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.

Not very good mostly silent documentary, with a faked voice pretending to be the late B movie queen,as she takes you around the world to some pretty "wild" events. Serves as a decent document of some stuff you probably never saw from that time period, but definitely not a worthwhile homage to this lovely lady.

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.

The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield (1968)

BOMB (out of 4)

If you're looking for a documentary on the life and career of Jayne Mansfield then it's best you stay far away from this "film" which is really nothing more than an exploitation of the actress. What we basically get is a mondo movie that features footage of a vacation Mansfield took to Rome, Italy just months before her death. With a fake narrator pretending to be Mansfield, she talks about all sorts of dumb things but mostly about how she loves Italian men and wishes she could see a Roman orgy. Because there was so little footage of this vacation, we also get clips from some of her later movies edited in and there's footage of other people not even connected to Mansfield in her real life. This is an incredibly stupid, tasteless and downright waste of time that just proves that the actress was treated just as bad after her death as she was in the last few years of her life. We get several shots from her Playboy photos as well as clips from the notorious PROMISES....PROMISES! but this film here makes that stinker look like the work of Orson Welles. The silly thing is that there are three people credited with directing this movie but if any of them had any class they would have requested their names be removed. Again, there's no question that this thing was rushed into production to capitalize on Mansfield's death but the most sickening thing comes in the final ten minutes when we see a fake "crash" and then see death photos of Mansfield who of course died in a car crash. Even more tasteless is that we see her ex-husband Mickey Hargitay showing off the home they shared and then we get introduced to their two sons, both of whom were in the car when their mother died. The first portion of this film, as bad as it is, was apparently just trying to exploit the star and show off its X-rating but what happens at the end is just a disgrace and really vile. This film is just a complete bore that turns into something so tasteless that there's really no point in watching the film.