The Grasshopper (1969/National General/Warner Archive DVD)/Lovelace (2012/Radius-TWC/Anchor Bay DVD)

Picture: C+ Sound: C+ Extras: D/C- Films: C+/C

PLEASE NOTE: The Grasshopper is only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the links below.

Does sex really liberate anyone? In the 1960s, self-awareness in the most personal level handled in a realistic manner became a revolution, but this did not always pan out cinematically, as these two different films will show.

Jerry Paris' The Grasshopper (1969) is a curio worth revisiting and bringing up, even with all of its issues. Paris had directed most of the episodes of the 1960s Dick Van Dyke Show (now on Blu-ray!), a That Girl (which deserves Blu-ray) and some episodes of Love, American Style (all series reviewed on this site) so in this adaptation of Mark (Seance On A Wet Afternoon) McShane's novel The Passing Of Evil (!?!) about a young gal (a very young, sexier, sweeter than you remember Jacqueline Bisset) going from place to place, a free, fun-loving 19-year-old looking for fun.

The book was adapted by Jerry Belson and Garry Marshall, who Paris knew from the sitcom work and at first this is a fun film with some fine star and acting turns as Christine (Bisset) seems to be a liberated counterculture gal or at least one whom has its spirit, but soon, reality starts to intrude and she finds herself in trouble and unfortunate situations that are the opposite. The film gets in trouble here and some scenes turn into bad camp comedy down to the “bad girl” ending that reminds us of the heavy-handed, anti-woman foolishness Marshall's Pretty Woman (1990) would make a hit, trick ending included.

This film was produced by the underrated National General Pictures and Warner Archive has rightly issued it on DVD, flaws and all. Even when the film fails, suffering in part from TV sitcom related issues in a drama, the cast includes Joseph Cotton, Jim Brown, Stanley Adams, Christopher Stone, Ed Flanders, Ramon Bieri as a bad guy and Penny Marshall in a few scene-stealing appearances. It is worth seeing for them, Bisset in prime form and for being a good looking time capsule in general.

There are sadly no extras.

Another problem is that we have a film about a liberated woman written, directed and created by men, so you can easily have downturns to this including a sexist side that was well criticized for films about women in the 1960s and 1970s where they were supposedly liberated. That brings us to Lovelace (2012), a drama about the life of the XXX sex star who became known as Linda Lovelace (played here effectively by Amanda Seyfried) who is also fun loving, but gets involved with a seductive older man (the great Peter Sarsgaard as Chuck Traynor, likely too charming and good-looking for the role, but this is from Linda's point of view) who eventually gets her involved in what became the first hardcore, totally graphic sex film that launched the XXX industry and porn chic: Deep Throat (1972).

Co-directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (who proved with the problematic Howl that they are better with documentaries like Paragraph 175, The Times Of Harvey Milk and The Celluloid Closet than they are with dramas) to their credit seem to have made a film longer than the 90 minutes we get here. With exposition missing (and moments like how the comedy Linda Lovelace for President happened) among other things, this can play like TV movie despite the efforts and ambition, plus a great cast that include Juno Temple as a best friend of Linda, Robert Patrick as her father, an impressive Sharon Stone as her mother, Hank Azaria, Chris Noth, Bobby Carnivale, Chloe Sevigny, Adam Brody, Debi Mazar, Eric Roberts, Wes Bentley and James Franco showing up briefly as Hugh Hefner suggest a much better film was made and did not make it to screens. I'll bet like 54, that a longer film exists, though this will be compared to Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights in what is a fair comparison, though this is not merely a film about the XXX industry.

It is based in part of Linda's book about being exploited, yet once again we have mostly men telling the story and that in itself causes this to be problematic. The duo may have lost control of the film beyond this shorter cut, but we'll have to wait to see until later how correct that is. This is still worth a look for what is here, but most will be disappointed.

A featurette entitled Behind Lovelace is the only extra, but you can see even more about the real story in the superior documentary Inside Deep Throat at this link:

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/2834/Inside+Deep+Throat+(NC-17/Documentary)

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on Grasshopper and anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Lovelace are about even in playback performance though the former would look fine on Blu-ray and the latter is also being issued that way, so pick it up in that format if you can play it. Grasshopper was originally issued in three-strip, dye-transfer Technicolor prints and you can see how good some of that color was here, though there are also detail issues and the print can show its age at times. Lovelace tries and usually succeeds in imitating some Eastmancolor film stocks of the time, shot nicely in the Super 16mm film format, which is a big advantage for it, but this is a slight stereotype of the era's productions as Grasshopper reminds us.

The lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Grasshopper is not bad and the various vocal songs made for the film play back just fine, while the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mix on Lovelace is dialogue-based, quite at times and only has so much of a soundfield, though it might be better in a lossless mix as the Blu-ray is supposed to have.

To order Grasshopper, go to this link for it and find many more great web-exclusive releases at:

http://shop.warnerarchive.com/product/grasshopper+the+1000179507.do?sortby=ourPicks&refType=&from=Search

- Nicholas Sheffo