Aug 15, 2005

Promises! Promises! (1963)


Dion Conflict, an old friend to ESR, began showing some outdoor movies as of last Sunday, in his parking lot. Last week he showed APPOINTMENT IN HONDURAS, as a "test screening" (a last-minute kind of thing to try it out and see if such a venue would work)... and then continued with tonight's film PROMISES PROMISES, the notorious Jayne Mansfield sex comedy which featured the fading starlet in the buff. So desperate is this movie that it has to show this fleeting footage again and again.. and again. But it almost works as a Dada-ist nightmare, as the movie almost acts as some kind of dream logic, with these incongruous cut-ins, and weirdo dream sequences. In its day, the plot for this film was quite vulgar- two couples on a ship play around with each other, and then a pregnancy makes them wonder who the father is. Jayne's husband Mickey Hargitay, former Mr. Universe, is one of the hubbies in this confusion of sexual mores, and then good old Tommy Noonan, the gimpy lead who starred with both Marilyn Monroe and Mamie Van Doren, adds Jayne Mansfield to his troika of starlet vehicles in which he is unlikely paired off to a bombshell.

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