JUST ADDED: Last Summer star Bruce Davison will join us IN PERSON, schedule permitting, for a Q&A following the film on Sunday, March 5!
Barbara Hershey (The Entity) is the amoral leader of a trio of teenagers on summer vacation on Fire Island, unencumbered by their never-around parents. With Richard Thomas and Bruce Davison the other members of the pack, they start a tentative ménage a trois out of adolescent curiosity. When a shy new girl (Cathy Burns) shows up at the beach, hoping to become friends, the more-sensitive Thomas is taken with her sweet qualities. But dominant Hershey feels threatened and begins mind games to humiliate the interloper. The honesty of Burns’ character only inflames Hershey’s insecurity, and the trio, with Thomas’ reluctant participation, initiate a climactic trauma that will haunt all of them for the rest of their lives. Originally rated X, the film was trimmed after only a few weeks for an R rating. Despite the controversy, Cathy Burns was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Perry’s wife Eleanor wrote the screenplay adapting the novel by Evan Hunter.
Print courtesy of the National Film & Sound Archive of Australia
“Frank Perry’s Last Summer is about exactly such years and days, about exactly that time in the life of four 15- or 16-year-old adolescents, and it is one of the finest, truest, most deeply felt movies in my experience…the performances of the four teenagers are the best that could possibly be hoped for.” – Roger Ebert
Larry Karaszewski discusses Last Summer for Trailers From Hell.
Ariel Schudson writes about Frank & Eleanor Perry on the New Beverly blog.
Kim Morgan discusses Last Summer on the New Beverly blog.
