The Last Movie

Directed by DENNIS HOPPER

Starring DENNIS HOPPER JULIE ADAMS DANIEL ADES

1971

Released 21 JAN

Blu-ray

o 2018 turned out to be the banner year for the posthumous, wide proliferation and Dennis Hopper’s . Both are governed, for better or worse, by entropic tendencies. Welles’ film was only “finished” 30 years after his death. Hopper’s heavily meta-, self-reflexive film was picture-locked and submitted as finished in its own time – it even won a top award in Venice and had a proper opening in New York City – but it so horrified Universal Pictures that every effort was made to move on from it as if nothing happened. Told not entirely in chronological order, the film recounts the adventures of stunt coordinator Kansas (Hopper) who shacks up with a prostitute after the western he’s working on in Peru has wrapped. He gets mixed up with some wealthy American tourists who want to walk on the wild side, an equally sauced pal who claims he’s got a gold mine, and a poverty-stricken village that may or may not have a clear understanding that movies are fake.