Editorial Reviews

The Last Movie is a 1971 drama film from Universal Pictures. It was written and directed by Dennis Hopper, who also played a horse wrangler named after the state of Kansas. It also starred Peter Fonda, Henry Jaglom and Michelle Phillips. Production of the movie, which cost $1 million, took place in the film's major setting, Peru.

Product details

Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.32 x 4.19 x 1.12 inches; 6.13 Ounces
Director ‏ : ‎ Dennis Hopper
Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 48 minutes
Release date ‏ : ‎ March 19, 1993
Date First Available ‏ : ‎ September 29, 2006
Actors ‏ : ‎ Dennis Hopper, Kris Kristofferson, Peter Fonda, Dean Stockwell, Michelle Phillips
Studio ‏ : ‎ United American Video
ASIN ‏ : ‎ 6301475534

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4.4 78 ratings

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4.4 out of 5

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Isadore Ducasse

A Unique Work of Art

Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2023

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Jarring and discomforting, cold cloudy natural Peruvian beauty, the means of production forced into the foreground randomly, the most famous pretty boy actor, Peter Fonda, totally hidden as far as I could tell, only a profile shot of him as an extra stunt man near the end, as far as I could tell, but for all that the whole work of art is completely consistent, in its texture and look and feel and everything, from the first frame to the last, like it was meticulously edited to seem like it was almost unedited if you fail to step back and look at the whole. Forces you to forget about plot and content and relax into form, where everything starts to seem intuitively connected as in a fluid drunken dream, until the end when you can't help stepping back and focusing on content.

I googled Wikipedia and clicked the link on the mention of the "cargo cult," which blew my mind, symbolic exchange, the sacred and profane, graven images, the bargain with the devil and commodity fetishism between the first and third world, and drunken Dennis Hopper coming to that realization right between those worlds but no words to express it, just the feeling you get watching. But in the end: "do you actually know how to find gold?" Whether they arrived at this conclusion through poesis or cerebration, my immediate thought was that the gold standard is an allegory for our very relation to reality, an even more apt metaphor than the relation between movies and real life, because it is so fundamentally arbitrary, it only works if we completely suspend our disbelief and stay drunk and high on capitalist ideology, while the Third World understands it's an illusion but believes that illusions can influence illusions and so maybe the first world can at last be conjured into sending some of that imaginary Almighty lucra down south for once, where Hollywood has no business being in the first place....

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J. Miller

An intriguing film experiment

Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2014

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A unique and bizarre movie. It's hard to say what it's about, but it's an intriguing experiment and worth seeing.

One person found this helpful

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Cowpoke

Hopper

Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2014

Verified Purchase

Hopper is not to everyone's taste but his films are always out of the ordinary. This one was apparently something of a nightmare in terms of location, cost & time to complete but it is worth your time. It is somewhat convoluted and requires attention unlike so many modern films that you can sleep thru. You may not enjoy it, but persevere and you may want to delve into the Hopper film library. Julie Adams, once married to Ray Danton, is in the film late in her career - still attractive & talented.

One person found this helpful

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sofar

Alone at Cinema One

Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2015

I actually paid to see this movie 4 times when it opened in NYC. The most memorable time was a rainy afternoon when it was just me and a bag of popcorn and hundreds of empty seats. I found this film to be captivating, disturbing, funny, insightful. It was like looking at a Picasso painting. Every time I saw it I found beauty, horror and confusion. The Last Picture Show came out about the same time as the last movie and got great reviews. I hated The Last Picture Show because it was so deliberately "artistic". I've never seen it on the small screen and am not at all sure I would want to.
For one afternoon Cinema One was my living room.

3 people found this helpful

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biker boy 66

Dennis Hopper

Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2010

This is one of ,if not the best Dennis Hopper movie, with #2 being Easy Rider. He acts and directs this film. I love it. Kris Kristofferson plays in it as well, and sings Me and Bobby Magee, I love it. A must have for Dennis Hopper fans. Never released on DVD, Mr. Hopper was going to release it on DVD, but never had the chance to.Very RARE and HTF. A GREATTTTTTTT one.

3 people found this helpful

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William Murrow

I worked on The Last Movie and recommend that you do NOT

Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2015

I worked on The Last Movie and recommend that you do NOT watch it in the VHS version. Watching it in VHS is extremely disappointing and is completely different from the viewing experience Dennis intended. Laszlo Kovacs' lush and remarkable cinematography is an indispensable aspect of the movie experience and it is best viewed on a large screen with excellent presentation. Many details are revealed when one sees this film on the big screen, with good sound.

ALSO - the final cut prior to sound mixing and preparation of the release version was more linear and approachable for mainstream audiences and conformed with the original script. At the very last moment Dennis decided to remove the entire ending and place it at the beginning, befitting of his fondness for abstract expression. If you find it hard to put it together in your head, watching it twice reveals the original storyline more clearly. Much like viewing any abstract artwork over and over.

11 people found this helpful

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Miamigold

Hopper,as himself! the real deal!

Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2010

This is The Movie,The Movie that Banned Dennis Hopper for a few decades.
It showed his style,his art,the creative artist that he was,and will forever be.
Few, really knew Dennis Hopper,Few will ever really understand how good he really was,.Hollywood Exec Black Listed Hopper,but he in the end showed them that an Artist has to express himself,and if the mass like it or not! He is the Artist.
I found this VHS of Dennis a few years back brand new in a shop,I was searching for it for years!..Hollywood hid this Movie,maybe even Burn the Original Footage.If anyone wants to see what a Rebel Artist Genious is this is the Video.It may not be a Cinematic performance but that's not what it is,it's Dennis Hopper the Real Deal..This is how he blew millions & in the end still was the Artist!..And he enjoyed his Ride on Life,What a ride it was, Man!..A great human being.R.I.P.

3 people found this helpful

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William H. Kern, Jr.

THE LAST MOVIE wasn't.

Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2015

I saw it in Taos when he was finishing the editing. His brother David was also working on it. I went to his theatre with him, Nick Ray who was visiting him in Taos, David and and a group. I liked it more then, than later when it was re-edited by Universal and screwed up. He arranged for me to play it at my Cinema One Theatre in Lima, Ohio. Of course it bombed. THE LAST PICTURE SHOW was released at the same time and people got them mixed up by the titles. The original edit was very good. I didn't know it had been available on DVD. What company put it out? Please let me know. Thanks-Bill Dakota

4 people found this helpful

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Marc Olmsted

The Last Movie - noble and uneven

Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2005

At least half of THE LAST MOVIE is a brilliant film. The idea of cutting between the making of a Western, the Western itself, and even the making of "the real movie" about these things has certainly been imitated since, but here is the original. A further plot point has the Peruvian local natives deciding to make a movie based on what they've seen, constructing cameras and booms out of cane. They cast Hopper's character in the lead, but have no understanding that violence is faked in Hollywood. Hopper will be the film's sacrifice. Eventually all three narrative threads deconstruct completely.

Where the film goes wrong is that much of its brilliance is also its weakness. Clearly improvised, certain scenes fall flat and certain shots are probably fascinating on particular drugs, but the sober viewer will be challenged by their length and content. There is no question that this is a drug-soaked production. At times maddeningly narcissistic, I have still seen this picture several times and would love to own a DVD of it.

24 people found this helpful

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saraellen

One Star

Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2016

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Silly movie that made little or no sense.

Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2010

My review's title is derived from Allen Ginsberg's comment on his great friend Jack Kerouac's (unpublished in his lifetime) book VISIONS OF CODY. Ginsberg saw the flashes of brilliance in the King the Beat's book - like seeing flashes of lightening on the horizon. But he also realized it was raw, undisciplined, drug-induced writing that few people would understand. Only those who had bedded Kerouac might possibly grasp it. Ginsberg didn't say it in quite so polite a way, but the point is that the late, truly great Dennis Hopper's THE LAST MOVIE is a cinematic equivalent of an abstract artwork, much the same way Kerouac's CODY was.

Hopper loved abstract art and collected it all his life. THE LAST MOVIE is completely opposite the linear brilliance of EASY RIDER. Yes, it is confusing. Yes, it is jumbled up. Yes, it either makes little sense or is senseless throughout. Yes, it cannot hold a candle to EASY RIDER.

But having said all that, the film has its own flashes of brilliant lightening illumining its convoluted landscape. If the movie is confusing (which it most certainly is) then so is Life itself. If it is jumbled (which it is), then so is Life itself. If it is baffling and hard-to-figure-out, so is Life itself. Perhaps this was what Hopper's intent was: to make a movie about how movies have dominated not only Western culture, but it also shows film's seductive powers in the effects on the Peruvian village where Hollywood has just shot a Western, packs up and leaves. Hopper, a wrangler and stuntman, on the film-within-a-film stays behind and has his world turned upside down by the dichotomy between the real and the unreal. The movie shuns linear story-telling for a vertical form - and succeeds at this rather admirably.

SPOILER ALERT; The closing scene sums it all up. Don Gordon's character is talking about searching for gold in the Peruvian mountains to the Hopper character - and all his knowledge about finding gold, panning for it has come from the movie TREAURE OF SIERRA MADRE. For better or for worse, movies have dominated our lives and our learning.

This film is a noble attempt to create an abstract artwork in filmic form. While it does not succeed all that greatly, it is a great thing that Hopper at least tried to do something totally different with the canvas which was his film and the colors which were his characters and the beauty of the Peruvian scenery.

Now that Dennis Hopper has sadly left us, it would be sadder still if this movie were never released on DVD. We can hope!

12 people found this helpful

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Grigory's Girl

Worth checking out at least once....

Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2006

This is Dennis Hopper's notorious follow up to Easy Rider. It's a film that shook studio executives to the core because it was such a mess in their eyes. Essentially, after Easy Rider became the massive hit that it was, Universal Studios gave Hopper carte blanche to make his next film. They gave him a million dollars, and the crew went to Peru to make their film. Hopper came back with roughly 40 hours of footage, took nearly a year to edit, and came up with what you see here. It won best picture at the Venice Film Festival, but it bombed in the US, and Hopper descended into drug induced madness for many years. He didn't step behind a camera until Out of the Blue, an independent film shot around 1980. Is the film any good? It has some great scenes, some pretentious moments (such as title cards saying "scene missing", an old trick that student filmmakers use to show us their film is "profound"), some good performances, great photography (courtesy of Laslo Kovacs), a rather stupid story, and it doesn't make an ounce of sense (not even in an art film way). Still, it's interesting to watch. Considering Hopper was stoned out of his mind and thousands of miles away in Peru when he made the film, Universal was lucky to get a finished cut at all (which they were probably grateful for, until they saw the film). It's worth checking out at least once....

13 people found this helpful

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Uncle Chino

Henry Fonda was wrong

Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2008

I heard Peter Fonda say that even though his father Henry Fonda didn't like Dennis Hopper that after he read 'The Last Movie' he said, "this is one of the great westerns of our time." Well, Hank may have been right about what was on the page but what ended up on film was a cluttered mess. I am a fan of Dennis Hopper somewhat but no matter how you slice it or how much his Hollywood friends try to dress it up this movie stunk. I bought it back in the early 90's and watched it. I gave it to a friend to watch and he never gave it back and I didn't care one bit. El stinkerOO!!!

2 people found this helpful

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Genre	Drama
Format	NTSC, Color
Contributor	Peter Fonda, Dean Stockwell, Kris Kristofferson, Michelle Phillips, Samuel Fuller, Dennis Hopper
Language	English
Runtime	1 hour and 48 minutes

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The Last Movie [VHS]

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