Too Hot To Handle
Picture: D
Sound: C- Extras: D Film: B-
Before we begin, it should be noted that Terence Young’s
1960 film Too Hot To Handle, was released by the original M-G-M in
Eastmancolor, yet this DVD copy is actually in black & white and looks very
bad. Back in the early years of TV,
with color prints more expensive than monochrome, TV stations routinely
broadcast black and white prints, even when color TV arrived. There has to be a color version somewhere.
With that, Young made this film two years before his
career peaked commercially by helming three of the first four James Bond
films. Issued by Koch Vision as part of
their Jayne Mansfield series, this British production also stars Leo Genn as
Johnny (who Mansfield’s showgirl is involved with), Carl Bohem (the same year
he did Michael Powell’s masterpiece Peeping Tom), Christopher Lee as the
show host, and Lee’s cousin Ian Fleming as a pawnbroker. Yes, the same Fleming who wrote all the
James Bond novels.
Also issued under the title Playgirl After Dark to
capitalize on the Playboy Magazine’s famous TV series before the advent of the
unrelated women’s magazine Playgirl, the film is seedy and offers many of the
elements Young would bring to the Bond series.
The title song is performed by Mansfield as a sort of sexually explicit
counter to the many glossy Marilyn Monroe numbers Hollywood and 20th
Century-Fox lavished on her. There is a
calypso number, clipped dialogue, British gangsters, a portrait of the dark
underworld that is pretty matter-of-fact and the usual police presence doing
what it can to fix things.
Bohem is a reporter who may get the story, but Mansfield
is quickly onto the blackmail plot against her Johnny first and the film is not
bad. It may not age well, but it is
often hard to tell from this print, which is an affront to the great Otto
Heller, B.S.C., who shot it. Warner
Bros. should have a good copy of this in their vaults, give or take if it was
so independently produced (and it does not look that way) that the original
camera materials are with a third party.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is scratchy and Lee sounds as if his voice
has been overdubbed throughout. The
only extras are a weblink and covers of other female-star DVDs form the time
period with Mansfield and other actresses of the time. This runs just over 90 minutes and is an
interesting film that deserves better. Too
Hot To Handle is even campy at times, but should even have more
supplements.
- Nicholas Sheffo
