This Russ Meyer film, made between his most financially successful film (VIXEN), and his short-lived embrace by Hollywood (during which he made BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS), is an entertaining but slight and ultimately incomprehensible throwaway.
Deputy sheriff Harry (Charles Napier), who patrols a desert area on the Texas-Mexico border, is helping crime boss Franklin (Franklin H. Bolger) run a marijuana-smuggling ring. Harry needs the extra money because he has everything invested in a silver mine that has yet to produce. So when Franklin
orders him to kill the Apache (John Milo) who has decided to leave Franklin's operation and go into business for himself, Harry has no choice but to go along.
After making love to Raquel (Larissa Ely), a prostitute in Franklin's employ, Harry and his Mexican assistant, Enrique (Bert Santos), set up an ambush in the desert. There is a shoot-out, and the Apache escapes into the desert, but Harry is confident that he is too seriously wounded to survive.
Harry calls in sick to work so he can spend the day with his lover, Cherry (Linda Ashton), a British nurse. Later he drops her off at the hospital where she works. Her newest charge is Franklin, in for a checkup; he demands (and gets) a rather intimate sponge bath and oil rub.
The next day, Raquel visits Franklin's hospital room and gets into bed with him, only to find that he has been murdered. She is soothed by Cherry: the two share a joint, dance, and make love in another hospital room.
At his desert shack, Harry hears his jeep being stolen by the Apache, who ambushes Enrique on his way back from a drug run and kills him. He returns for Harry, and the two have a shoot-out in which both are killed. A final scene implies that the events we have just seen are from the imagination of
Raquel, a writer.
The preceding plot summary makes no mention of the most salient aspect of CHERRY, HARRY & RAQUEL, the frequent inserts of voluptuous model Uschi Digard (here billed under the pseudonym "Astrid Lillimor") swimming, running, talking on the telephone, lounging on a yacht, and doing any number of
things that have no apparent connection to the plot. But she's naked and looks great, and that's all the reason Meyer has ever needed.
Although it was one of Meyer's biggest hits, something clearly went wrong with CHERRY: it's awfully short, barely qualifying as feature length, and several characters mentioned in the credits don't appear in the film. Meyer has said contradictory things over the years about it (including that it
is exactly the way he wanted it to be), so we may never know. Perhaps Meyer was too preoccupied fielding offers from Hollywood after the astonishing success of VIXEN to fret much about this. Writer Tom Wolfe's onscreen credit as scripter was disputed in later years by Meyer, who claimed that Wolfe
had had nothing to do with the film. Best to think of it as the quintessential drive-in movie, enjoyable only if you don't think about it. (Graphic violence, extensive nudity, sexual situations, adult situations, substance abuse, profanity.) leave a comment