This is basically female "coming-of-age" movie but with a little twist: a teenage girl meets the Grim Reaper who gives her another 24 hours to live. She decides to make the most of it by losing her virginity. The girl (first seen swimming naked in a pond) is played by pretty exploitation actress Monica Gayle. In real life a girl who looks like this probably wouldn't need 24 hours to lose her virginity (more like 24 seconds), but she has a lot of trouble in this movie. She first approaches and shy, young virgin who spies on her when she skinny-dips, but he shrinks away from her. She then goes off with a local motorcycle riding stud, but she is turned off when his idea of foreplay is whipping her with a belt. Finally, she decides to seduce her handsome former teacher(!) who once caught her stealing strawberries (hence the title). This scene really makes illicit student-teacher hook-ups and statutory rape look dangerously enticing, not only because of some more generous nudity by Gayle, but also because of an incredible scene where he feeds her champagne-soaked strawberries. (Wow!) There's another twist at the end that is actually pretty predictable, but I won't give it away.
I've heard stories that this movie actually played the Southern drive-ins as an Ingemar Bergman film and no one knew the difference. I don't believe it though. First off, if you wanted to make money in the Southern drive-ins, would you really market your film as an Ingemar Bergman? Besides, I think the small town setting of Luchenbach, Texas would have tipped most people off (this was also the setting of director Larry Buchanon's "The Naked Witch" but clearly not the setting of ANY Bergman movie). Although Buchanon was obviously inspired here by films like "Wild Strawberries" and "The Seventh Seal", the Bergman comparison is a little facile I think. While Bergman films are arty and mythic, this film is more personal and idiosyncratic, like much of Buchanon's work, and it still has one foot firmly planted in Southern-fried exploitation. But while Buchanon was no Ingemar Bergman, he's not Ed Wood either (to whom some people have compared him). Like Wood his reach did tend to exceed his grasp at times, but he was clearly a competent filmmaker, and his reach, especially in this movie, was pretty impressive.
This movie is well complemented by its soundtrack which features haunting and mournful early Janis Ian-type folk rock melodies. It often resembles a memorable, haunting interlude in "The Virgin Suicides" (a later film set in this same time era) with ripe and pretty young girls frolicking in nature to a haunting nostalgic early 70's soundtrack, or perhaps an American version of the contemporary Australian film "Picnic at Hanging Rock".
This is not a great film perhaps, but like those movies it has a haunting, dream-like quality to it that will really stay with you.
