The Fat Spy

A film best watched on DVD so you can fast-forward through the songs (except possibly Jayne Mansfield's). Despite the cast it's far too dull to be really awful, and sounds much more interesting than it actually is. But you can't completely hate a film in which people look straight into the camera and say things like "Boy, is this a movie!" and features a dance called 'The Turtle'.

As a longtime resident of SW Florida, I had to watch this film after finding out it was filmed entirely in the city of Cape Coral, and showed parts of Cape Coral Gardens (known to local residents as The Rose Gardens - an abandoned water park that was a popular hangout for teens back in the late 70's/early 80's). The story is pretty incoherent, and as a previous reviewer put it, was basically a sales pitch for the city of Cape Coral. It looks like the majority of it was shot at the Cape Coral Yacht Club (the beach scenes anyway), with the remainder being Cape Coral Gardens (obvious sale pitch for the park at about 1 hour in), and the corner of Del Prado Boulevard and Cape Coral Parkway. Pretty low budget... The performances, as well as the music... just plain bizarre (though it was the '60's).

I rated this a "4" simply for the archival footage of the city I've known for 30 years. Of particular interest to local residents is a shot of the Iwo Jima statue - located originally at the entrance to Cape Coral Gardens, left abandoned when the park closed and long neglected for years... is the very same statue that now resides by Eco Park along Veteran's Memorial Parkway westbound from the Midpoint Bridge (one of the entrances to Cape Coral from the city of Fort Myers). And unbelievably...this film is available on DVD!

Really one of the worst movies I've ever seen. But funny in the same way "Plan 9 from Outer Space" is. The "musical" scenes are stunningly bad and the songs themselves are worse still. The acting is consistently horrific throughout. The plot and storyline impossible to fathom let alone follow. The 'actors' themselves seem to have no idea what the plot is. High point would be the 'musical' number near the end with Phyllis Diller and Jack E Leonard dancing around in some garden. But even though it's terrible from start to finish, it's watchable on some strange campy level. It's just so incredibly bad ... I kept wondering if it might eventually make some sort of sense before it was all over. But it didn't.

It would be impossible to write a spoiler of 'The Fat Spy' because even after watching it twice, I have no idea what it was about.

I found this on DVD at Wal-Mart for $2.00 CDN.

Truly abysmal beach 'comedy' featuring the fading glamour that was Jayne Mansfield.

I think I would be hard pushed to find a worse movie than this! The acting, direction, stock quality, music, sound recording and plot are all dreadful. The plot, or what little of it there is, has something to do with the fountain of youth on a small tropical island but will leave you bamboozled to say the least.

The only attraction here is Jayne Mansfield and it will only be fans of the actress that will want to get hold of this film. However, by now Jayne was on a downward spiral that would eventually lead to her tragic death. Never averse to making a quick B picture to bring in some cash and push her celebrity, things were by now in dire straits and this is well and truly a Z grade film made for next to nothing. Mansfield takes 50 steps backward here in her personal quest to be taken seriously as a dramatic actress. Her dumb blonde performance in this picture is an embarrassment to behold and her sex pot image is seriously on the wane as her famous curves have been filled by extra flesh.

A disaster in every sense of the word and a real shame to see someone with Jayne's obvious potential wasted in a load of old rubbish. It's hard to imagine that someone who appeared in the classic 'The Girl Can't Help It' and got the full Fox treatment is now doing Monroe rip-offs in nonsense such as this.

Steer clear...!

Here's a sidenote to what everyone else posted.

This film was produced in Cape Coral, Florida. It was only filmed there for product placement purposes, well before product placement was ever really heard of.

The developers of Cape Coral were the typical "bought swampland in Florida" types you heard so much about.. so they thought having a movie filmed HERE would advertise their city. They used all the city landmarks at the time and hoped the movie would sell their property sales.

Eventually Cape Coral became as they say "Lies that came true" and is a thriving city today. It's just a very funny thing to watch this film from the angle of it being a sales tool.

That, and watching them hide Jayne Mansfield's very visible pregnancy with statuary and other methods is funny too.