It's the off-season at the lonely Beauregard Hotel in Bournemoth, and only the long-term tenants are still in residence. Life is stirred up, however, when the beautiful Ann Shankland arrives to see her alcoholic ex-husband, John Malcolm, who is secretly engaged to Pat Cooper, the woman who runs the hotel. Meanwhile, snobbish Mrs Railton-Bell discovers that the kindly if rather doddering Major Pollock, played by David Niven, who won an Oscar for his performance, a retired officer who likes to find out more...

To spark up or not to spark up? This rambling, flamboyant, incoherent ‘head movie' should be approached with caution by anyone who hasn't got any drugs in their system. In the Napoleonic wars, an officer finds an old book that relates his grandfather's story. On a trip to Madrid a Belgian soldier takes a short cut across the mountains, a land of robbers, body snatching gypsies and devils, and stays at an inn named the Venta Quemada....Luis Buñuel (who seldom viewed movies more than once) liked t find out more...