The Wild Wild World of Jayne Mansfield

Forget Michael Palin, the world according to Jayne '40-18½-36' Mansfield is my kinda world!

First she treks to Rome, followed by a herd of horny men pinchin' her ass while she's babblin' on about the Colloseum, her nude Playboy pics, gladiators, orgies mixed with Hercules footage!?! Then Cannes gets the bombshell treatment as our bikini Jayne (VA VA VOOOOM!) walks the beaches ("smallest bikinis in the world") and starts twistin' to "Bird's The Word" performed by a cool black R&B combo. She goes on a boattrip and strip nude and confesses:

"I'm basically very shy!"

And on and on this relentless busty 'love crusade' goes. Hookers, midgets, Paris, dragqueens, gays'n'dykes ("I'm just too darn confused!" poor little thing), Mickey Hagitay, strippers, footage from PROMISES, PROMISES and PRIMITIVE LOVE.....and bloody pics of her fatal car crash in 1967!?!

Now, where's my time machine?

Fading sex goddess Jayne Mansfield takes a Mondo Cane-type tour of Europe, meeting male hustlers, transvestites, strippers, nudists, topless girl bands, and other colorful types along the way.

Filmed mostly in 1964 but not released until after Jayne's horrific death (and padded with a lot of footage from such Mansfield epics as "The Loves of Hercules" and "Primitive Love"), this deliriously tasteless travelogue was optimistically heralded by Jayne in one of her fan club newsletters as a sequel of sorts to Elizabeth Taylor's famed television tour of London. However, one can hardly imagine the then-Mrs. Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton doing the twist to "The Bird's the Word," much less visiting underground drag nightclubs.

Adding to the weirdness is the fact that "Jayne"'s narration is supplied by a voice double, and in a few new scenes shot from behind, a body double is used as well (apparently, also to pad out the film's length). In fact, such lengthy scenes as the Drag Queen Beauty Contest seem to have been filmed after Jayne's death, with inserts of Jayne's "reactions" to the show edited in.

Never fear, though, because plenty of the real Mansfield form is on display. In Cannes, she prances around in a bikini, then doffs the top for a trip to a nudist colony ("Gee, I hope nobody's watching!" Jayne's voice over simpers). In Paris, Jayne visits a massage parlor/tanning salon and is generously oiled down. And for those who missed them the first time around, the bathtub scene from "Promises! Promises!" and the striptease from "Primitive Love" are spliced in for good measure. (Jayne having "daydreams" in Rome leads to a few choice snippets of "The Loves of Hercules," as well!)

The crazed one-liners attributed to "Jayne" throughout the film have to be more inane than anything that would've ever actually issued from Mansfield's mouth (on the Eiffel Tower: "Gee, I hope nobody tears it down and builds a parking lot!").

To top everything off, the film suddenly ends with screeching tire noises, a simulated car crash, and then gruesome police photos of Mansfield's fatal car accident (including her corpse and that of her chihauhau!). Then, a grotesquely tacky epilogue unfurls of ex-Mr. Jayne Mansfield, Mickey Hargitay, sadly touring the Pink Palace, playing the pink grand piano, and displaying the famed Wall of Magazine Covers. A supremely smarmy narrator intones, "A pair of shoes wait by the heart shaped bed...who will fill those shoes?", as the camera pans on a pair of Jayne's stilletos!

As horrifying as this film sounds, no doubt Jayne would have been delighted with her cinematic send-off. Her legacy of bad taste lives on to this day, and it is as jaw-dropping and mind-reeling as in 1967.

After the death of Mansfield in 1967 this weird piece of film was cobbled together from footage shot years before her death. The idea is that its a record of Jaynes world tour. The trouble is that nothing happens. Jayne and or her body double walks around Europe and America as she visits odd spots like a gay night club or a nudist island. We get a breathless Jayne like imitator speaking about her trips and life in a dumb blonde sort of way.

Worse is the fact that there wasn't enough footage with Jayne to make a movie so sequences are used from several of her films, stills from her Playboy spread and other cheese cake shots. Other sequences were filmed and reaction shots of Jayne were inserted. This is fine for awhile but once the film gets to the halfway point I hit the fast forward since things became duller and duller since it became more clear that this was a greed production.

Of course the kicker and the reason that the film remains in the minds of bad cinema lovers is the last ten minutes. A screech of tires and the camera shakes as get to witness the accident photos of Mansfield death drive. Sure they're black and white but they are ghoulish. More ghoulish is the shots of her ex husband Mickey Hargitay and her sons walking around her home forlornly as news reports of the accident are played on the soundtrack. Where the hell did this left turn come from? This is a rather minor mondo film, that is both less and more interesting in that the one death it has is of its star. But outside of that there isn't much to recommend it, except that there are worse things than the first half of this film.

ITS CAMPY AND FUN. An easy watch and a fun movie. It's fascinating seeing the cameos of early trans people. Don't get me wrong, the film gets clunky at times, her body doubles are a bit obvious and it's not Jayne Narrating but Carolyn De Fonseca but it's passable as she also dubbed over Jayne in a few of her other movies like Dog Eat Dog. IF YOUR A FAN OF JAYNE PLEASE WATCH. In some scenes like the interview with one of the transgender performers it's clear that it was filmed after Jayne's death and it's a bit awkward in the drag ball scene as it's obvious again that Jayne is not alive at the time of filming. THE END HAD ME CRYING. We go from this fun film to a sad movie and the campy plot juxtaposed with the painful reality of her life honestly summarises her life in a metaphorical way.

By the time Jayne Mansfield came to film her Wild Wild World documentary in the late 60s, her star was well and truly on the wane. The A-movie parts had dried up and she was acting in B-movie trash and touring night clubs in order to make a living. As well as regular centre spreads in magazines like Playboy, Mansfield still maintained a place in the public eye. Although by no means the star she once was she still commanded press attention and was probably, by this point, one of the first people to be famous for being famous.

The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield is a curiously muddled affair which cobbles together footage of Jayne sashaying around various Euro locations. Jayne visits tourist attractions, night clubs, nudist beaches and beauty parlours in a whistle-stop tour of Europe.

Jayne unfortunately was killed during the production of the film and so some early scenes of her in Rome involve a (sometimes) poorly concealed double. Another drawback is the faux-Mansfield voice over. More a parody of Mansfield than anything else this breathy, dumb blonde voice comes out with some real clunkers during the course of the film! Perhaps the most twisted aspect of the movie is the inclusion of photographs of the scenes of the car crash which claimed Jayne's life followed by a tour of the Pink Palace by a glum-looking Mickey Hargitay and two of Jayne's young sons. A rather sleazy and sensational end to an otherwise harmless piece of late-60s camp.

Although by no means a good film, this is an interesting one to watch. It is nice to see the attention Mansfield still attracted by this point in her career. Although the success of glossy A-movies such as The Girl Can't Help It were more than 10 years old by this point and Mansfield was 'starring' in dross like The Fat Spy, she could still draw a crowd. Although less curvy than in her heyday and there being something slightly grotesque about her wiggle and constant near-nudity, Jayne was nothing if not a personality. And her Wild, Wild World sums her up perfectly!

*One point of interest for film buffs: David Puttnam is credited as an executive producer on this film. A very early film credit, Lord Puttnam is he is now is probably more famous for producing movies like Midnight Express, Bugsy Malone and Chariots of Fire. Well, we all have to start somewhere!