A couple of years back we here at VHS of the Week took a deep-ish dive into Graffiti Bridge, the fleetingly watchable and largely forgotten sequel to Prince’s Purple Rain. Graffiti Bridge came out at a time when my man Prince’s career was on the wane. The accompanying soundtrack, “Thieves in the Temple” aside, suffered from a bizarre overabundance of Tevin Campbell songs. We don’t pick up a Prince album to hear a shit ton of Tevin Campbell...not then, not ever! (ok...I’m looking at the track list now and only 3 of the 17 songs are by Campbell. That’s still three too many!). Prince rebounded nicely the following year with Diamonds and Pearls...but that’s his last truly essential album. The following 25 years of his career are a brackish river bottom with only the occasional pearl worth digging out.
What, then, to make of Prince’s severely forgotten 1986 black & white European film noir Under the Cherry Moon? Unlike Graffiti Bridge, UTCM went into production when Prince was at the very peak of his powers. I know that I repeat this ad nauseam but if you weren’t around in 1984 you cannot possibly fathom the impact Purple Rain had on popular culture. It was the #1 album in the country for 19 weeks! Almost every song on that motherfucker is a stone cold classic “still playing it at weddings in the year 2020” monster hit. It even had a vaguely/totally autobiographical feature film accompaniment...and THAT was a huge hit too! Dude could shred, dance, sing, and almost act. He was five feet and one inch of pure dynamite! Elvis Presley in platform heels. I’m sure the higher ups at Warner Bros film division took a look at receipts for Purple Rain and saw their franchise star for the next decade. Lethal Weapon? Riggs and Prince! Christmas Vacation? Prince W. Griswold! Of course, all of these ideas went to dust the second the rough cut of Under the Cherry Moon screened out in Burbank.
So what exactly was Prince thinking when he headed to south of France in ’85 to shoot his big screen follow-up to Purple Rain? What exactly was Prince ever thinking about ANYTHING!? He was one elusive motherfucker, man, until the day he died. For one, this time he had a rock solid soundtrack album in the can. It’s called Parade and it’s in my personal Top 5 of all of Prince’s albums...and that’s sayin’ something ‘cuz the guy put out 39 albums. Although over the years the fact that the album is supposed to be a soundtrack to UTCM is often concealed because the movie tanked so hard. Kind of like when Billy Idol’s “Cradle of Love” was the theme to Andrew Dice Clay’s Ford Fairlane until that movie shit the bed at the box office and then the association was played down....know what I’m talking about? No? Whatever. Anyway, he also brought some top shelf talent down to Nice with him. The production designer Dick Sylbert worked on Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby and the cinematographer Michael Ballhaus lensed a couple of flicks y’all might have heard of like Goodfellas and What About Bob? This wasn’t no low budget Rob Zombie torture porn flick. This here was a prestige project.
Under the Cherry moon takes place in Nice, France in the 1940’s (note: WHEN in the 1940’s?? This kind of matters). The film opens with narration that explains that Prince is a bad boy named Christopher Tracy who only cares about money. The narrator then disappears from the movie...never to be heard from again. Man, I hate that shit! Like we couldn’t have figured this out on our own?? Prince plays Christopher ...who is really just Prince with a ton of particularly outlandish (even for Prince) costumes. His look is this movie is a cross between Cheech Marin and Liberace. When we meet Chris/Prince he’s playing the piano for a bunch of swooning socialites who throw napkins with come hither messages on them at his piano en masse. Although Prince is clearly just playing the piano we also hear strings and horns and all sorts of lush orchestration. Where’s the string section at, bro? Also working the room is Prince’s right hand man Tricky, played by the dude who is best known as the the dude who holds up the mirror for Morris Day in Morris Day and the Time, Jerome Benton. Morris Day was apparently too busy filming his cameo in Richard Pryor’s Moving to act in this flick. I totally just made that up...but it is certainly a possibility. Prince and Tricky and hustlers. Gigolos, if you will. They charm wealthy aristocrats and live off of the gifts and money they receive from them. I mean..at least Prince is PRINCE and can play a tune. No idea why anyone would want to mess with Tricky. He doesn’t even have his mirror! And that, my friends, is the ENTIRE MOVIE! That’s all there is to it....mostly.
But we haven’t even gotten to the opening credits yet! The credit sequence is all sweeping helicopter shots of the French Riviera set to Parade opening track “Christopher Tracy’s Parade”...which begs the question: why is a movie set in the 1940’s full of music that is clearly from 1986?? That don’t make any kind of sense! At one point the helicopter camera zooms in on an ivory white grand piano perched on a cliff high about the sea and I just KNOW that’s going to come up again later in the flick (Note: I’m wrong. It is literally never seen again! Did they just fly it up there for that one shot?? Do you know how hard it is to move a piano??). Prince and Tricky return from their night out hustling and decide to take a bubble bath. I mean Prince is in the bath and Tricky just hangs out on the crapper...as you do with your scammin’ buddies. Prince says he’s tired of hustling these penny-antes and wants to go for “big macaroni”. Maybe try Italy instead of France then? They get word that there’s some heiress who is about to inherit 50 million clams on her 21st birthday. They figure...you know...that’ll do. Then they almost kiss...so there’s that.
Prince and Tricky head off to the bday soiree where the heiress arrives in her suit of the occasion. Her name is Mary and she is played by a lady who is now known as DAME Kristen Scott Thomas. Mary is all “let's get this party rockin’” and proceeds to jump behind the drum kit and bash out a tune. And you know...she’s a perfectly serviceable drummer. Not technically proficient...but a good feel...like Ringo Starr or whatever. Later on Prince catches her eye by giving her THE LOOK! You know, the PRINCE LOOK!? His acting here almost always resembles Dave Chapelle’s Prince impersonation...which is a real mind bender. Unlike Purple Rain, where he didn’t really say much of anything (he didn’t NEED to...his guitar did that talkin’!) here he’s either goofing around goofily or being all come hither. He succeeds at neither. Perhaps a skilled director could’ve coaxed something out of him...but Prince IS the director...having fired original director Mary Lambert a week into filming. She went on to direct Pet Sematary...which is cool...and also Pet Sematary 2...which is less cool.
Prince and Mary meet and they don’t hit it off at all! She asks him what he does and he says he does nothing professionally. Regular friggin’ Johnny Rockefeller, this guy. She says she has a boyfriend anyway...so there’s that. Prince tells her she’ll breathe better if she loosens her chastity belt. UTCM is less sexist than Purple Rain but only because no women were thrown into a dumpsters during the making of this film. In every other way it is horrifically sexist! Prince’s flirtations with Mary all basically involve him, and sometimes Tricky, insulting her, calling her “party poop” and “brat” and “cabbage head” and mocking her virginity. Still, she takes him out on a shopping spree and buys him a Porsche because this movie sucks like that.
What happens next you ask? I mean, really not much of anything. This is a flick where very little happens yet it is still often impossible to follow. It’s like they just shot a bunch of scenes and let the chips fall where they fell. Like...I think Prince hooks up with Mary’s mom but I’m not entirely sure. At one point he shows up outside of the family’s mansion drunk and yells “fill up her ass...she likes that!” and then just drives away. No context...no nothing! We do get to meet Mary’s dad in the form of the actor who played Victor Maitland in Beverly Hills Cop (is this the gentleman who wrecked the buffet at the Herrod Club??). Maitland is NOT a fan of Prince’s (not even Little Red Corvette, bro? Ice cold). Prince shows up at another party and jumps up on the piano and does a split and plays “Girls and Boys” (not to be confused with the Blur song “Boys and Girls”). I use the word “play” cautiously as Prince is not actually playing the piano and there are no other musicians present. WHERE is the music coming from, dudes!? Victor Maitland shuts the party down and takes Mary home and tells Prince to stay away or he’ll, you know, kill him. Later that night Prince climbs through Mary’s window and tries to ball her but he's actually in her mother's bedroom. My arms remain folded. Face: expressionless. The next day during lunch Prince mentions he’s afraid of bats. A bat promptly swoops down from the ceiling. Prince screams. Ha?
One night about 7 hours into this movie Prince rolls up to a drag strip rocking out to his own tune “Life Can Be So Nice.” I’d rock out to it too because that song FUCKS! Speaking of...Prince and Mary drag race, after which he throws her to the ground and prepares to ravage her. And he’s...like...wearing this weird belly shirt (shirts Vs. blouses) and he...like...rubs his own dick a little (this is PG-13 so just a little. The rubbing...not the dick. Or...I don’t really know...). They start to make out like banshees and it’s just...OFF! I don’t know how else to explain it...but it looks kind of like Prince has never kissed anyone before (which, if true, would change literally everything...in the entire world). He...like...puffs up his cheeks like a blowfish and puckers his lips and rocks his head from side to side violently. It’s about as sexy as watching Don Rickles read the phone book. After they finish Prince says “I wish your father could see us when we kiss.” First; WHAT!? Second: her response--”not really...you BIT me!” Prince is feeling himself so hard he decides to find a phone booth, which is conveniently right next to the spot on the field where they balled, and call up Victor Maitland and tell him off. They decide to go for a little victory lap ball sesh in the phone booth...which is just like the Christian Slater/Patricia Arquette scene in True Romance minus any and all carnality.
Prince seems to have this Mary business locked down. She takes him ona boat ride around Cote d’Azur and they say hey to Mick and Keith and then they go ball in a cave that is somehow full of candles (they must’ve hit a Yankee Candle on the way). Somewhere, on a cliff nearby, sits a perfectly good grand piano...unplayed. Back in town, though, Tricky decides to rain on (Christopher Tracy’s) parade by telling Mary she’s being played by Prince and that he’s owed 30% of whatever money she gives him. Tricky also says “I’m a werewolf, bitch”...but I have no reason to believe this to be true. Tricky and Prince fight. They call each other “drunk” and “stupid”. Shiver. Mary decides to board the first private plane to NYC but Prince comes rolling up on the tarmac like the end of Casablanca or whatever (I haven’t seen it since college...there’s definitely a sad airport scene, right?). She jumps in the coupe with Prince and they drive off somewhere to hash things out. He immediately crawls in the back seat and puts his shades on ‘cuz Prince gonna be Prince. She calls him a whore. He whispers Prince-isms like “define love”. He tells her he wants to marry her and all that. I guess she agrees because they immediately set out for the sex cave. They decided to eschew dialogue in favor of simply letting the song “Kiss” play out...which is understandable. That tune is a big ass hit from back then.
Unfortunately Victor Maitland is still full of murder rage and sends his goons to kidnap Tricky. Tricky fights them off and rushes to warn Prince at the sex cave (How’d he know about the cave, huh?). Prince is like “oh shit...thanks for the heads up...just let me go rescue Mary fir...BANG!....the bad guys shoot Prince! He fucking DIES! Before he fades to black he manages to say “we sure had fun, didn’t we?” which is what I hope actual Prince was thinking as he was dying foolishly in that elevator. Man, I’m getting all choked up writing this now. I loved Prince...I really did. The song “Sometimes it Snows in April” starts to play out...and I’ll tell you...I put that one next to “Purple Rain” any day. It’s got loads of unintended poignancy now...Prince having died in April and all. Remember when D’Angelo tried to play that song on late night TV the week Prince died and broke down crying. FML, man.
Anyway...the big boo hoo ending kind of elevates everything that came before it, right? WRONG! Some time passes and, one afternoon, Tricky returns to his apartment with his girlfriend Katy to find a letter from Mary. She tells him that she misses Prince/Christopher terribly...and that she’s decided to give Tricky some dough and an apartment building. She says to give Katie a hug. Instead, Tricky says he’s Katy’s landlord now...and that bitch better have his money. She starts to back away from him and he’s all “where you going...I’m gonna put your ass out on the streets!” And then the movie just ENDS! That’s it! Good lord in heaven...and I do mean Prince Rogers Nelson. The end.