Review of The Last Movie (1971) by Ramón S — 10 Aug 2010

After the success of Easy Rider (1969), Dennis Hopper was offered a deal over at Universal Pictures, as was Peter Fonda. While Fonda went off and did The Hired Hand (1971), Hopper went to Peru, he spent much of 1970 there and came back with about 40 hours worth of footage.

He made it into perhaps the maddest film of it's day, too far ahead of it's time. No wonder it flopped and killed Hopper's career for a decade. It has Hopper as Kansas, a stunt co-ordinator of horses of a film being shot in Peru, when an actor is killed on set, Kansas quits the business and stays in Peru, living with local woman Maria (Stella Garcia), However, Kansas is asked to help with a dilemma the locals have, they're making their own "movie" with cameras and equipment made out of sticks, based on the film that Kansas was working on, and they're acting out real violence as they don't understand acting, and they need Kansas to help them out.

You can see what Hopper was trying to do, and it's a film which blurs the line between fiction and reality. It's too much a head trip through, it's no surprise that Hopper's friend Alejandro Jodorowsky talked him out of doing a coherent cut and something more experimental.

It's a film which tries, but not hard enough, despite appearances by Peter Fonda, Michelle Phillips, Samuel Fuller, Henry Jaglom and Kris Kristofferson. This is the Synecdoche, New York of it's day.