faction of which kidnapped and murdered former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978), hos- tage scenarios were hardly novel. By 1978, an exploitation film hoping to titillate audiences with a photoplay of captives and cap- tors had to work hard to keep the mixture fresh. LAST HOUSE ON THE BEACH bears a super- ficial resemblance to THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT in that the hostages taken (among them NIGHTMARE CITY’s Laura Trot- ter and TENTACLES’ Sherry Buchanan) in their surfside re- treat by a trio of bank robbers (led by ALMOST HUMAN’s Ray Lovelock) are likewise girls on the cusp of womanhood; Prosperi goes the extra mile by trucking in a dose of “nunsploitation,” re- vealing the girls’ mentor (Florinda Bolkan) to be a bride of Christ in secular mufti. Director Prosperi and writers Ettore Sanzò (who contributed to the original story for NIGHT TRAIN MURDERS), Gianbattista Mussetto and Romano Migliorini (who cowrote Massimo Pupillo’s structurally similar BLOODY PIT OF HOR- ROR) use this clash of morals to hold up a mirror to Italian soci- ety, arguing that these outrages are but a symptom of a greater disease wrought by the ever-wid- ening gap between the haves and have-nots.
Although Bolkan’s steely Sis- ter Cristina has a time bomb in- tensity that one expects to detonate in the film’s final frames (such expectations do not go unrewarded), it is Lovelock’s character who is more interest- ing. Depicted initially as a cut above brutish partners Flavio Andreini (INGLORIOUS BAS- TARDS) and Stefano Cedrati (YETI: GIANT OF THE 20TH CENTURY), Lovelock’s dreamy, articulate Aldo presents himself as a university drop-out whose descent into criminality is a
practical concession to hard times. Later, however, Aldo par- ticipates in the rape of Sister Cristina and prevents the nun from intervening in a savage as- sault on one of her students, re- vealing himself to be worse than his animalistic peers—a beast not by ignorance or heredity but by choice. (When flashbacks reveal the lie of Aldo’s claim that he was an unarmed driver in the bank robbery, one is reminded of Union soldier Clint Eastwood’s pretense of being a Quaker in Don Siegel’s THE BEGUILED.) There’s also an interesting throw- away line (spoken resentfully by Cedrati and pointed at the cap- tives’ elevated social status) about “programmed babies” that ech- oes a minor plot point in Dario Argento’s Il gato a nove code (THE CAT O’NINE TAILS, 1971), which laid at the heart of its mur- der mystery genetic engineering aimed at keeping the offspring of moneyed Italians “high quality.” LAST HOUSE ON THE BEACH kicks around some interesting themes but fails ultimately to freshen the recipe for suspense. Too much of its running time is given over to eyeballing the comely young hostages but never are any of these girls allowed to become more than stick figures. Certain scenes feel rote and shopworn thirty years after the fact—an uncomfortable group dinner (an arguable borrowing from THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT), the requisite arrival of the innocent passerby whose unwit- ting intervention gives the hos- tages some hope of rescue, the requisite killing of the innocent passerby, the failed escape—and Prosperi unwisely cuts away from the claustrophobic continuity of the hostage situation to under- score a very minor plot point. The proceedings do become appreciably nastier in the last act, as Buchanan’s character is
punished for her attempted es- cape by being sodomized with a pointed stick (an act perhaps in- spired by, but much more brutal than, Linda Blair’s broom handle fate in the 1974 telefilm BORN INNOCENT) and the tables turn in favor of the surviving hostages. LAST HOUSE ON THE BEACH is an interesting product of its time and its name casting alone will pique the curiosity of the Euro- sleaze crowd but, even at its most unpleasant, the film repays sur- prisingly little for the investment of your time.
Severin Films presents the English language version of LAST HOUSE ON THE BEACH, which nonetheless bears the La settima donna title card. Letterboxed at 2.35:1 and an- amorphically enhanced, the transfer is brilliantly colorful (blues dominate the color palette, from the beach house’s cobalt carpeting to Bolkan’s denims to the sparkling Tyrrhenian) and clear enough so that viewers can discern blemish-concealing cream on the face of one ac- tress and a herpetic lesion that comes and goes from Stefano Cedrati’s upper lip. The Dolby 2.0 sound is typical for this vintage, unsurprising and unexceptional but adequate. The English dub job is quite another matter, with Flavio Andreini threatening to make “mince” out of one of the hostages and Cedrati referring to what is obviously a devilled egg as “a piece of bread.”
The roster of extras is slim, consisting of Italian and German theatrical trailers and a 28m in- terview with Ray Lovelock, who tells a few stories about the mak- ing of LAST HOUSE ON THE BEACH, identifies himself as the singer of a song heard in the film on a transistor radio, and spends a lot of time waffling about how he’d never make this movie today.
69
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
