Mansfield 66/67

The straightforward documentary stuff is fine and does a good job illuminating Jayne, but all the little flourishes i.e.) the dance numbers etc are awful and take you right out. It's like watching bad community theatre actors playing dress up and should have been cut right out. That stuff just doesn't work and takes away from the whole.

Tongue-in-cheek documentary on late actress Jayne Mansfield, bombshell of the 1950s, popular for her curves, eye-popping bust and platinum blonde hair. A would-be heir to Marilyn's throne, Jayne's career was sidetracked in the early '60s after she married bodybuilder/actor Mickey Hargitay and started having children. Twentieth Century-Fox dropped her contract, she supposedly turned down the role of Ginger on "Gilligan's Island", and wound up in rank B-movies before her tragic death in 1967. Interviews with historians, writers, actors and cult figures reestablish all the rumors movie-buffs have already heard a dozen times over, including how she died, her connection to Satan worshipper Anton LeVey, her high IQ, and the number of languages she spoke. It's a colorful, movie magazine-styled gossip-fest but not likely to be of much interest outside of Mansfield's devotees. ** from ****

To like or not to like, THAT is the question!

For what this is, it's very good- so I like it, cause it kept me quite enthralled. So, in that sense, this documentary is very likable, but at the same time, it's not a likable story. So, I am torn about "liking" this, but it's like a good horror film.

Jayne's story is one of the most interesting of any Hollywood star, and it's so fascinating the way things happened in her life, giving everything a supernatural, eerie, and frankly, scary quality to it. Hers was a real-life horror story- not the morbid, ugly ones of the nightly news, but the fantastical, creepy, theatrical, macabre kind that all the best movie chillers are made of.

Who knew that a documentary on sex kitten/blonde bombshell Jayne Mansfield would be perfect for the Halloween season?! But it sure is!

Oh, how I wish I had a time machine to go back and save her and the others with her on that fateful night from such horrific ends, but alas.

Anyone interested in movie stars of the 1950s and 1960s may enjoy this, as well as, oddly enough, anyone interested in the occult, theories, and conspiracy.

The creepiness factor is high with this one!

R. I. P., dear Jayne,

Mansfield 66/7 contains a number of interesting contributors (John Waters, Kenneth Anger) and film academics to convey the fascinating, but tragic, life of Janye Mansfield. The documentary covers good ground, with the Anton LaVey sections and footage being particularly insightful (in fact, I would have liked the film to focus much more on the LaVey/Mansfield connection). As such, the US material is compelling (although some unnecessary animated sequences go a bit off track), but the film then bizarrely splices these sequences with dance and 'drama' scenes produced by a group of Leeds-based performance students. While no doubt arty in intent, these sections of the film are distracting, weird, incongrous, shot in a flat cinematic style that jars with the US footage, and are ultimately really quite awful. Why the producers opted for this approach is a mystery, but the UK scenes only serve to undercut the narrative badly. As such, the filmmakers should have replaced them with further or longer relevant interviews and footage that illuminate the life of Jayne Mansfield in the 1966/7 period rather than indulging in telling parts of the tale through interpretative dance, lifeless sketches, and various Leeds folk leaping and capering about in bad blonde wigs.

As that was when I decided to switch it off. I wanted a Jayne Mansfield documentary, not a pretentious art student project,