The odd thing about Holiday in Spain is that it was originally released in Smell-O-Vision under another title, Scent of Mystery. It flopped, even with the gimmick of various aromas being piped into cinemas as audiences watched. With another smelly film, Dead Lover, currently doing the rounds (writing this in March 2026) – it’s in Stink-O-Vision, a scratch-and-sniff take on the same idea – I thought I’d go back to this 1960 oddity and give it a spin.
Which, of course, I can’t. Not the original Scent of Mystery at any rate. I don’t have the Smell-O-Vision technology and can’t find a copy of the film. Holiday on Spain, on the other hand, is easy to get hold of. There’s even a very good version on YouTube. Holiday is essentially Scent of Mystery minus its aromas and re-edited. The wide Cinerama aspect remains, which means the image has a definite bowing curve when watched on screens at home. Like Smell-O-Vision, Cinerama was an attempt by cinema distributors to prise TV watchers away from their sofas with a huge image, a loud noise, smells, vibrating seats, any gimmick they could come up with. How’s that going, boys?
A jaunty, larky tale in line with other Mike Todd productions – Around the World in 80 Days most notably – this is essentially a glorious travelogue roaming Spain just before the arrival of mass tourism. As linker material of sorts there is Denholm Elliott as a snobbish and very proper British thriller writer being ferried from one eye-catching destination to another by taxi driver Smiley (Peter Lorre), taking in monuments, people, festivals, flamenco, the Alhambra, running the bulls in Pamplona and so on. There are many men in wide-brimmed hats and lots of weather-beaten faces and donkeys. It’s very much the Spain of popular imagination at the time, the sort of place Hemingway wrote about.
After about an hour a plot starts to take shape – someone wants to kill a woman called Miss Kennedy for her money – with Elliott’s chivalrous Oliver Larker taking it on himself to act as her protector. The Miss Kennedy we see in the film is a decoy played by Beverly Bentley. The real one is played by… we only get to see her in the film’s dying moment and I won’t ruin it by saying who it is but it is kind of funny, and kind of obvious if you know anything about Mike Todd.
The great cinematographer Jack Cardiff is directing here, and the film looks spectacular throughout. He and his cinematographer John Kotze even get to play with Todd-AO cameras here and there, which were developed by Todd’s company to deliver massive widescreen images. Away from the lush visuals there is Denholm Elliott being charming, which is his strong suit, and acting as a straight man to Peter Lorre, who does the humour. The gags are not very funny but Lorre delivers them with deadpan savoir faire. He had a heart attack while shooting this film and was ordered to rest up. So these close-ups of his face apart, what you’re seeing is often not him – no running!
This is a chintzy, larky sort of thing and Mario Nascimbene’s score runs right through the book of the rinky-dink, with various 1960s comedy boings, whooshes and parps to remind us that it isn’t to be taken too seriously.
This was the only Smell-O-Vision movie – or Scent of Mystery was. Not, obviously to be confused with AromaRama, a rival in the “battle of the smellies”, which resulted in both contestants losing out to box-office reality. It might have helped if the smells were convincing, a criticism at the time.
Holiday in Spain is a picture-postcard reminder of all that, and the 2014 restoration of the image does it proud. It’s still a touch milky here and there, but on the whole this is a handsome looking movie. Elliott, Lorre and lovely images. Good enough for a wet afternoon.
Holiday in Spain – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
I am an Amazon affiliate
© Steve Morrissey 2026
Excellent review. Thank you!