Grindhouse Fest: The Last House on the Beach (1978)

-Grindhouse Fest is the special section in Celluloid Dimension where you can discover all the goodies from the golden age of exploitation cinema. Have fun!

The Last House on the Beach (1978) Directed by Franco Prosperi

A rougher, more unglamorous Italian sleazoid rip-off of The Last House on the Left than Aldo Lado’s Late Night Trains, another politically daring but unavailing Italian response to Craven’s film. Franco Prosperi’s ignoble, ironically misogynistic The Last House on the Beach sets out an exploitative methodology diametrically opposed to the notorious excursion into sexual violence and coruscating nihilism found in Craven’s film, deploying the same rape-revenge structure, yet the sexist politics that ultimately give way to a feminist catharsis are hierarchized here in what appears to be more of a humiliating nunsploitation flick than a boorish facsimile.

Florinda Bolkan – in a subtle but psychologically challenging role – plays Sister Cristina, a nun who looks after a group of young college girls in a remote seaside house, where they are rehearsing a play. The idyllic days of this coterie of women are shattered when three heartless, villainous outlaws burst into the comfortable beachfront house to hide from the police after perpetrating a blood-soaked bank robbery. Once inside, the three nefarious criminals subject the girls to all kinds of physical and psychological abuse. What is so shocking and disturbing about watching such a simple, classic exploitation storytelling procedure is that the inhumanity is not sadistic per se, it is intensely humiliating. For the three perpetrators it is a delight to demoralize these women, most especially Bolkan’s character, who is repeatedly degraded by stripping her of her dignity as a woman and her pious philosophy as a woman of God. Nevertheless, the unpleasant process is necessary, the film accumulates so much negative energy and helplessness that the long-awaited twist of its vindictive climax is murderously effective. Moreover, Prosperi’s filmmaking hides copious surprises up its sleeve, somehow rendering macho aggression into an artful trick that ends up satirizing the male characters more than the female ones; it reinstates the dignity of the victims and returns the humiliation to their perpetrators. The roles shift, and it is very satisfying to witness it because the film never cheated, it created monstrous characters fulfilling their depravity, it left us hopelessly angry and indignant so that the final impact is that of a justified reverberation of punitive brutality.

The whole exercise may seem pointless, iffy and androcentric – after all, the cinematic approach is still that of a very tawdry affair – but as a piece of burlesque malevolence articulating in sordid cadence both the nunsploitation and rape-revenge subgenres, it leaves you in a thrilling state of unalterable bewilderment. Not that you’ll exactly have a good time watching this pseudo The Last House on the Left – it stirs up too many paradoxical emotions to be specific about what you feel while watching it – but it is a wickedly entertaining shocker, only for those who can see deeper than just violent porn.

*Of all the Italian knock-offs of Craven’s 1972 film the best is Ruggero Deodato’s The House on the Edge of the Park, but this is a good contender for second best.