THE LAST MOVIE

Showings

Ped Mall -Scene 1 Wed, Aug 22, 2018 10:00 PM
Series Info
Series:Late Shift at the Grindhouse
Film Info
Rating:R
Runtime:108 minutes
Director:Dennis Hopper (Easy Rider)
Year Released:1971
Production Country:USA

Description

Wednesdays get weird when Late Shift hosts Ross Meyer, Joe Derderian and Aaron Holmgren dig up low-budget b-movies, horror and gore-fests, and camp classics for your viewing pleasure. Buy your ticket and take a ride in our Time Machine! Punch in and earn a bonus! $3 Pabst Blue Ribbon tallboys and $2 small popcorn! PLUS -- special custom trash trailer reel curated by Ross with cheap swag and prize giveaways!

 

The Last Movie is something that I made in Peru. I won the Venice Film Festival with it, and Universal Pictures wouldn't distribute it. You should think about Godard a little when you watch it." - Dennis Hopper, director

“Dennis Hopper's second film as a director: dazzling, chaotic, indulgent." - Time Out London

“Three decades of postmodernism have gone far to normalize its style without taming its wild, druggy, vertiginous charge."
- Nathan Lee, The New York Sun

Consciously self-reflective and co-written by Hopper and Rebel Without a Cause screenwriter Stewart Stern. The Last Movie follows a Hollywood movie crew in the midst of making a western in a remote Peruvian village. When production wraps, Hopper, as the baleful stuntman Kansas, remains, attempting to find redemption in the isolation of Peru and the arms of a former prostitute. Meanwhile, the local Indians have taken over the abandoned set and begun to stage a ritualistic re-enactment of the production - with Kansas as their sacrificial lamb.

Among the most storied productions of the New Hollywood Era, Hopper was given carte blanche by Universal for his next directorial feature after the tremendous commercial success of Easy Rider. The writer-director-star took the money and ran - literally - staging The Last Movie in Peru at farthest remove from the Hollywood machine, with an on-screen entourage in tow that included Kris Kristofferson, Julie Adams, Stella Garcia, Peter Fonda, Dean Stockwell, Toni Basil, Russ Tamblyn, Michelle Phillips and director Samuel Fuller.

Although it won a CIDALC award at the 1971 Venice Film Festival, The Last Movie would effectively end Hopper's career for many years - the Hollywood establishment gleefully writing him off as a self-indulgent madman. Yet the movie remains thrillingly innovative and remarkably contemporary - influenced greatly by the work of Bruce Conner and the French New Wave, as well as the Pop and Abstract artists Hopper revered.