The long-buried 1969 movie
Chastity, starring Cher (or Fher?)---
www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7-AawIf9uQ&feature=relatedwww.youtube.com/watch?v=vb8zRrzvQVA&feature=relatedwww.freeclassicimages.com/images/chastity_1969.jpg
Go on a cross country adventure with Cher in her first dramatic film, Chastity. Chastity ('Cher') is a lonely young girl who is hitchhiking across the country in hopes of finding someone to love her and make her forget her disturbed past. She does find love with a man whom she calls Andre ('Stephen Whittaker'). Chastity feels that the relationship is getting too serious so she decides to run. She goes to Mexico where she starts working at a whorehouse, there she befriends the strange lesbian owner (Barbara London). Chastity is looking for a mother figure in the woman, but the woman has different feelings for Chastity. She soon realizes that this is not the life for her and decides to return to Andre and try to start a new normal life. Things are good, but not for long as Chastity's dark disturbed past will never let her feel loved by anyone. Written by Clint Hickman
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8 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Sonny & Cher's "Easy Rider"--and surprisingly not an embarrassment, 18 October 2007
Author: moonspinner55 from redlands, ca
Cher is agreeably pithy and cynical as a runaway named Chastity (she got the name from the dictionary). She's a wiseass, she's adorable, she's moody, she tosses off quips and straight lines like a jaded pro. This was Cher's third movie proper (following "Wild On The Beach" and "Good Times") and it's fun to see her in Cleopatra eye-makeup and her old nose. So many bad things have been said or written about this film that I half-expected a disaster, but it's clear right from the beginning the movie is visually expressive and evocative. Directed by someone named Alessio de Paola (an alias?), one tends to suspect writer-producer Sonny Bono held the reins, and if so he has a genuine feel for border towns and nowhere-places where people are cheerfully giving but eventually want payback. The picture begins to sag a bit in the middle when Cher tries her hand at prostitution and
has a lesbian encounter with the cathouse madam (lots of fingers touching and wind through the trees, that kind of thing). But I certainly admired the film's gritty quality and easy pace. For her part, Cher concocts a true original in our heroine, talking to herself in the third person ("So, Chastity old girl, whaddya wanna do now?") and when her question to a gentleman bedfellow is met with a surprising answer, she tells him quietly in the dark, "I'm smiling." **1/2 from ****
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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
A Story about life and the importance to be loved., 29 August 2004
Author: LoveTheRicardos from Canada
I think this movie didn't receive the success that it deserved. "Chastity" (written and produced by Sonny Bono) is a beautiful story about a helpless girl who's ready to do anything (even if she doesn't like it) to have a minimum of attention and love. OK, we can see that they didn't get a lot of money to do this picture and that can be a good thing because they did a very good movie. Cher (in here movie debut)is absolutely perfect in the role of Chastity. Not surprised that she got an Oscar 18 years later. She's an excellent actress and still is. If you want to have a great moment and think a little bite about questions of life, watch this movie. It worth it...really!
The DVD features a teaser trailer only. English, french and Spanish subtitles are available. And has both fullscreen and widescreen ratio.
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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
A Strange vehicle for Cher, 25 January 2006
Author: wlamb-1 from United States
In Cher's first attempt in a dramatic role she is found drifting through her young teenage life searching for her identity.She hitch-hikes to Mexico picking up truck-drivers as well as a boyfriend along the way.Her dysfunctional family and abuse follows her ,haunting her as she lives out her escapades wearing the same top and jeans till it makes you a bit nauseous!
Her foray into the comfort of lesbianism,is short-circuited by her traditional American values,and Chastity tries the "straight life" one more failed time.The script is trite,and the story jaded .Cher has said the rough stuff was excluded,as Sonny Bono couldn't stand to see his wife do "those things". All in all a cool 60's trip,with an amateurish and weird aura!
Chasity later became the name of Cher's daughter conceived during this movie! Was the above review useful to you?
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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
A RARITY- but worth seeking out!, 28 July 1999
Author: Denny Spangler (dennyspangler@webtv.net) from Sanford, MI
This is it- the legendary dramatic debut of Cher! She's an angry rebellious teenaged runaway hitchhiker. She has decidedly different views on sex- she won't give it up to the truckdriver who picks her up, but ends up working as a prostitute in Mexico. I won't give away the emotional ending of the movie, but it explains her reasons for doing all that she does; you may hate her at the beginning, but by the end your heart is breaking.
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3 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Run -- do not walk -- as far away from this movie as possible, 18 March 2003
Author: mrmoser1 from Deep In The Heart Of Texas
She was born in a wagon of a travelin' show, her mama used to dance for the money they'd throw. Yes, it's pre-nose-job Cher in her absolutely wretched dramatic debut, as a sullen and surly hitchhiking runaway with a heart of pressed tin. With her grating voice and punk-ass demeanor, she can often be misconstrued as acting, but do not be fooled - she is simply a marionette in the hands of producer Sonny `Svengali' Bono (whom one can also presume was also the never-heard-of-before and never-heard-from-again director de Paola). Chastity is a disturbed young woman who hits the road to escape her dreary, unhappy life, and finds more dreariness and unhappiness. In this turgid and lugubrious script, she takes her anger out on men by picking them up, leading them on and then `not letting them get anything.' She works as a prostitute without ever having to give up `the goods,' and winds up in a Mexican whorehouse for a lesbian madam who would like Chastity to be something more than an employee. With a creepy introspective/philosophical voiceover narrative by Cher, it is hippie-age BS and you can definitely see her *Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves* period looming on the horizon. Chastity is perplexing in a way that is peculiarly unintriguing, and despite all her woes, she is supremely unsympathetic. Her eventual confession of being abused as a child may have been shocking in 1969, but in retrospect, it is entirely predictable. There are some who will dig deeply to find some merit to this film, but it should strictly be taken as what it is: pure camp - meaning, of course, that's it's hysterically funny while it tries desperately to be serious. Would *you* name *your* child after this? `Chastity.pick her up if you dare.' Indeed.
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4 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Good early effort by Cher, 8 January 2003
Author: rosscinema (rosscinema@cox.net) from Oceanside, Ca.
Sonny Bono saved up his money and made this film starring his wife and its really not bad. You shouldn't expect great acting but Cher does show her early raw style here and even in scenes where she's required to cry she does it admirably. Script isn't bad either but all the talking she does to herself gets annoying after a while and I really didn't buy the whole Mexican brothel part at all. Her character is just to smart and in control to do something so brash and foolish.
Now, about the nudity. There are two scenes where Cher is supposedly nude and in one scene you don't see her face at all so I'm assuming its a body double. But in the other scene it kind of looks like her though her hair is in the way and the room is dark so while I'm not 100% sure I do think it might be her where you see a glimpse of Cher's breast. The film ends on an emotional level where the voices in her head let us the viewer find out what's wrong with her and the last scene of an emotional Cher on the side of the road I think is just a solid job of acting. Solid effort by all including Sonny who produced, wrote and scored the music. I kept expecting to see Sonny pop up in a cameo but he never does. Interesting hippie flick with solid acting.
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Boring, lifeless film., 29 July 2009
Author: sonya90028 from United States
Cher Bono plays the main character, named Chastity in this movie. The film opens with her frantically running, and it's unclear whether Chastity is running from, or to, something or someone. Chastity soon meets-up with a trucker who tries to seduce her, when she stays with him in his hotel room. Having none of that, Chastity leaves the hotel in a huff.
Basically, Chastity roams aimlessly about, hitch-hiking for a while. She steals a car, and drives down to Mexico, where she lives in a brothel as a prostitute. She comes back to the states, when she gets bored. When Chastity finally connects with a decent guy who lets her share his apartment, she inexplicably has a nervous breakdown.
Cher plays Chastity with a dour, wisecracking detachment. The character seems hollow, and two dimensional. Cher is much more talented as a singer, than an actress. She just doesn't have the thespian chops, to flesh out the character of Chastity with any credibility. This film will likely bore you to tears, unless you enjoy watching the young, gorgeous Cher on screen.
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Terribly dull and boring. A total mess, 22 June 2009
Author: Sgt_Callan from Ireland
"Pick Her Up If You Dare"
Sonny Bono decided to try and start Cher's acting career in the late 60's with this film, which he financed, wrote and produced himself. It ended up being a complete mess, and has never been released on home video and is now a much sought after movie amongst Cher fans. I managed to see it on TV; I had never heard of it before but decided to give it a try as it sounded good and I think that Cher is a great actor ( Judging from her performance in "Silkwood" ). Half and hour in, and I was very close to turning the film off. I found it excruciating and very boring with the only redeeming quality being Cher's performance. After watching it I could see why it's never been widely released.
Chastity ( Cher ) is a teenage runaway who hitch-hikes across America and eventually into Mexico, meeting very odd people along the way and every male she comes across seems to want to have sex with her. She has a terrible secret, which prevents her from getting intimate with men. She has an encounter with a pimp and a brothel in Mexico, and has an encounter with a lesbian. The only person that she meets who actually makes her smile is a man named Eddie ( Stephen Whittaker ) who gives her a ride and lets her stay in his place.
Thats pretty much all that happens in this film. Cher hitch hikes across America and into Mexico and all sorts of things happen to her. Cher is very good in this, albeit she doesn't pass as a teenager ( She was 22 years-old when she made this ), but then again, not many adults taking teenage parts ever do manage to pull it off. Stephen Whittaker provided a good supporting performance as Eddie, he would later pursue a directing career over his acting one. This film is directed by a man named Alessio De Paola. A man that nobody has heard of, and made nothing prior to this film and nothing afterwards. There has been speculation that Sonny Bono in fact directed it. Sonny would never make another film after this.
One of the reasons why "Chastity" fails is because it fails on every level to be engaging. I couldn't interact with Cher's character, primarily due to the terrible script, which I read was severely butchered by Sonny in a re-write which took all of the power out of the movie.
"Chastity" was a major flop when it was released in 1969. It was a financial disaster for Sonny and Cher, albeit they decided to name their child after the film which makes me believe that perhaps this movie had sentimental value for the two as it was a film that they made together.
Overall, "Chastity" is a terrible film. The script is poorly written, and ends up being a complete mess of a film. It's very boring, dull and sometimes almost unwatchable due to its tedious nature. The only reason that I'd recommend this film would be if you wanted to see a very young Cher, but other than that, this film should remain out of circulation in my opinion as there are far better films out there that are virtually unknown.
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A film that should make its way out of obscurity: Sonny Bono's last testament of the 1960s is a low-budget but respectable piece of filmmaking., 17 October 1999
Author: Michael Paley (baby.gravy@worldnet.att.net) from United States
Sonny Bono, in his autobiography "And the Beat Goes On," maligned his own debut as a writer/producer of serious cinema. But "Chastity" does not deserve a bad reputation: on the contrary, the film is a well-thought out and entertaining exploration of a runaway (played engaging by Cher in her first film as a dramatic actress) trying to discover herself, and in the process, find out what life is all about.
While at times the film strives to be a little too philosophical (it is clear that Bono wanted to make a statement), the film is both visually and aurally creative. From the opening sequence in which a montage of Chastity's thoughts flash through a sketch of her profile and the subsequent telephoto shot of her running towards the camera (she wants to go somewhere - but ends up going nowhere!), to the scene in which she wanders through a Mexican brothel, "Chastity" always keeps the viewer interested in the film itself, and more importantly - caring about its young protagonist.
The film is low budget - and possibly due to casting constraints some of the actors seem rather stiff - but overall the low budget helps to give "Chastity" more of a realistic look. The movie was obviously not filmed on sets - but instead on real locations - and the camerawork at times even gives it a "cinema verite" feel.
Of course, Sonny Bono was primarily a song writer and producer, and his use of music (most of which he wrote) is creative. The title theme is a haunting, beautiful composition that must have been influenced by Ennio Morricone and the music he wrote for Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns. For those who may be familiar with the Atco soundtrack album, the music works very nicely in the context of the film.
In any case, "Chastity" is no masterpiece, but it is an entertaining (though downbeat) film that deserves to make its way onto a commercial video release. Bono deserves a lot of credit for writing, producing and scoring the film (and according to his autobiography he even edited a good portion of it).
And as the soundtrack is out of print, it would give the viewer the opportunity to hear the Bono theme music and the classic opening tune "Band of Thieves." Was the above review useful to you?
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1 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Surly, Sleazy Camp, 26 May 2002
Author: shark-43 from L.A. CA
You have to see this movie to believe this movie! A strange Sonny Bono created oddity at the tail end of the Sixties where he wanted to show off his Cher and her acting ability (now she is pretty awful and wooden and quiet in this but she has done good work in Silkwood, Mask, & Moonstruck)by producing and writing this heavy handed, weird script. Cher plays a runaway who is so surly and hateful towards everyone but allows men to pick her up - where she teases and berates them plus refuses to "let them get anything". There is horribly overwritten narrative by Cher that reeks of bad writing and sophomoric philosophy. But this film so captures a part of 1969 and the scenes of Cher working in a Mexican bordello are priceless!! This is camp and you might enjoy laughing at it with some likeminded friends but as a drama rental, you'll be aghast!!
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