TOO HOT TO HANDLE (AKA PLAYGIRL AFTER DARK)

 

In August of 1959 Christopher Lee worked on two different films with very similar plots. Both movies dealt with the tawdry world of London strip joints. The first, BEAT GIRL, is a picture I wrote a blog post about a couple years ago. The second, TOO HOT TO HANDLE (titled PLAYGIRL AFTER DARK in America), I viewed for the very first time on the Tubi streaming channel last night. 

In BEAT GIRL Lee played a notorious nightclub owner. In TOO HOT TO HANDLE Lee is the right-hand man to a notorious nightclub owner, Johnny Solo (Leo Genn). Johnny owns the Pink Flamingo, a popular club located in Soho. The Pink Flamingo is raking in money, despite the fact that its main competitor, The Diamond Horseshoe, is right across the street. The main attraction at the Pink Flamingo is the curvaceous Midnight Franklin (Jayne Mansfield), who also happens to be in a relationship with Johnny. 

One would think that with his professional and personal life, Johnny's got it made. But what he doesn't know is that his associate Novak (Christopher Lee) is conspiring with the Diamond Horseshoe's owner Diamonds Dielli (Sheldon Lawrence) to take over the Pink Flamingo. As various threats against his life and club increase, Midnight begs Johnny to get out of the strip club game, Meanwhile, a Frenchman (Carl Boehm) who is writing an article about the Pink Flamingo tries to get closer to one of the dancers, a mysterious woman who doesn't want to reveal her past (Danik Patisson), while Johnny knowingly hires an underage girl (Barbara Windsor), much to his eventual regret. 

TOO HOT TO HANDLE was directed by Terence Young (DR. NO), who had crossed paths with Christopher Lee a number of times by the shooting of this film. Young keeps all the gangster and soap opera elements moving along, but the movie is hampered by a number of musical acts at the club that come off as more silly than steamy. 

British actor Leo Genn usually played upper-class or military figures, and he's an off-beat choice to fill the role of a tough nightclub owner who has had to battle his whole life. Genn actually does very well as Johnny Solo, even though it is hard to believe it when he fights off a bunch of goons at once. Even more off-beat is the idea of Genn and Jayne Mansfield as a romantic couple, but the thing is....you totally believe that the two care about and love each other. Mansfield gets plenty of chances to strut her stuff on the Pink Flamingo's stage, but her Midnight isn't a brazen hussy or a dumb blonde. She's a woman who knows all too well what nightclub artists like her have to deal with, yet she is also at a loss to figure out how to start a new life. Mansfield is surprisingly good here, giving depth to what easily could have been a cliched character. 

Christopher Lee's Novak is a guy the viewer immediately distrusts at first sight, with his pencil-thin mustache and cheap gangster suit. Novak is also the MC at the Pink Flamingo, and it's fun to watch Lee go from glowering menace to an enthusiastic conveyor of the nightclub's delights. 

TOO HOT TO HANDLE provides plenty of eye candy, with all sorts of scenes showing various dancers blessed with sexy figures prancing about in skimpy costumes. (There's also a backstage catfight). The movie also shows that the strip club life isn't all glamour and glitz. The patrons of the Pink Flamingo are shown to be overwhelmingly middle-aged (or older) lonely businessmen, and the dancing girls are expected to be extra nice to the more wealthy customers. The subplot concerning Barbara Windsor's character sends the film down a dark turn, and it leads to a rather unexpected climax. 

The version of TOO HOT TO HANDLE shown on Tubi appeared uncut, but the colors on it were so faded that most of the time you couldn't even tell what the colors were (this presentation did no favors toward Otto Heller's Eastmancolor cinematography). Despite this I enjoyed the film. The entire subplot involving Carl Boehm could have been easily done away with, and Christopher Lee doesn't get the big climatic scene his character deserves, but the relationship between Leo Genn and Jayne Mansfield, and those two actors' down-to-earth portrayal of it, makes the story work.