In her day Jayne Mansfield was known as a bustier "poor man's" Marilyn Monroe. Never quite attaining the celebrity of her fellow blonde locked sex symbol; Mansfield had roles in a slew of lower-budgeted flicks before dying in a tragic road accident in 1967. Watching Dog Eat Dog it's sort of hard to see what her appeal was as she's really not that great an actress and her character is prone to belting out "Crackers!" at a whim, but that's not to say the makers of the movie aren't going to take full advantage of her sexpot status and have her shimmy around on a mattress full of money in the opening scenes.

It's also in the opening scenes we see Corbett (Cameron Mitchell) being chased through the streets of some European city by a cigar smoking, sunglass wearing baddie in a car (that we learn is Costas, his partner who helped him pull of a heist along with Mansfield) who likes to menace him with a gun and laugh manically. Seems the trio have stolen a million dollars from an American transport and now are trying to figure out a way to hide away without their greed taking advantage of them.

Too bad for them though that hotel manager Morelli (Aldo Camarda) and his bartender girlfriend figure out just who they are and decide to put into motion a murderous plot to get the cash for themselves. Our thieves decide to rent a boat from the hotel to take them to Istanbul only they end-up at an island villa where they take the people there hostage and all sorts of double crossing only a dopey 60's crime flick could try to pull off occurs.

Dog Eat Dog is just so outright wacky you can't help but be drawn in, it's by no means a good movie particularly and it eventually gets too senseless for its own good, but you'll have a hard time resisting (if you're a fan of crappy cinema) such things as a bizarre "flying" moment, cornball dubbing with lines such as "your mother must have made love to an elephant", a series of fistfights (and even Mansfield in the middle of a catfight on a sailboat), and a finale that's packed with tons of deceptions, nutty furniture destruction, and a "portrait ripping" death.

With a script that could be described as nothing less than scattershot and a pretty bad finish and its foot chase over a rocky beach, Dog Eat Dog is just inane enough to be entertaining. It's fun enough to watch, even if it's just to laugh at all the ridiculous goings-on and Mansfield's poor attempts to be a slutty and turn all the men against each other. Serious cinema fans need not apply.

The copyright date on the print Dark Sky has used (be sure to thank them for bringing a lot of obscure stuff like this to DVD) says 1966, even though the film was shot in and around Yugoslavia in late 1963. (Chris Hartley, 3/8/06)

Directed By: Gustav Gavrin.
Written By: Robert Hill, Michael Elkins.

Starring: Jayne Mansfield, Cameron Mitchell, Dody Heath, Ivor Salter.

Picture Ratio: 1.85:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: There's a few problem areas and the picture is a bit shimmery and dirty at times, but the transfer here is still pretty good as the black & white photography looks fairly decent and sharp for the most part.

Extras: There's not a whole lot here as we get a trailer, still gallery of mostly ads, and two old newsreels about Mansfield (one about her visiting Yugoslavia, the other about her death).

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