Christine Adams, a carefree 19-year-old from British Columbia, Canada, travels to Los Angeles to be with her fiance, who works there in a bank. When her car breaks down part way she hitches numerous rides, being detoured into Las Vegas by an L.A. comedian and shown the town. E
Eventually she gets to Los Angeles. When the relationship with the fiance doesn't work out, she moves to Las Vegas.
She finds work as a showgirl and meets Tommy Marcott, an African-American former pro football player who works as a "celebrity greeter" at a casino. They fall in love and get married. Christine is raped and beaten by a wealthy casino patron. Tommy exacts a severe reprisal with his fists and the pair flees Vegas, aware the big shot may seek revenge. In Los Angeles, Tommy is unable to get a good job and the couple's relationship spirals down. Tommy is shot dead on a basketball court, likely a revenge hit.
After the funeral, Christine OD's on street drugs taken in her grief. She returns to Las Vegas and finds work as a V.I.P. "party girl". She meets and is persuaded by wealthy client Richard Morgan to return to Los Angeles as his mistress.
Christine is fond of Richard but she gets bored in her new life, drifting into a romantic involvement with Jay Rigney, whom she had previously known platonically. She convinces Jay that she can get enough money that they can buy a ranch together. However that plan is doomed when Richard asks Christine to marry him, wanting her to spend all her time with him.
Jay persuades Christine that the only way they can keep the dream of getting a ranch alive is if she becomes a prostitute and he works as her pimp. She ends her relationship with Richard and for a while things go as planned. However one night she returns to the apartment she shares with Jay to discover he has left her and taken all of their money.
Christine goes to the airport where Richard’s private plane is kept and, by promising “some fun” and sharing a marijuana joint, induces airfield employee Elroy, who she had previously flirted with, to take her up in a skywriting plane. Still sharing the joint, Christine, by then twenty-two, has Elroy write "FUCK IT" across the sky, to the amusement or consternation of those below. The police take away Christine and Elroy when they land.
This section needs expansionwith: contemporary reviews. You can help by adding to it. (October 2025)
Jim Craddock of VideoHound wrote in 2002 that "Bisset is a starstruck Canadian undone by the bright lights and big cities of America. By age 22, she's a burnt-out prostitute in Las Vegas. Cheerless but compelling".[5]
Tom Lisanti and Louis Paul state in 2002 that "Bisset gave one of her finest performances, as a naïve woman who abandons her family for the glamour of Las Vegas".[6] Shirley Halperin and Steve Bloom wrote in 2012 that Bisset is "at the peak of her hotness here, and for some that might be enough to make this pseudofeminist classic worth the watch", adding that she "exudes both naivete and badassness as her character".[7]
DVD
The Grasshopper was released March 23, 2009, on DVD by Warner Bros. via the Warner Archive DVD-on-demand service.
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