In a Nutshell
Manafield 66/67 is about the last two years of movie goddess Jayne Mansfield’s life, and the rumours swirling around her untimely death.
[imdb]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6027344/[/imdb]
Review
After Room 237, the baffling yet intensely watchable film about the conspiracy theories and wild interruptions of Stanley Kubrick’s 1985 adaption of Stephen Kings The Shining, pop culture documentarians Todd Hughes and P.David Ebersole return to a world of suspicious coincidences, tongue-in-cheek and even the satanic in Mansfield 66/67.
As the title suggests, this quasi-documentary primarily explores the curious final two years of “Hollywood’s Smartest Dumb Blonde”, Jayne Mansfield, particularly focusing on her relationship with Anton LeVey, lion tamer and Head of The Church of Satan. It doesn’t proclaim to be based on any official documentation but instead as a self-aware ” true story based on rumour and hearsay”, told to us by a diverse selection of talking heads.
Hollywood’s Smartest Dumb Blonde!
Notably these include an array of Mansfield’s famous friends, such as the aged exploitation star Mamie Van Doren who like many of her peers has fallen victim to a serve addiction of cosmetic surgery who provides personal and often scandalous details into Mansfield’s’ life but also her character including unusual intelligence and self-awareness of someone with her image and position.
Famous and mysterious stories are told to us by various film and Hollywood historians and journalists, with frequent interjections of speculation. The word ‘apparently’ comes up very often. Various semi-famous cult figures with no direct connection to Mansfield or Levey, but have a clear rabid fascination for the story offer their own words on the documentary’s curious subject.
The most noteworthy of these Mansfield maniacs is the consistently wonderful John Waters, who of course is extremely easy to listen to, in fact, it would have been a boost to the film if he appeared more perhaps even is some sort of interviewer or more traditional narrator role.
The Devil is in the Detail
What makes the story and the real-life people within seem special is the extra details we learn about Mansfield and LeVey that don’t have much to do with the overall narrative. Did you know that Janye Mansfield spoke five languages, played the violin and release an album of “Mansfield reads Shakespeare”? well, I didn’t.
Also before his most famous career as being the immortal head of The Church of Satan, Anton LeVey was a Lion Tamer and after moving into his new, more spiritual job, he kept a lion named “Togare” in his backyard. After being taken away from LeVey due to being just too dangerous, Togare went on to star in the cult classic Roar.
A Problematic Narrative Based Largely on Hearsay
Telling a story visually in a documentary can be difficult, especially when the events you’re telling might not be true thus there’s no video footage. Some documentaries work around this and innovate, Mansfield 66/67, for the most part, doesn’t.
Every now and then short clips from various Mansfield movies will be cut together to represent a conversation or a reaction to something and it happens it cute and sometimes even results in a chuckle, however more complex situations are often portrayed by a group of young people acting out what’s supposed to be happening in the form of dance. This may sound interesting but the cheapness of the sets, costumes and lighting heavily contrast with the glamour of Mansfield’s life.
Similarly, some predicaments are illustrated (literally) by some low-quality 2D cartoons. Like the dancing, this comes off as cheap and silly but in some instances such as when Mansfield youngest son is tragically mauled by a Lion on a trip to the zoo, it comes off in bad taste.
A Product of the Nuclear Fifties
In part, what Mansfield 66/67 is really about the changing of time and learning to change with it. Jayne Mansfield was a product of the nuclear fifties and when the more progressive sixties came along, she just didn’t fit in. Her desperation for media attention leads her into the arms of Anton LeVey, which may or may not have lead to her untimely death.
At the end there are some notes about the change in L.a sine Jayne Mansfield time, afterwards, it becomes clear that the unusual events of this film could have only taken place within the short window of “66/67”
Verdict
Apart from some annoying interludes, Mansfield 66/67 is a swingin’ tongue in cheek documentary about very idiosyncratic time which housed some very idiosyncratic people.
