Want to watch a bleak, exploitative melodrama that’s preachy? “No?” That’s fair. Can I sweeten the deal with showgirls in white fox? Solid “maybe”? I’ll take it! And so will The Grasshopper, which you should not hop into lightly.

The Grasshopper – The Film

Christine is a nice girl from Canada when the movie begins. She ends up in Las Vegas and becomes a not-nice girl. Strangely, the credits are just the flashing word “MESSAGE.”

The Grasshopper – The Furs

The Grasshopper gets to the good stuff early, which is when Christine (Jacqueline Bisset) becomes a Vegas showgirl. First up is the classic enormous feather boa headdress, which is iconic in the “showgirl” fashion world.

The girls quickly change costumes to the best stuff in the film. This white fox fur-trimmed outfit comes in various versions, and you’ll see many of them on screen at once in a few shots.

Fortunately, Christine and her outfit get a few decent closeups, particularly that enormous hat. Also, for the record, that is a “nude” bikini top with sequins, so you’re not seeing anything. On Christine… On a bunch of other extras in other shots, you are, in fact, seeing something, should you be interested in “seeing something.”

The film moves on from showgirls in white fox sadly. There are a couple of brief scenes where people other than Christine wear furs. One is a small mink wrap, and the other is a very brief scene where a business deal is finalized in the company of some ladies in furs, including blue fox and chinchilla. It’s a nice shot, but it’s only ten seconds long.

Christine does the sugar daddy thing for a while and gets a standard dark mink coat out of the deal. Not great if you ask me, especially when you’re accustomed to white fox showgirl outfits, but I guess she has to pretend to be thankful.

The mink appears in a couple of scenes, the second one where she flirts with a mechanic at the airport so they can set up the end of the film.

The Grasshopper is not exactly a fun-filled Vegas romp, but you get white fox showgirls, so it’s got that going for it. In all, there are just under five minutes of fur (and Vegas showgirl feathers, which are still pretty cool) in a runtime of 98 minutes. That’s just under 5 percent of the movie you won’t have to fast-forward through. 

• Fur Runtime: 4:53 minutes
• Film Runtime:  98 minutes
• On-Screen Ratio: 4.98%

Find-a-Fur: The Grasshopper, 1970

(All times are approximate and are affected by the cut of the film.)

• 22:55 – white fox showgirl outfits
• 32:00 – ”
• 49:05 – mink
• 1:13:18 – blue fox + chinchilla (brief)
• 1:15:30 – 1:21:00 – mink
• 1:27:15 – ”

Fur Fashion Gallery – The Grasshopper, 1970