How campy is the
sexualized melodrama The Grasshopper?
In one memorable scene, bereaved heroine Christine Adams (Jacqueline Bisset),
still dressed in black from a loved one’s funeral, demands that her limo driver
pull to the side of the road and pick up two scraggly-looking hitchhikers. Once
the longhairs are inside the limo, Christine
screeches, “Are you holding? Do you have any shit?” By the next scene,
Christine is unconscious from an overdose, and the movie still has another
half-hour to go. Based on a novel by Mark McShane and written by the unlikely
duo of Jerry Belson and Garry Marshall, whose most famous collaboration was the
1970-1975 sitcom The Odd Couple, this
fast and furious soap opera charts the spiritual decay of a wholesome Canadian
girl who tumbles into a degrading cycle of drugs, prostitution, and tragedy.
Yet because the Belson/Marshall script is peppered with quippy dialogue and
because director Jerry Paris films the whole story with the bright visual style
of, say, a Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedy, The
Grasshopper is impossible to take seriously. Plus, with all due respect to
the fine acting skills that she later developed, Bisset plays the leading role
with a kind of sunny vapidity, smiling blankly through some scenes and
unpersuasively mimicking anguish in others.
When the movie begins, 19-year-old Christine drops out of college and
flees her home in British Columbia to join her boyfriend, who has already begun
his working life in Los Angeles. Along the way, Christine has car trouble and
is given a ride by Danny Raymond (Corbett Monica), a Las Vegas nightclub
comedian. Although Christine declines Danny’s sexual overtures, she’s dazzled
by Sin City while staying overnight there. So when Christine grows bored with
her quietly domestic life in LA, she ditches her boyfriend and returns to
Vegas, where she gets a job as a showgirl. Eventually, she becomes romantically
involved with Tommy Marcott (Jm Brown), an ex-NFL player now working as the
manager of a cheesy football-themed restaurant. For a few moments depicting
the heyday of the relationship between Christine and Tommy, The Grasshopper is energetic and
fresh—addressing miscegenation without sensationalism, the movie draws a
connection between two people who wish to be appreciated for more than just
their bodies. Alas, Christine’s chance encounter with a horny, Mob-connected
businessman (Ramon Bieri) triggers violence, which in turn begins the spiral
leading to Christine’s drug problems and sex work. By the end of the picture,
when Christine is juggling relationships with an aging sugar daddy (Joseph
Cotten) and a craven young stud (Christopher Stone), the lurid aspects of The Grasshopper have spun out of
control.
From start to finish, the presentation of The Grasshopper is slick but garish, epitomized by Christine’s
showgirl costume of a blue wig, a sparkly leotard complete with built-in
pasties, and giant feather wings. Meanwhile, the soundtrack features absurdly
on-the-nose songs explaining the heroine’s emotional state. Brown elevates his
scenes with the casual cool he brought to all of his screen work, and some of
the supporting players are excellent, particularly Ed Flanders as a sleazy
hotel manager. Nonetheless, The
Grasshopper is unrelentingly artificial, a cautionary tale without
credibility, and a jokey treatment of bleak subject matter.
The Grasshopper: FUNKY
