The Cinema Sirens Collection

A multidisc release featuring such ''sirens'' as Jayne Mansfield, Brigitte Bardot, Gina Lollobrigida, and Claudia Cardinale certainly sounds like a can't-miss concept. But what we have here is less a ''collection'' than a grab bag, full of titles that hardly show these bombshells at their best. Mansfield goes from a watered-down femme fatale in the creaky caper film It Takes a Thief to an outsize—in more ways than one—caricature of herself as a campy stripper in Too Hot to Handle. Lollobrigida is decidedly nonglam as a sensibly dressed small-time smuggler in the tepid potboiler Alina. And then there is Bardot, in the excruciatingly whimsical The Bear and the Doll, looking perfectly silly as a miniskirted playgirl swinging around ’60s Paris. Only Cardinale, in Girl With a Suitcase, actually comes off well. As a struggling singer who gets involved with a teenage boy, she is gorgeously, earthily vibrant. In short, a true siren.

''Suitcase'': B– ''Too Hot,'' ''Thief,'' ''Alina'':C ''Bear'':D–