio into his confidence and finding out where the mural is. Only as it develops Sergio not only doesn’t remember Harry’s friend, but also has no idea of what “mural” Harry is referring to. Comedy, uh, ensues. 

Greenfield at least knows to throw us a bone with frequent explicit shenanigans. He proves this posthaste with a random sex scene between Harry and the beautiful, black-haired Elli, a topless dancer with “voluptuous breasts” that Harry’s brought along. Greenfield tries to establish a former affair between these two, but it broke off due to Harry’s business sleaziness or something, but now against her better instincts Elli’s come along on this latest caper, or some such crap. The point of it all is that they get right down to the sleaze posthaste, a scene featuring Elli’s memorable line: “Just stop talking and put it inside of me!” 

But this rampant sleaze is soon clouded over by those farcical tones that sunk all those other Dell paperbacks, like when Harry insists that Sergio take a busful of guests on a tour of Oaxaca, and it descends into a goofy sequence in which Sergio and a hotel colleague he’s brought along try to b.s. their way through it for the behest of the gringos. Speaking of which there’s also a lot of stuff from Sergio and the other Mexican employees’ points of view, and Greenfield makes them all seem rather dumb but still cagey in their street smarts of how to get more money out of the gullible gringos. Eventually the crux of the plot revolves around Harry trying to convince Sergio that Sergio knows where this mysterious mural is, and, uh, comedy ensues. 

I really don’t feel like writing more about the book because it sucked. So what the hell, I’ll go ahead and randomly excerpt some filth after all. Read at your own discretion!