Year: 1970
Duration: 01:24:20
Directed by: Larry Buchanan
Actors: Les Tremayne, Paul Bertoya, Terry Mace
Language: English
Country: USA
Also known as: Veintricuatro Horas de Amore, Le Fragole Hanno
Description: Sexploitation oddity
from director Larry Buchanan loosely based on Ingmar Bergman's THE
SEVENTH SEAL! "Death (Les Tremayne) sits on a grave with a scythe on his
shoulder and narrates this flashback-filled color drama. It is supposed
to take place somewhere in Europe, but nearly everyone has Southern
accents!
Monica Gayle stars as Erica, a poor girl who has various sexual
encounters before Les finally takes her away. A farm boy can't do it, a
playboy biker beats her, and she falls for a poetry-reading teacher.
Parts are unintentionally funny and parts are pretty sexy (Gayle is
naked in a river, in a field, climbing a ladder...). Buchanan claims his
Bergman copy played in Texas theaters -- as a Bergman film -- and
nobody knew the difference! Gayle went on to many Hollywood nudie
movies.
Review: Self-professed “schlockmeister”
Larry Buchanan made a couple attempts at serious artistic films, of
which “Strawberries Need Rain” is one. It seems to be dedicated to the
proposition that a well endowed girl like Monica Gayle can only find a
meaningful relationship with a sensitive older man. (I guess Buchanan
was pushing 50 when this was made.) Throw in an ascetic old man in a
black suit, carrying a scythe, as the Grim Reaper—and you have the
“tribute to Bergman” that this film was said to be. Buchanan claimed
that the film was passed off as real Bergman in Texas, with success.
I first saw this film before whatever theatrical release it had, in Arthur Knight’s “Theatrical Film Symposium” class at the USC school of cinema. After the showing of the film, Buchanan addressed the class and explained its artistic premise while imaged of Monica’s bobbing natural breasts still floated in our minds. The only thing funnier than that was watching Professor Knight (one of the original authors of Playboy’s “History of Sex in Cinema”, among his lesser achievements) try to maintain a straight face.
I first saw this film before whatever theatrical release it had, in Arthur Knight’s “Theatrical Film Symposium” class at the USC school of cinema. After the showing of the film, Buchanan addressed the class and explained its artistic premise while imaged of Monica’s bobbing natural breasts still floated in our minds. The only thing funnier than that was watching Professor Knight (one of the original authors of Playboy’s “History of Sex in Cinema”, among his lesser achievements) try to maintain a straight face.
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