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story identification - 80s sci fi film with quest to replace lost female droid companion


I vaguely remember watching a science fiction movie with my mother sometime in the 80s (I was born in 84, so I'd be quite young at the time)... The movie was from the 80s, and this is what I remember about it:


The main character has a female "companion" droid that looks just like a human female.


Something happens to her, and he wants to "fix" her, but there is only one place he might find an identical model, which is somewhere in a desert?


Her "mind" (hard-drive/emotions/memories) is stored on some kind of removable media, I want to say it was like a CD, but I'm not sure. It was located somewhere around the back of her head, maybe under the hair?


I seem to remember the droids being stored in clear-vinyl body-bags inside a pyramid-type structure in the desert?


I want to say the film had a lot of visuals and themes reminiscent of blade runner, flying cars and such.



Answer




This sounds like Cherry 2000 (1987), which in spite of the title takes place in 2017.


Per Wikipedia:



In the year 2017, the United States has fragmented into post-apocalyptic wastelands and limited civilized areas. One of the effects of the economic crisis is a decline in manufacturing, and heavy emphasis on recycling aging 20th-century mechanical equipment. Society has become increasingly bureaucratic and hypersexualized, with the declining number of human sexual encounters requiring contracts drawn up by lawyers prior to sexual activity. At the same time, robotic technology has made tremendous developments, and female androids (more properly, gynoids) are used as substitutes for wives.


Business executive Sam Treadwell (David Andrews) owns a "Cherry 2000" gynoid as his wife. After she short-circuits during sex, Sam is told by a repairman that she is damaged beyond repair. A gynoid dealer tells Sam that the "Cherry 2000" model has since gone out of manufacture, and that the only remaining ones are in a defunct factory in "Zone 7", a particularly dangerous, lawless area. With Cherry's memory disk, Treadwell hires Edith "E" Johnson (Melanie Griffith), a tough tracker, to guide him to the factory.



Personally, I think the film is memorable mostly for Melanie Griffiths' performance as a soldier of fortune. There are segments attempting to parody the Old West and 1950s America, yet ironically the movie itself seems ultimately trapped in its own 1980s milieu. The soundtrack by Basil Poledouris is good though.


Here is the trailer. (Note Gort and Robbie in the background at the robotics facility.)






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