Too Hot to Handle (released in the United States as
Playgirl After Dark) is a low-budget
neo-noir British gangster thriller, directed by
Terence Young.
Christopher Lee has a small role in the film.
Too Hot to Handle was
Jayne Mansfield's first film away from
20th Century Fox after achieving stardom in the mid 1950s. When the studio didn’t know what to do with their “trouble” stars, they would lend them to foreign productions. Studios made thousands of dollars, while Mansfield only made her regular salary of $2500 a week. This British drama is usually marked as the beginning of her descent into low-budget productions but actually despite being set almost entirely in a nightclub, it's clearly not a cheapie with a large cast and somewhat lavish production numbers with solid direction from
Terence Young, who later did many
James Bond films.
Notorious in its day because Mansfield's risqué see-through clothing and racy musical numbers that caused some controversy, holding up the American release for two years, while the sexiest frames were fully displayed on
Playboy magazine.