The Last Movie (1971)

Undescribable Perfection

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Did you people see the same film I saw?

A Masterpiece!

Do not get too invested in any storyline within Dennis Hopper's THE LAST MOVIE or you will be left entirely frustrated. Instead, enjoy it as the head trip that it is. Hopper's follow-up to EASY RIDER redefines self-indulgence and enters some other realm...one in which an artist has run amok with Universal Pictures money and brought together a lot of his friends to help out. Hopper plays Kansas, a stuntman working on a western in Peru who decides to stay on after the movies crew departs. He hooks up with local whore Stella Garcia, meets up with crusading priest Tomas Milian and attempts to help his friend find a gold mine. There's no real narrative, but plenty of beautiful imagery (thanks to cinematographer László Kovács) and some early 70s ballads on the soundtrack. Hopper & Garcia have great chemistry and it's fun to spot the likes of Severn Darden, Dean Stockwell, Michelle Phillips and Sylvia Miles peppered in cameos throughout. Samuel Fuller plays himself, directing the film within a film.

Dennis Hopper's now notorious second feature fulfilled the promise of 'Easy Rider' by doing to his career what those Southern rednecks did to his character at the end of the earlier film: blasting it to an early grave. Given the disposition of its maker and the attitudes of his era it's not surprising the film took shape the way it did, but unlike the more unified mess of his debut feature (in retrospect a happy accident) this sophomore effort is merely chaotic: an ill-conceived, sloppily executed, helplessly edited riot of unintended laughs.There's a germ of an idea here about the essential artifice of movie-making (in which the film itself finally disintegrates into random outtakes), but the director painted himself into a creative cul-de-sac by envisioning a project that had to fail in order to succeed. And fail it did, famously so, putting all of Hopper's drug-induced limitations on public display. Seen today, it's a fascinating example of professional self-destruction, and a laughable catalogue of hippie flotsam scraped from the bottom of the '60s barrel.

I doubt that there are many viewers who have actually seen this film. I saw it back in the early Seventies, having already read bad reviews of it, and therefore was prepared for a poor film. What I had not expected was something that is little more than a home movie with a fairly interesting drama beginning it, only to lose its way and end up being literally nothing. SPOILERS AHEAD:We are led to believe that Kansas will be literally crucified by the villagers as a literal Christ figure, and then that plot line disappears completely. There are a couple of sequences that indicate Hopper might want viewers to see Kansas as the bad guy, rather than the hero, but these are so underdeveloped as once again, to go nowhere. The actual ending of the movie is so vague, to put it mildly, we're not even sure if Kansas is supposed to have been killed. The next to last scene shows Hopper arguing with a couple of actors, as all three pass a bottle of booze back and forth between them. The two drunken actors laugh at Hopper when he tries to get them to finish the movie. Then follows the anticlimactic "ending", in which Kansas is seen staggering down a road and falls, presumably dead, presumably having been shot by some unseen assassin. Then the words " the end" appear, looking like they've been written on the film with a felt tip pen. And that's it. How Hopper persuaded the studio to release this thing I'll never know, but the sheer gall of a filmmaker to expect an audience to pay cash to see a movie with numerous intertitles stating " scene missing" is beyond belief. My biggest criticism is that potentially, there's an interesting story here that could have been made by competent filmmakers into a small but worthwhile film. There's the germ of a real movie lurking somewhere amongst all the wasted celluloid and ludicrous non-characters and pointless dialogue. The fact that Hopper overcame his drug and alcohol problems, and is now acclaimed as a genuine filmmaker, with some real movies to his credit, as well as some good acting in other people's movies, is something for him to be proud of, but this movie is not. A fascinating mess, worth seeing once out of sheer curiosity, but pretty dull and stupid. Only for fans of real turkeys like Ed Wood's movies.

I enjoyed the strange play of this movie. The mother's milksquirtng from a breast is definitely a first. I think they are to be commended for breaking down the myth of film actorsas real heroes. The native peoples who might see films as ritual for religion or politic give the raw substance for an anti-movie like this. Brialliant in concepton - too bad the budget and follow through were'nt there. I saw a version with lost scenes and rescued editing. It deserves more.