Cherry, Harry and Raquel

Russ Meyer (director)
Tom McGowan (screenwriter)
Larissa Ely, Linda Ashton, Charles Napier, Uschi Digard (starring)

France: Eve Productions, 1989. Original French grande poster for the 1989 release of the 1970 US film. Scarce.

A small-town border sheriff and marijuana smuggler sets out to kill a rival drug dealer, while his girlfriend has a dalliance with another woman. The first Meyer film to feature full frontal male nudity, a rarity even in sexploitation films at the time, and quite the introduction to soon-to-be Meyer’s regular Charles Napier.

Meyer shot several new sequences late in production, about a quarter of the film’s runtime, either to replace footage lost by a photo lab, or because an actress left the shoot early (the reason is disputed). The new sequences, unrelated to the original ones, give the film an almost surreal quality, leading Roger Ebert to call it “possibly the only narrative film ever made without a narrative.”

The film was one of the most successful of Meyer’s career, leading him to return to and refine this style in subsequent films, peaking with Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens in 1979.

47 x 63 inches, folded as issued. Near Fine.


[Book #139236]