Excellent, a Must See

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

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.

It's difficult to see why people have such a hard time with this movie. Anyone who is interested in European art cinema of the '60's or even the novel since Joyce should have no trouble reading the film on at least some levels. Hopper's method here is to try and get inside the head, to put thought and memory on the screen, not just pictures.Part of the problem may be the sheer complexity. There are probably enough ideas crammed in here for a dozen movies, and Hopper throws them all at us, often simultaneously. There's a story about American imperialism, there's a story about the artifice of film-making, there's a story about the way audiences view cinema, there's a Christ allegory wrapped up with a general sacrificial victim theme, a story about men and women, sex, money and power, there's Hopper's own story, the story of cinema itself, there's a satire of Hollywood conventions in general and the Western in particular, very notably there's a story about the Peruvian landscape, ravishingly shot by Laszlo Kovacs. There's even the story of Hopper's gofer lost in a society he doesn't understand if you want a simple narrative to hang on to. The film combines all these facets into a structure which can only be described as crystalline.Devotees of "folding" should find plenty to occupy them here - there's the film about Hopper's character "Kansas", the film Sam Fuller is making, the villagers' "film", "The Last Movie" itself, an on-set home movie and probably several others besides.Hopper gaily references (and steals from) everyone from Fellini and Godard to John Huston and Nicholas Ray, and of course goes bonkers in Peru well before Werner Herzog got around to it (and appropriates tribal culture in a strikingly similar way).Definitely not a film to be missed by anyone interested in fractured narratives, postmodernism in film or the beautiful image. Vastly underrated and well worth its Venice prize, this is to "Easy Rider" what "Pulp Fiction" is to "Reservoir Dogs". Hopper as a director has never been better.

Stunt double (Dennis Hopper) is on location in Peru making a Sam Fuller western and stays behind to hatch 'get rich quick' plans only to find himself starring in a ceremonial movie of the natives. The big difference is while Hollywood violence is fake but the camera equipment is real, here things are reversed: the camera equipment is fake (fireworks make the camera reels spin) but the violence is real. Crazy imaginative production frequently goes off on hallucinatory tangents and the editing is creative to say the least. Easily the most interesting of Hopper's films. Alexandro Jodorowsky is rumored to have helped with the massive editing job.

The biggest problem with viewing The Last Movie is that it actually has two parts.The first part of the film where the citizens of a Peru village try to duplicate (for real) the violence of a western that has just been filmed in their village raises some interesting question (some put forth by the town's priest).The problem is at a critical point for the main character (the only member of the crew to stay behind) the movie suddenly and without warning shifts gears into the second part which can best be described as 'the making/behind the scenes of the Last Movie.' Worst yet this part of the movie doesn't have any rhyme or reason in the order in which things are shown so it can be a confusing 5 minutes before the viewer figures out what has just happened. And even after the poor viewer does figure out what has just happened trying to follow this part of the film is next to impossible as it is so disjointed.It is a pity as the premise of the film is a good one and if the film had stayed with that premise it would have been a great film. Instead you have part of a great film followed by a disjointed mess.