From my favorite movies..

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This movie is considerate: it delivers what it promises (Jayne Mansfield topless) twice in the first 5 minutes - so you don't really need to bother with the remaining 70. Mansfield has a sensational body indeed (breasts as well as legs), but the film is more static and unfunny that smutty and scandalous. Tommy Noonan's drunken routine gets tiresome fast, T.C. Jones' gay-hairdresser routine is even worse. *1/2 out of 4.

PROMISES! PROMISES! has two reputations - one as a notorious film, being the first film in which a famed Hollywood star appeared nude (heavily hyped in Playboy magazine at the time) and the other as a bad film. It's "notorious" edge is merely historical - today it simply resembles an R-rated LOVE BOAT episode with a little bit of nudity from it's star lady Jayne Mansfield who literally drops her towel and reveals her famous breasts (as well as another scene which shows the butt that once famously bopped down the street to tune "The Girl Can't Help it"). It's bad reputation is not really deserved. While no classic, it's an pleasing time filler with enjoyable performances from both it's main cast and several notable character actors.The parallels between the film and GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES are remarkably strong. Like Blondes, the film is set on an ocean liner, and has Tommy Noonan as it's leading man. Marie McDonald plays Jayne's caustic pal with an delivery that strongly suggests Jane Russell's performance in the Marilyn Monroe film.Jayne and husband Tommy Noonan have been married for four years but have been unable to have children. This cruise ship vacation is apparently an attempt to put some spice into their love lives. Travelling with them are best friends, Marie McDonald and Mickey Hargitay, another childless married couple. Hargitay is a vain, health-obsessed movie star who apparently makes Hercules type pictures.Neurotic (and apparently impotent) Tommy keeps running to ship doctor Fritz Field for help. Field gives Noonan tablets that are actually aspirins suggesting they are some sort of vintage equivalent to Viagra. The "pills" do the trick but Field's elaborate stories about them (suggesting they may have temporary amnesia as a side effect) wreak havoc on the neurotic Noonan's emotions after Mansfield, Hargitay, and McDonald all (accidentally) digest them as well.This "independent" film has some very good production values despite allegations that it's a "low budget" film; there is superb editing in several scenes in which we see private moments in the Noonan, Mansfield/Hargitay, McDonald cabins which we see via split screen shots as they have concurrent private moments, often mirroring the other with similar or duplicate dialog and action, some it spoken at the same time. The film's score is surprisingly good and very much evokes the image of an "adult" albeit mainstream sex comedy of the 1960's.Jayne looks sensational and has a charmingly sweet presence here like in her 1950's 20th Century-Fox glory days, qualities regrettably somewhat sidetracked in most of the dreary pot boilers she ended up making for most of the 1960's. I do wish though the script had played more on her considerable comic gifts. Tommy Noonan is very good as her emotional mess of a husband, I actually think his performance here is better than his more famous one in BLONDES. Marie McDonald is quite good as the jaded confidante. Character comic Fritz Field, whose film career spanned 1915 to 1989, is terrific as the doctor and there's a hilarious running bit character played by the plump, sixtyish character actress Marjorie Bennett (a very familiar face for her cheery roles in scores of TV episodes) as a rich old gal who has got herself a young Italian gigolo. The now forgotten T.C. Jones, one of the first widely famous female impersonators, is fun as the ship's hair stylist in perhaps the most blatantly "gay role" then seen in American films, a sassy pal to Jayne who is the lone male attending her baby shower where he amuses the girls with his impressions of Tallulah Bankhead and Bette Davis. Legendary TV comedienne Imogene Coca makes an amusing gag cameo (the film's director was her husband, King Donovan) as one of Jones' more unfortunate hair clients.This is one of those movies were it's bad reputation gets in the way of people reevaluating it and giving it a fair appraisal. PROMISES! PROMISES! will never be a threat to Jayne's best films, the Frank Tashlin movies THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT and WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER? but it is entertaining and actually succeeds at it's most goal of being an amusing light sex comedy.

This is an early mainstream sex comedy that stands out because it was the first to feature an actress naked (Jayne Mansfield). Had the nudity been necessary for the plot and not just used as a gimmick, this might have been a better movie. Instead, nude shots (often the same one again and again) were placed rather randomly in the film and it made the film seem a bit sloppy and exploitative. In addition, the plot itself is pretty smutty as well--making this a rather adult film. Despite all this, the film isn't as bad as you might guess and I think a few of the reviews were a bit too harsh. While it certainly isn't a great film and the actors are 2nd rate (at best), the film is a decent time-passer provided, of course, you don't let the kids watch.The plot involves an unlikely married couple on a worldwide cruise, nerdy Tommy Noonan and Jayne Mansfield. Noonan has serious sexual performance anxiety and sees the ship's doctor for help. The doctor realizes that there probably isn't anything anatomically wrong with Tommy and gives him a placebo to give him confidence. I guess most man can empathize--most men would have been intimidated (at least to a degree) by sexy nymphet Mansfield. Later, through some tough to believe coincidences, Noonan believes that his now-pregnant wife was NOT impregnated by him. In addition, a female friend becomes pregnant and it looks like Noonan could be the father.As you can tell by the description, this is a very adult film--particularly for 1963. The acting is only fair, the plot tough to believe but somehow the total effort comes off....well....okay. Not a great film and not a must-see, but still a film of historical significance.

Producer/writer/star Tommy Noonan's painfully unfunny shipboard sex-farce stars real-life man and wife Jayne Mansfield & Mickey Hargitay, wed to different spouses on screen. Hargitay's the husband of a middle-aged Marie "The Body" McDonald while Jayne plays Noonan's wife. Both women are trying to get pregnant while on a cruise but both men are convinced they're sterile; erection pills, a female impersonator, a paternity mix-up, brief (topless) nudity and a song or two follow before the inevitable happy ending. As the first film to show a "major" Hollywood star cavorting "au naturel", PROMISES! PROMISES! was featured in a much publicized "Playboy" magazine photo-spread, ran into censorship problems and was banned in several states.It's also known as a "Triple Ess" movie (three suicides) with a rather dark behind-the-scenes history- five people associated with the production died, either violently or by their own hand, in relatively quick succession: Director King Donovan's wife, Ann, died from an overdose of barbiturates; Marie "The Body" McDonald, wife of co-producer Donald Taylor, died from a massive overdose of drugs and alcohol in 1965 and two months later, Taylor himself committed suicide in the same room in which he found Marie; Jayne Mansfield was near-decapitated in a 1967 car crash; Tommy Noonan died after a brain tumor operation in 1968."The Body" was also in another "S-S-S" film: Paramount's 1942 proto-noir, LUCKY JORDAN. Marie, star Alan Ladd, and bit player Dorothy Dandridge all killed themselves. "Satan's slave" Jayne Mansfield's sagging flesh aside, PROMISES! PROMISES!, possibly the very first viagra flick, is a darkly fascinating "Hollywood Babylon" trope with the on screen action like a train wreck: absolutely awful but just try to look away! This tasteless, tedious exercise in titillation gets a 10/10 on an enigmatic, indefinable level (just because) but it's reely not very good.Reviews: "The only excuse for this shabby, sex-propelled contrivance is that obviously there is an audience waiting to devour it... Several glimpses of a bare-breasted Jayne Mansfield and one of her derrière-in-the-buff figure to satisfy the peeping Toms, Dicks and Harrys who frequent those offbeat, anatomical "art" houses where this attraction is apt to be distributed. But beyond the occasional vicarious sensual thrill it affords the ogle-happy denizen of these cinematic flesh palaces, there is nothing in "Promises! Promises!"... Her tape-measure performance can be summed up in the phrase, "thanks for the mammary". -"Variety", 8/7/63"...its vastly overrated. Miss Mansfield does considerable talking, little acting, and even sings (???) the title tune." -"L.A. Herald Examiner", 8/3/63