Last Summer
Last Summer
R | 10 June 1969 (USA)
Last Summer Trailers

During summer vacation on Fire Island, three young people become very close. When an uncool girl tries to infiltrate the trio's newly found relationship, they construct an elaborate plot that has violent results.

Reviews
Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.
Steineded How sad is this?
Inadvands Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess
ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.
preppy-3 Three attractive affluent kids--Sandy (Barbara Hershey), Peter (Richard Thomas) and Dan (Bruce Davison) meet on Fire Island one summer. They all start hanging out with Peter and Dan clearly attracted to Sandy. Then plumb unattractive Rhoda (Catherine Burns) joins the group. Feelings erupt, complication escalate and it all leads to a VERY disturbing ending.It's a coming of age film but a realistic one showing just how vicious teenagers can be. It's well made with superb acting by all four (Burns was nominated for an Academy Award) but I can't say it was a good film. The characters were unpleasant (Sandy is clearly a sociopath) and there are long dull stretches which go nowhere and add nothing to the plot. More than once I wondered where this film was going. However the harrowing final sequence more than made up for it. Be warned--the last part is extreme--the film got an X rating for that alone. So the acting and ultimate message make it worth seeing but it's sometimes pretty slow-going.
kayaker36 The cinematography is artistic, with seascapes and vistas of the beach at Fire Island that are relaxing to the eye -- a pleasure to watch. Some of the acting is passable, overcoming the cliché-ridden, preachily didactic script.The three protagonists are young and attractive, rich and privileged. They also are homophobic, racist, classist and "lookist", even the female member of the trio, played in space cadet style by Barbara Hershey. Their victims, a not-so-pretty teenager and a Hispanic man, are wholly innocent and impliedly entitled to special protections. The homophobic aspect is quite bizarre in that there is a definite homosexual undertone to a relationship of two young men latching on to one girl.As the politically committed sixties gave way to the seventies "Me" generation it was inevitable that Frank and Eleanor Perry's left-wing films would go quickly and permanently out of fashion. Eleanor Perry, a former campus bolshevik some fifteen years older than her husband, later penned a bitter account of their partnership and breakup, which no one by then cared to read.If you like propaganda, laid on with a trowel, this picture is for you.
obfd I enjoyed this film, even with the disturbing ending. I grew up on this beach every summer, and the depictions were very realistic, especially the nonchalant way the kids were left to roam freely with no adults, as Fire Island was known to be a "safe" place for kids. I knew people like each of these characters growing up, and I felt they were quite realistic.The locations in this film are as follows: The beach scenes and the house are in Seaview, NY, on Fire Island. The scenes in the woods are further east, between Point of Woods, NY and the Sunken Forest, on Fire Island. The scenes with the sailboat are shot near East Fire Island, in the Great South Bay. The dance club and the ferry dock on Fire Island are in Ocean Beach, NY. The movie theater and the restaurant are on Main Street in Bayshore, NY. The ferry dock on the mainland is the Fire Island Ferries terminal on Maple Ave in Bayshore NY.
HumanoidOfFlesh "Last Summer" actually has a lot in common with such films as "The Lord of the Flies" or "The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea" in which a young boy ends up murdering and dissecting his mother's lover.It also reminds me a little bit Mendal W.Johnson shocking novel "Let's Go Play at the Adams".These are stories about children untamed.The film is unsettling not because of what these three teenagers do to their friend,but because of how little it bothers them and how easily they begin to see her as outside of humanity."Last Summer" follows the random activities of four teens during a summer on Fire Island.Rhoda is shy and overweight and targeted for teasing by the others.As sexual tensions increase,the more experienced and dominant Sandy encourages Dan and Peter to rape Rhoda.The climax of "Last Summer" is truly powerful and disturbing as it clearly shows the banality of evil.9 out of 10.