Too Hot To Handle (1960)

Known in America as Playgirl After Dark, this movie starred Jayne Mansfield, Christopher Lee and pint-sized Carry On sex-bomb, Barbara Windsor.

In London’s Soho, Johnny Solo (Leo Genn) runs the Pink Flamingo strip club. He’s tough to intimidate. So when he starts getting threats and demands for protection, he fights back.

Behind the takeover plot is a competitor, Diamonds Dielli (Sheldon Lawrence).

Mansfield plays Midnight Franklin, who’s Johnny’s girlfriend and one of the club’s headliners. She desperately wants to get Johnny out of the business.

Christopher Lee (with a pimp moustache) is Novak, Johnny’s sleazy club manager (and emcee).

Subplots involve German actor Karlheinz Boehm (just before Peeping Tom) as a French (!) writer, an intellectual Austrian stripper (Kai Fischer) and an underage stripper called Ponytail (Barbara Windsor).

A lot of time is devoted to elaborate fantasy numbers (steam bath, a calypso number, and a staged monsoon, complete with rain) with almost naked women.

Can Johnny win the struggle with Diamonds, and can Midnight get him out of harm’s way?

After seeing this movie, it’s hard to believe anyone ever called Jayne Mansfield “the poor man’s Marilyn Monroe“.

Midnight Franklin
Jayne Mansfield
Johnny Solo
Leo Genn
Robert Jouvel
Karlheinz Bohm
Ponytail
Barbara Windsor
Novak
Christopher Lee
Diamonds Dielli
Sheldon Lawrence
Lilliane Decker
Danik Patisson
Inspector West
Patrick Holt
Cynthia
Kai Fischer
Terry
Penny Morrell
Melody
Katherine Keeton
Marjorie
Susan Denny
Maureen
Judy Bruce
Jacki
Elizabeth Wilson
Jungle
Shari Kahn
Flash Gordon
Tom Bowman

Director
Terence Young