Cherry 2000

Cherry 2000

Theatrical poster
Directed by Steve De Jarnatt
Produced by Edward R. Pressman
Caldecot Chubb
Written by Lloyd Fonvielle (story)
Michael Almereyda (screenplay)
Starring Melanie Griffith
David Andrews
Tim Thomerson
Pamela Gidley
Music by Basil Poledouris
Cinematography Jacques Haitkin
Edited by Edward M. Abroms
Duwayne Dunham
Distributed by Orion Pictures
Release dates
  • November 17, 1988 (VHS)

[1]

Running time
 93 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $10 million[2]
Box office $14,000

Cherry 2000 is a 1987 science fiction cult film starring Melanie Griffith and David Andrews.

Plot

In the year 2017, the United States has suffered a series of civil insurrections and economic downturns, fragmenting America into post-apocalyptic wastelands and limited civilized areas. One of the effects of the economic crisis is a decline in manufacturing both in quantity and quality, and heavy emphasis on recycling aging 20th Century mechanical equipment. At the same time, robotic technology has made tremendous developments and female androids (or "gynoids") are used as substitutes for wives. Society has become increasingly bureaucratic and hypersexualized, with the declining human sexual encounters requiring contracts drawn up by lawyers prior to sexual activity. Business executive Sam Treadwell's (David Andrews) "Cherry 2000" android (Pamela Gidley), short circuits during sex while on the wet kitchen floor. He is told by a repairman that she's irreparable and offers gynoids of his making, but Sam declines. The repairman says finding a Cherry model will be difficult since she was a limited edition from "the time before" the wars that tore apart the country. To make matters tougher, the gynoid dealer says that Cherry 2000 parts were built in a defunct factory in the antebellum era, and the factory is in "Zone 7", a particularly dangerous, lawless area.

After removing the small optical disk with all the memory from the old unit, Treadwell searches for a replacement, enlisting Edith "E" Johnson (Melanie Griffith), a tough tracker who guides him into Zone 7. Standing in their way is Lester (Tim Thomerson), a wasteland overlord with deranged subordinates who advocates an askew moralism where Lester decides what's right and wrong and kills anyone who doesn't agree with that. Edith and Sam enter an underground reservoir occupied by Six-Finger Jake, an elderly tracker who raised and taught Edith. Jake, an aficionado of American history, has made up his cave to be like a 20th Century home, and through getting to know Sam, wonders what caused society to abandon healthy male-female relationships. Lester's men attack as Edith and Sam head out with Jake for the factory. Sam is hit on the head during the fight and wakes up in a 1950s-styled motel/village run by Lester. Sam is greeted by his ex, Elaine, who has changed her name to Ginger and is Lester's woman now; she informs him that everyone was killed in the fight except him. Lester and his men arrive, towing behind them Edith's Ford and confirming what Elaine/Ginger had said. Lester takes an instant liking to Sam and decides to induct him into the group. Sam, in order to survive this encounter, goes along with it until he witnesses the sadistic murder of a tracker that Lester's men had found passed out from heat stroke in Edith's Ford.

He decides to escape but bumps into one of Lester's men. He distracts him by pointing out the constellation Orion (which is a tongue in cheek nod toward the film's production company, Orion Pictures). When he goes for a sucker-punch to the gut, the man goes down easily even though he towers over Sam. Sam sees that he has a knife in his back, thrown by Edith, who is not dead and has come to rescue him. They are rejoined with Jake. As they leave, Jake decides to create some distractions and meet up with them later but before he leaves he gives Edith the device holding the Cherry memory disk while Sam is creating a distraction by making gas bombs out of the vehicles and a gas tank in the village's beehive house. Jake had led Sam to believe the chip had been lost when they were forced to kill and leave behind the donkey carrying it. Amid the destruction, the bees attack Lester stinging him and creating a running joke throughout the rest of the film about the bee-stings on his face.

Edith, realizing Sam is a veteran of the earlier wars, begins to see him in a new light. She allows him to think that the Cherry memory disk was lost in the hopes he will give up the search and reciprocate her feelings. Sam takes a turn driving while Edith sleeps, but finds himself distracted by her and ends up getting the car in an accident. They both exit the car shaken but unhurt. When Sam touches Edith in an attempt to make sure she really is all right, he realizes the attraction they're developing for each other, and they start to make out on the car's hood. Things really start heating up between them, but before anything happens, Edith accidentally activates the device that is holding Cherry's memory chip, which was on the back of her belt. She hands over the disc and he accuses her of lying to him. They don't have time to work this out because Lester's goons show up and attack them, forcing them to fight and then, after killing the goons, continue on to the robot factory. Edith has them go to a brothel/gas station owned by Snappy, a friend of Jake's, to fix up and borrow a light plane that he had. It's revealed that Snappy is in league with Lester since his one and only prostitute, Randa, has Lester for a frequent client. When Lester and his underlings find Edith and Sam, Six-Finger Jake is killed, shot in the back and then the head by Randa while Edith and Sam escape in the plane. Randa reveals where the two were going. Lester kills Randa for making a comment about his face, and he and his men chase after Edith and Sam

After Sam tells Edith that Randa killed Jake, he suggests that they turn around and go back, but Edith says she's determined to find the Cherry 2000 model so that her surrogate father's death was not meaningless. As Edith brings the plane down for a landing in Zone 7, it's revealed that the zone is actually dunes covering up casinos, that Zone 7 is actually the ruins of Las Vegas, now a ghost town, and the gynoid "factory" is actually a casino called "Pharaoh's Casino" (most likely a spoof on the Luxor Las Vegas Casino). While searching the abandoned casino, Sam finds a duplicate Cherry 2000. He inserts the memory chip into this duplicate, and Cherry "wakes up" as if nothing had happened from when she shorted out. Cherry and Sam kiss, but Edith reminds him that she told him hurry up, and now Lester's gang has found them. They have a shootout with Lester's gang, and the two end up killing nearly all of his men; Cherry doesn't understand any of this and naively says she would rather watch "all this on television". Sam finds Lester on the roof where they came into the casino and shoots him, causing Lester to fall into the casino, presumably dead. After escaping in the plane, they find that the combined weight of Edith, Cherry and Sam prevents takeoff. Edith says her job is done and that she can take care of herself and will jump out so that they can leave. Sam rejects this idea but Edith jumps out anyway without him realizing it. After the plane lifts into the air, he notices that it is only he and Cherry in the plan and is forced to make a critical choice.

Cherry tells Sam she loves him, and then quietly sits back when he doesn't reply the same. Sam turns around the plane to help Edith, who has been trapped by the remainder of Lester's men behind a giant genie lamp and is fighting for her life, egged on by Lester who has managed to crawl out of the casino, bleeding and severely wounded. Sam asks Cherry to get him a Pepsi and she happily complies by climbing out of the plane and then acting confused when she sees there is no place to get one for him. Sam drives the plane nearby where Edith is and tells her to get on. When E protests that the whole point of coming to Zone 7 was for Cherry, Sam replies "she's a robot". Lester tries to stop them by throwing a grappling hook on the plane's wheels; this proves fruitless as he just ends up dangling on the end of it and colliding into a giant female Pharaoh statue, which finally kills him. The last two henchmen ask Ginger what they should do now that Lester's dead, and she benignly replies, "Well, no sandwich for him" after which she hands one to Cherry (who opens it and says "Pretty") and gets one out for herself, peeling off the crusts so she can eat it. Edith and Sam then kiss as they fly into the sunset like in an old Western.

Cast

Soundtrack

Cherry 2000 is widely known for the original score composed by Basil Poledouris. The soundtrack album prepared for release at the time of the film was canceled due to the film being shelved for a few years instead of receiving a theatrical release. Later, Varèse Sarabande decided to make it the debut release in their CD Club. Originally sold by mail-order for US$20 and at only 1,500 copies, it became a highly valued collectible, one copy selling for $2,500 on eBay. However, for being such a touted collectors' item, the packaging for this limited edition CD was riddled with typographical errors. The track list had the incorrect length printed for the last two tracks, and two tracks were missing from the track list entirely.

Track Listing (as printed on label):[3]

  1. Prologue (1:02)
  2. Lights On (1:49)
  3. Main Title (1:55)
  4. Lester (5:05)
  5. Rauda (0:42)
  6. Hooded Love (1:13)
  7. The Barricades (1:50)
  8. Magneto (4:18)
  9. Drive to Gloryhole (1:23)
  10. Thrashing of Sky Ranch (3:21)
  11. Sam Flips (1:13)
  12. Cherry Shorts Out (1:30)
  13. Lester On The Move (0:36)
  14. Drive (1:52)
  15. Photograb (1:09)
  16. Plane to Vegas (1:00)
  17. <Missing from listing> (0:59)
  18. Ambush in the Cave/Truck Fight (2:09)
  19. Flashback (1:05) (An unlisted entry follows Flashback, time 0:54)
  20. Lights Out (1:47) (Correct time is 1:52)
  21. The End (0:35) (Correct time is 0:39)

In 2004, Prometheus Records acquired the rights to the score and made it available in a double package with another Poledouris score, No Man's Land. The Prometheus Records release was not a limited edition and, as well as rectifying the track listing, features an additional eight minutes of unreleased music; however, it sold poorly.

Track Listing:

  1. Main Title (2:00)
  2. Photograb (Alternate Mix) (1:13)
  3. Cherry Shorts Out (1:34)
  4. Lights On (Alternate Mix) (1:54)
  5. Flashback #1/Drive to Gloryhole (1:28)
  6. "E" Flips Sam (1:19)
  7. The Barricades (1:54)
  8. Flashback #2 (1:08)
  9. Photograb (1:13)
  10. Magneto (4:22)
  11. Pipeline (:59)
  12. Water Slide (1:04)
  13. Jake's Jukebox (1:39)
  14. Lights Out (1:29)
  15. Moving (:40)
  16. Thrashing of Sky Ranch (3:26)
  17. Drive (1:59)
  18. Hooded Love (1:18)
  19. Ambush In The Cave/Truck Fight (2:15)
  20. Lester Follows (:22)
  21. Drop 'Em (:43)
  22. Lester On The Move (:42)
  23. Rauda (on) Mic (:45)
  24. Jake Killed (:54)
  25. Plane To Vegas (1:03)
  26. Cherry Awakens (1:15)
  27. Lights On (1:54)
  28. End Of Lester (5:04)
  29. The End (:42)
  30. Main Title (3:00)
  31. P.C.H. (1:02)
  32. First Score (2:15)
  33. Lone Score (1:20)
  34. Love Theme (1:39)
  35. Chase (5:28)
  36. Porsche Power/Drive My Car? (2:41)
  37. Ann Buttons (1:15)
  38. Payoff (3:27)
  39. Showtime (4:17)
  40. End Credits (3:04)
  41. Movietone (Cherry 2000 Bonus Track) (:57)

Tracks 30–40 are from No Man's Land.

Location

The Citadel building located in Commerce, California was featured in the film.

According to the credits, the film was shot entirely in the state of Nevada. The van plunging into an open pit was shot at Three Kids Mine. The river crossing sequence was filmed at the Hoover Dam. Scenes at the Sky Ranch were filmed at the Beehive group camping area in the Valley of Fire State Park. E.'s and Sam's first kiss was filmed in the upper reaches of the Las Vegas Wash. Adobe Flats was filmed at Eldorado Valley Dry Lake Bed. The town of Glory Hole was filmed in Goldfield, Nevada. The Integratron building in Landers, California was used as the casino that was the "abandoned manufacturing plant" holding the rare copy of outdated Cherry 2000 android female robot with usable memory chip at the end of the movie. The fortress like building featured in the film is located in Commerce, California at the location of a former tire factory which was renovated and transformed into the Citadel Outlet Mall.

Release

After its completion in December 1985,[2][4] Orion Pictures originally scheduled Cherry 2000 for a U.S. release on August 15, 1986.[5] Sometime later, the date was postponed to March 1987,[6] then September 1987.[7] The film ultimately premiered on videocassette on November 17, 1988.[1] Producer Edward R. Pressman confessed that Cherry 2000's combination of genres stumped promoters at Orion, and resulted in its continuous shelving.[2]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Videos Being Released This Week". Newsday. November 13, 1988. p. 107 (TV Plus). Retrieved June 21, 2011. (registration required (help)).
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Broeske, Pat H. (October 11, 1987). "Lonely on the Shelf". Los Angeles Times. p. 30 (Calendar). Retrieved June 21, 2011.
  3. ↑ "Cherry 2000 (Basil Poledouris)". Filmtracks. Retrieved March 9, 2014.
  4. ↑ Herman, Jan (December 24, 1985). "Guitar Strings Outfox Tennis Player Star McEnroe". Toledo Blade. p. P-3. Retrieved June 21, 2011.
  5. ↑ Blowen, Michael (May 8, 1986). "Summer Movies '86". The Boston Globe. p. 14 (Calendar).
  6. ↑ Scott, Vernon (January 17, 1987). "Here's a sneak peek at the scheduled films for 1987". The Vindicator. United Press International (UPI). p. 11. Retrieved June 21, 2011.
  7. ↑ Gelmis, Joseph (June 21, 1987). "The Day of the Independent Producer: Juggling Projects from Nicaragua to Wall Street, Edward Pressman Backs Films That Are Current, Original and Ambitious". Newsday. p. 4 (Part II). Retrieved June 21, 2011. (registration required (help)).

External links