The documentary Mansfield 66/67 trades in the same camp as its iconic subject: “Blonde Bombshell” Jayne Mansfield. The film focuses on the last two years of the starlet’s life, reveling in the rumors that swirled and the legends that the papers saw fit to print.
The film is built from celebrity interviews, discussions with cultural academics, archival footage, and kitschy sketches. The film does best when it is analyzing the peculiarities of Mansfield’s singular persona and having fun with whatever explanations are dreamt up. When it indulges in notions of Satanism, curses, and other such nonsense, it quickly exceeds its artistic license and becomes hard to take seriously.
Perhaps that’s the point.
Mansfield 66/67 certainly has an irreverence about it. Events of Mansfield’s life are expressed through interpretive dance. Car crashes are play-acted with Hot Wheels. John Waters is interviewed extensively. This is a film that dares the viewer to…
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Plot and Theme 