Customer Reviews

Grasshopper [VHS]

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3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Saw this movie decades ago and loved it! Jacqueline Bissett was breathtakingly beautiful and Jim Brown was in his physical prime. I was in my teens when I saw it in the theater and it made quite an impression on me. Her tragic trek from one bad situation to another made my heart ache for her. Had not seen it listed as being shown on TV since forever and could not find this film in Netflix or Blockbuster. Glad to have been able to get it thru Amazon.

I've been dying to see this film for years, but there is simply no way I'm willing to pay $27 for a no-frills, bare bones DVD-R (with unattractive packaging to boot). Warner Brothers really needs to think their game through if they expect to move these obscure titles at this price.

This movie is about a young lady that cannot seem to settle down with any one guy she just does not know what she wants.The era for this film is the 1970's
This was the first time I have watched this movie in about 30 years and it appears to have had some scenes edited out since then because I remember things that were in the earlier release that just are not in this one so that does take from the picture.

I saw this movie because of Jacqueline Bisset. Was it a good movie? It was okay. It just wasn't a movie to leave a long lasting memory to see again and again.

[THE GRASSHOPPER - (1969) - Widescreen presentation - directed by Jerry Paris] Part exploitation, part cautionary tale of a young girl (Jacqueline Bisset) from a small town in British Columbia who travels to suburban L.A. to unite with her childhood boyfriend and, presumably, settle down. As it turns out, she doesn't want to settle for this douchebag (understandably), and ends up in Vegas as a showgirl to make ends meet. She has commitment issues with men and ends up in one turnstile relationship after another, until she meets Jim Brown. They date, they marry Vegas-style (no wonder divorce rates were/are so high), they have a troubled marriage that ends wretchedly (the highlight of the film), and she gets involved with a rock band and starts doing massive amounts of drugs. The downward spiral continues as she becomes the kept woman of a rich, older man (Joseph Cotton), flees when he offers to leave his wife of 30 years and marry her, first becoming an escort and finally a cheap hooker with her loser boyfriend as pimp, but ultimately he dashes off with all the cash they've amassed, leaving her nowhere and with nothing but a drug habit. As the old adage goes, "It ain't easy being pretty and it ain't pretty being easy"...

Had I known it was scripted and produced by Garry Marshall and Jerry Belson, a pair of irretrievably sophomoric TV hacks responsible for 'Happy Days' and 'Laverne and Shirley', I would've known what to expect and probably passed on this one. Parts were insufferable, namely the derivative soundtrack lifted from 'Midnight Cowboy', the uninspired ran-out-of-ideas-while-promoting-our-own-agenda final act and the insanely abrupt ending, coupled with the archaic cautionary message underlined in all the misgivings put forth here - ladies, if you don't marry your childhood sweetheart, settle down and have kids, you're going to hell in a handbasket right quick, having to settle for a black man, selling yourself to old codgers for next to nothing and, oh yeah, a drug habit and jail time. So conform or lose all. There was no third option back then in a world of many options, optimism and the 'Let it all hang out' era the likes of which American society had never known before or since? It's absolutely mindboggling in its message. It's rotten, racist, repressive and just wrong on so many levels. And this was made in 1969? When the entire world was engulfed in breaking the barriers of conventionality we're subjected to a 1950's repressive admonition straight out of 'Ozzie and Harriet'? WTF? Above all, it tries sooo hard to be hip and happening while promoting McCarthy and Eisenhower-era policies and standards. If there weren't several rounds of reasonably enjoyable gratuitous nudity thrust our way, this could've been an ABC Movie of the Week in the early 70's or a Lifetime channel flick to remind women which side of the fence they're supposed to play on. I ask you in all sincerity, friends - don't you just hate it when some imbecile ruins your exploitation entertainment by inserting a conflicting ideology into the proceedings, thereby abolishing the entire reason you signed on for? Me too: it's nothing short of criminal.

Truth be told, it did have a few enjoyable trashy, tawdry moments here and there; the first half of the film was engaging in a tacky, cheesy way and fans of Miss Bisset will undoubtedly appreciate her solid performance at this early stage in her career and enjoy seeing parts of her physicality only dreamed about previously. The showgirl scenes are downright fun, the rock band ('The Ice Packs'- yeesch) segments are almost insipid (giving Marshall a never-overlooked chance to place his obnoxious wife, Penny, as one of the clichéd Plaster Caster girls, as if someone would find her erection-inducing in any way), the hotel sequence where she's first sexually compromised by an obnoxious brute is blatantly reprehensible, and from there it's all a downhill avalanche. Its touted here as a "remarkable, neglected film" - I'm thinking remarkably conflicted and neglected for good reason. And why 'The Grasshopper'? Jump this one and bag 'Day of the Locusts' instead...