Primitive Love: Jayne Mansfield in something completely different
Primitive Love: Jayne Mansfield in something completely different
In Primitive Love, Jayne Mansfield, sex bomb, plays Jayne Mansfield the noted cultural anthropologist. Yep. If you think the premise is odd, you’re right, and the movie made from it is a genuine curiosity.
Looking her usual glamorous self, Jayne Mansfield checks into a hotel where she is to meet with a respected professor of anthropology. Her sensuous beauty immediately turns two bumbling hotel porters, played by Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia, into a pair of Pavlov’s salivating dogs as they do anything they can to get a glimpse of Mansfield. Mickey Hargitay, Mansfield’s muscleman husband, has a small part as the hotel bell captain who repeatedly tells Franchi and Ingrassia, “Get to work, you idiots!â€
Much of the movie is taken up by a strange, sometimes interesting, travelogue that Mansfield’s anthropologist plays for the professor. It is supposed to be a look at courtship and marriage rituals throughout the world. The sequences appear to contain a mixture of genuine National Geographic style footage and cobbled up versions of “primitives.†In one, a group supposedly made up of Hawaiian women, including Mansfield in a brunette wig, do a hula dance. One problem with the travelogue is that we can never be sure if what we’re seeing and hearing are or are not descriptions of genuine practices. For example, is it actually customary for husbands in China who catch their wives in acts of infidelity to pelt them with raw eggs?
Despite the breathiness of her voice, Mansfield sounds solidly authoritative as she narrates the travelogue, lending credence to those who believe it would have been better for her career had she adopted a more knowing persona in general rather than so often playing the stereotypical “dumb blond.â€
Mansfield tells the professor that her thesis is that “while man has advanced in other areas, in love he has remained a primitive.†She believes the film she has shot on her world travels proves her thesis. The film’s joke is that it is proven by the relentless antics of Franchi and Ingrassia. The two of them are the most irritating part of Primitive Love for their broad mugging does not look horny so much as loony. They often seem to be trying to imitate Jerry Lewis and always overdoing it.
Jayne Mansfield is ever glamorous throughout Primitive Love whether garbed in a form-fitting business suit of jacket, blouse, and skirt, in an extravagant Hollywood-version of a hula skirt, or sensuously in lingerie – and she is seen in all these garments in this film
Primitive Love is a very odd movie but by Jayne Mansfield fans may enjoy it as may those looking for something completely different.
On the DVD with Primitive Love is a movie called Mondo Balordo. Narrated by Boris Karloff with a horror movie oiliness and wry amusement, the film shows a variety of striking images. There is no theme other than the violence and oddness of the world as we go from a dwarf singer to a lion killing a zebra, prostitutes selling their services, a beauty contest to raise funds to preserve artifacts, scenes of models in bondage, and a party with several male cross-dressers and those attracted to them. Mondo Balordo sometimes shows its age in a bad way as when Karloff calls the practice of men cross-dressing “frightening.†It can also give the viewer the distasteful feeling of looking at other people as if they are exotica in a zoo: here is the average-sized man with his dwarf girlfriend, here are the lesbians, here are the hunters, here are the Jehovah’s witnesses. The film is interesting while it lasts but since it is not tied together by any overarching theme, it cannot stick in the mind after the end.
The DVD on which Primitive Love and Mondo Balordo come is excellent, with both films seeming fairly crisp and easy on the eyes. It also has several extras. Most of them are trailers for more “Mondo†or Mondo-like movies, emphasizing shock value and looking to a large extent like schlock.
| More from Denise Noe
Stumble It!
May 4th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Denise, dear, you should get out more often.
There is a job for you, to my mind, reviewing better odd DVDs. In Oz we have a TV Station called SBS. Its the ‘multicultural’ station here, drawing its programs from all over the world. Oddities are to be found amongst its broadcast archives of foreign films and docos, including what appears to be a Canadian series broadcast under the heading of XY.
XY deals with ‘underground’ films on a variety of subjects, linked by odd takes on sexuality. We have had all sorts, very entertaining: a woman ex-groupie who didn’t shag rock stars right off but made plaster casts of their willies first, for instance. Now that is what I call anthopological fieldwork ! And breasts – I am reminded of course just by the mere mention of Jayne mansfield – and women’s total obliviousness to their own breasts’ size. It seems very few women wear the right sized bra. That’s primitive, and despite all the thousands of hours of women’s maths since the stone age. And, yes, cross-dressers. Of course, you could do a review of Camille Paglia’s ‘Sexual Personae’ or ‘Vested Interests’ by – who was that? Did you know that historically more women have dragged themselves into chaps’ daks than men have pulled knickers up? See, not many people know that. Or that a male Governor in an American State wore dresses all the time? (Mind you, that was pre-rev so he was a Brit and so no real surprise there). Had good taste too, apparantly.
Hours of fun there, Denise. Saucy too.