Released in the United States on June 19, 1969, Last Summer received generally positive reviews, with Burns garnering an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.[3]
Plot
Dan and Peter, two youths vacationing on Fire Island, befriend a young woman named Sandy, who has found an injured seagull on a beach. While nursing the seagull back to health, the three friends spend time experimenting with alcohol, marijuana, and their sexuality. Dan and Peter, both virgins, express interest in having sex with Sandy, whom they suspect is also a virgin. The trio make the acquaintance of a slightly younger teenager, Rhoda, a shy girl who confides in the others that her mother died in a drowning accident. Rhoda becomes close with Peter and they share a kiss.
One day, the boys find that Sandy has killed the seagull after it bit her. The three older friends pull a prank by arranging a dinner date with an older man, Anibal, through a computer dating service. After getting him drunk, they abandon him to a group of local bullies despite Rhoda's protests. Tension builds between Rhoda and the three older teens, and in the final sequence Dan, Peter, and Sandy pin down Rhoda near the beach as Dan rapes her. After the attack, Sandy and Dan are seen walking away, as Peter, standing alone, stares into the ocean.
The film takes place and was filmed on Fire Island, a long sandbar off Long Island with the Atlantic Ocean on one side, the Great South Bay on the other, and upper-class summer homes built on its beaches and dunes.[4] For the final week of principal photography, production moved to Bay Shore, Long Island.[4]
The accidental breaking of a seagull's neck during filming affected Barbara Hershey sufficiently for her to change her surname to Seagull for a couple of years.[5]
Evan Hunter, author of the source novel, wrote a sequel novel titled Come Winter, which was released in 1973.[6]
Release
The film was given an X rating when it was first submitted to the MPAA due to the scene that depicted Rhoda's rape.[4]Last Summer was one of a handful of high-profile X-rated movies that were released in 1969, along with the Best Picture Oscar winner Midnight Cowboy and Haskell Wexler's docudrama Medium Cool.[7] The scene was edited shortly after its initial theatrical release so the film could receive an R-rating, though this version still contained nudity and strong language. When the film was occasionally broadcast for television, a further-censored PG-rated version was presented, which cuts all nudity and heavily edits the scene of Rhoda's rape. The R-rated version is the one distributed for the VHS videotape release.[8]
All original 35mm prints of the film were lost for years.[9] In 2001, a 16mm print was located at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia after a two-year search and was brought to Los Angeles.[7] It was reportedly the only surviving film print of the movie. The 16mm print was given a rare screening at the American Cinematheque's Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles in 2012.[7] On June 4, 2017, the print also received a screening at New York City's Quad Cinema.[10] To date, the film has not been issued a DVD release.
Soundtrack
The film had a soundtrack album (Warner Bros.-Seven Arts WS 1791) of the score composed by John Simon and Collin Walcott.[11][12] Heard on the soundtrack are John Simon (piano), Collin Walcott (sitar, tamboura), Aunt Mary's Transcendental Slip and Lurch Band (rock band), Cyrus Faryar (voice), Buddy Bruno (voice), Ray Draper (tuba, voice), Electric Meatball (rock band), Henry Diltz (banjo, voice), Bad Kharma Dan and the Bicycle Brothers (motorcycle gang). Rick Danko, Levon Helm and Richard Manuel of The Band are heard on the soundtrack as well, but were uncredited because they recorded for another record label.
Critical reception
Last Summer received positive reviews.[13][14]Roger Ebert gave the movie four stars, writing:
From time to time you find yourself wondering if there will ever be a movie that understands life the way you've experienced it. There are good movies about other people's lives, but rarely a movie that recalls, if only for a scene or two, the sense and flavor of life the way you remember it.
Adolescence is a period that most people, I imagine, remember rather well. For the first time in your life important things were happening to you; you were growing up; what mattered to you made a difference...[On] top of the desire to be brave and honorable, there was also the compelling desire to be accepted, to be admitted to membership in that adolescent society defined only by those excluded from it...
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.[15]
