The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield

4.9
1968 1 hr 39 min Documentary

Jayne takes us on a review of her last world tour. She takes us through Rome, shares a fantasy about Roman athletes, and then is off to Cannes. She takes a trip to the nudist colony on the Isle of Levant, where she almost kind of joins in. Then it's off to Paris, where she gets a beauty treatment from Fernand Aubrey, and attends some racy dance revues. In New York and Los Angeles, she visits some topless clubs and listens to a topless all-girl pop band. The film wraps up with some posthumous footage of her family in mourning.

  • Cast:
    Jayne Mansfield , Rocky Roberts , Mickey Hargitay

Similar titles

Decasia
Decasia
A meditation on the human quest to transcend physicality, constructed from decaying archival footage and set to an original symphonic score.
Decasia 2002
Sex and Buttered Popcorn
Sex and Buttered Popcorn
Actor Ned Beatty hosts a look at the genre known as "exploitation" films. Interviews with some of the producers and directors of these films are shown, along with scenes from and trailers for some of these films.
Sex and Buttered Popcorn 1989
Dream Chasers
Dream Chasers
Dream Chasers 2003
Mystery of the Nile
Mystery of the Nile
Filmed in IMAX, a team of explorers led by Pasquale Scaturro and Gordon Brown face seemingly insurmountable challenges as they make their way along all 3,260 miles of the world's longest and deadliest river to become the first in history to complete a full descent of the Blue Nile from source to sea.
Mystery of the Nile 2005
Super Cities: Istanbul
Super Cities: Istanbul
Evidence of Istanbul's glorious past is still seen in the ancient architecture of this bustling city. The Byzantine church Hagia Sophia is thousands of years old, and is a marvel of construction. There are ancient palaces to explore, including Topkapi, which housed rulers during the Ottoman Empire. For the traveler interested in an extensive shopping experience, the Grand Bazaar features 4,000 shops in which to browse, haggle, and perhaps buy. Super Cities: Istanbul provides a guide to Turkey's important cultural and business center.
Super Cities: Istanbul 1994

Reviews

ChanBot
1968/04/18

i must have seen a different film!!

... more
Acensbart
1968/04/19

Excellent but underrated film

... more
Bluebell Alcock
1968/04/20

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

... more
Philippa
1968/04/21

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

... more
dbborroughs
1968/04/22

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.

... more
boinnng
1968/04/23

Oh my GOD! What an AMAZING movie! "The Wild, Wild World Of Jayne Mansfield" is an exploitation movie lover's dream come true! When i first saw this, my jaw DROPPED to the floor in utter amazement! As soon as I heard the zippy little title music and cheesy-cute opening credits, I had a feeling this was going to be interesting...but I was completely caught off guard when the breathy narrator announced "Hi! I'm Jayne Mansfield" while watching grainy black & white footage of Jayne in Rome! WHAT!!???!!! The movie proceeded from there and I was stunned by the audacity of the filmmakers as they carve out a pseudo mondo movie out of literally NOTHING!!! This movie was made AFTER Jayne was dead. Whoever put it together was a GENIUS and deserved an Oscar or SOMETHING! What you get are, what appear to be, HOME MOVIES of Jayne on vacation in Europe, a wonderfully FAKE Jayne Mansfield narrator, an obvious stand in (especially noticeable in the early black and white scenes where she's walking down the Via Veneto in Rome, looking through the Playboy magazine, and entering her hotel), shamelessly silly nudie filler scenes (which are all connected via "Jayne's" ditzy explanations), etc! You will HOWL with laughter as Jayne, on a nudist island off of the coast of France, splashes her toes in a stream. The cool water running over her toes reminds her of other times and other feet! WHAT!?! Yes, she has segued into a memory of a risqué theater performance where only feet are on stage! It's tacky stuff...but for a memory, it's strange that Jayne is NO WHERE to be seen! While in Paris, follow Jayne, on the top of the Arch de Triumph, as she takes a secret passage that leads into Paris' swinging underground nightclub for transvestites! (You enter from the top of the Arch de Triumph? HUH?? Whatever...) Then, marvel as Jayne, with amazing bionic-like super vision, spys on couples fooling around in a hotel room, a park, etc all from the top of the Effeil Tower with her naked eyes!There's also a drag queen competition that Jayne is supposed to be attending. There is one quick flash of her seated in a booth...but it does NOT seem likely it's the same place. For all we know, it could have been film of her having a Grand Slam breakfast at Denny's or something, very craftily spliced into the other scene! The most shocking and painfully funny bit, has the camera filming from a car's point of view. Suddenly, the car seems to loose control! There is the screeching of breaks on the asphalt, and the car/camera go careening toward some trees! EEK! We then cut away to REAL photographs of Jayne's deadly automobile accident. She slammed into a big truck. Here in the heck is the TREE we, the audience as Jayne, just slammed into? And before you can look away from the crash shots, we are suddenly getting a tour of the inside of Jayne's gaudy mansion (with it's heart shaped pool, sink, and bed) by Jayne's ex-husband Mickey Hargitay!! (Does that place still exist as is? Man, I'd LOVE to see it! It's incredibly TACKY!!!)There is just SO MUCH this movie throws at you---it's stupdefyingly bizarre!I LOVE it! You get an interview with a supposed Jayne Mansfield look-a-like female impersonator, a topless female band performing, a best-breasts competition, and strip-tease lessons! There are also film clips of Jayne in "The Many Loves of Hercules", "Primitive Love", and nude in "Promises Promises"! Although the film gets a bit bogged down with all of the topless filler towards the end (did they run out of cutting room floor clips of Jayne??), it's still an amazing cinematic achievement. The filmmakers have literally taken NOTHING and created a mondo MESS-terpiece of exploitation genius! Jayne would have been proud!

... more
TJBNYC
1968/04/24

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.

... more
Jens-28
1968/04/25

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?

... more