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Jayne Mansfield Collection (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Our Price: £23.54 (subject to change)
Two out of three ain't bad - especially when the two are directed by Frank Tashlin!
Review date: 2006-10-10 Rating: 8 out of 10
The Girl Can't Help It is like a live-action Tex Avery cartoon - Jayne Mansfield even looks like Swingshift Cinderella herself, while Edmond O'Brien channels both Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd at times - although it's directed by another animator, Frank Tashlin, whose pen-and-ink work never quite dared to go this far. Smut is present in every scene, whether it be Mansfield holding two jugs of milk, or the outrageous milkman sight gag you cannot believe they got past the censors. The plot is a reworking of Born Yesterday but much, much funnier and a lot more likeable, with a mostly well-integrated array of rock'n'roll hits of the day from an impressive line-up of everyone from Gene Vincent to Fats Domino via Abby Lincoln and Eddie Cochrane, not to mention the mandatory Chuck Berry (although Barry Gordon's rendition of Blue Suede Shoes didn't make it further than the movie's trailer, included on the DVD). Yet for all the energy, perhaps the single most effective musical moment is Tom Ewell seeing old flame Julie London everywhere he turns when he hears Cry Me a River. The color is stunning in this 2.55:1 widescreen transfer, a big surprise for the usually lackluster DeLuxe color system. Perfectly joyous, and without an ounce of padding. Damn, it's catching!
(This has the best extras package of the set - an audio commentary geared more to the history of rock music than the film itself, a 43-minute Biography documentary on Mansfield and trailers.)
Yet somehow I still prefer Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? The Madison Avenue satire shares little more than a title and a character with the hit Broadway sendup of Hollywood, and it lacks the energy and jukebox construction of Girl (I mean the musical numbers, not the gal herself), but in taking on the corporate rat race rather than the music-and-gangsters milieu it seems just grounded enough for the gags to seem alternately more pertinent and more audacious. As well as being very smart, it's also unbelievably smutty, almost taking even more delight in censor-baiting than its predecessor, albeit with less milk. And in-jokes abound, whether it be Joan Blondel uttering "Well I'll be a writer's subplot," a Technicolor-dyed poodle named after Girl's cinematographer Leon Shamroy or a breathtakingly audacious two-minute break in the film for the benefit of TV viewers that sees the CinemaScope screen reduced to 24 inches of rolling flickering monochrome. Sadly the 2.55:1 widescreen transfer is not as good as the previouzs laserdisc release, though still acceptable. Extras are audio commentary and trailers.
The disappointment of the set is The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, a blockbuster hit in the UK but looking like nothing so much as an undernourished Rank Organisation movie with a much bigger budget. There's a serious lack of jokes for a comedy - mostly just variations on "He's English" as if that automatically turns every situation into a laugh-riot - leaving it to coast by on Kenneth More's likeability, which it just about does. As the rather dull romantic interest with nothing to work with Mansfield is pretty awful, but the film does have one nice song, The Valley of Love. The 2.55:1 widescreen transfer is good, but the only extras are a novelty trailer for the film featuring no footage but unbelievably badly faked laughter from a 'real' preview audience and trailers for theother two titles.
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Product Details/Specifications
Actor(s):
Jayne Mansfield
Tom Ewell
Tony Randall
Henry Hull
Kenneth More
Creators:
Kenneth More (Primary Contributor)
Jayne Mansfield (Primary Contributor)
Frank Tashlin (Writer)
Garson Kanin (Writer)
George Axelrod (Writer)
Herbert Baker (Writer)
Howard Dimsdale (Writer)
Jacob Hay (Writer)
Director(s):
Recording label: 20th Century Fox
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
EAN: 0024543228318
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 3
Format: Box set, Colour, DVD-Video, NTSC,
Release date: 2006-08-08
Universal product code (UPC): 024543228318
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Region code: 1
Running time: 292 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1956-12-01
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: Spanish (Subtitled)