Frank Perry's Last Summer, which was adapted from Evan Hunter's 1968 novel, is one of the great examples of the blurring of European art film and Hollywood genre fare in the late 1960s (John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy, which was released around the same time, is similarly evocative). The film garnered quite a bit of attention when it was released, partially due to the immediate notoriety of its being rated X by the relatively new MPAA ratings system (although it was re-rated R a month into its New York theatrical run with a few edits). Critics gave it generally good reviews and a few rave ones (notably Roger Ebert, Judith Crist, and Rex Reed); it earned solid box office (enough that producer Sidney Beckerman announced he was planning to produce a sequel); and Catherine Burns, in her screen debut, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

But, then the film seemed to vanish. It was released on VHS at least twice, once in the late 1970s and again in 1985 (that is how I first saw it when I was a college student in the mid-'90s), but it was never released on any other home media format. It aired on broadcast television in the 1970s and later on Turner Classic Movies from time to time. But, with the exception of a worn 16mm print of an edited version, no one knew of the location of any actual film prints. With support from screenwriter Larry Karaszewski (Ed Wood, The People vs. Larry Flynt), a longtime fan of the film who spent years championing it, a 35mm print of the original theatrical version was discovered in the BFI National Archives and Warner Bros, which had purchased Allied Artists, the company that produced it, discovered four reels of the original 35mm camera negative and several other elements, including two interpositives and an internegative. Thus, like Ralph Nelson's Soldier Blue (1970) and Samuel Fuller's White Dog (1982), the original theatrical version of Last Summer has shed its decades-long aura of inaccessibility. No longer confided to worn, fuzzy videotape or vague memories, it is now available for reevaluation.

And, for the most part, it holds up incredibly well. Unlike so many Hollywood films before it that treated adolescent characters as cardboard cutouts, silly caricatures, or unappealing stereotypes, Last Summer defied the trend by using teenagers, who are complex, deeply felt individuals, to explore basic tenets of humanity (this is a major part of its European legacy). Perry's film dug into discomfiting themes of friendship, the abuse of power, and most importantly, how the worst evil can reside in the most unlikely of places. Make no mistake: Last Summer is a downer, with few good things to say about most of its characters (or humanity in general), but it portrays its subjects skillfully and effectively. It is as disturbing as it is intriguing.

Taking place during the hot summer months on Fire Island in New York, Last Summer evokes William Golding's Lord of the Flies, which also explored the dark side of adolescents left to their own devices. In his novel, Golding set a group of British schoolchildren alone on a desert island and chronicled their descent into primal savagery once they were freed of civilized rules and conventional morality. Golding's point was that humans are inherently evil creatures, and it is only the confines of society that keep us from reverting to animals. Last Summer replaces the desert island with a deserted beach and mirrors the absence of adults with absent parents who are too busy with their own lives to bother checking on their children. The look of the film is slightly hazy and deceptively idyllic, with the near absence of adults rendering it almost surreal, as if the adolescent characters are acting out a dream that turns into a nightmare.

The story focuses on four teenagers: Sandy (Barbara Hershey), Peter (Richard Thomas), Dan (Bruce Davison), and Rhoda (Catherine Burns). For the most part, they are the only characters in the film, and they live with little or no restraint save what they impose on themselves. Sandy's mother is suggested obliquely via dialogue and a brief appearance by one of her boyfriends, but otherwise the characters live and act free of adult supervision. Sandy is pretty and fiercely independent, while Peter and Dan are typical, good-looking male buddies, unable to do anything without each other. They quickly form a lithe, tanned trio, spending their days on the empty beach in carefree abandon, bathed in the glow of summer, that youthful symbol of freedom from teachers and responsibility.

However, everything changes with the arrival of Rhoda. Unlike the other three, Rhoda isn't beautiful. She is soft and kind of clumsy, too serious and intellectual for her own good. She has a bad tendency to talk too much about her confused emotions and insecurities, something the other three don't admit because it might make them look weak. Rhoda is an easy target for ridicule, and although the others often succumb to the temptations, they always manage to draw the line. Rhoda clearly annoys them, but they have an inner sympathy for her that allows them to accept her, even if it is on limited terms.

Most of the film unfolds as a frank exploration of teenage angst, complete with sexual curiosity and confusion, drug experimentation, and revealing games of "Truth or Dare." It sets up several scenes where the kids could break the boundaries, but they never quite do. Peter and Dan continually talk about how they want to have sex with Sandy, but they never seem to get up the nerve to ask her, even though she seems to be more than willing. You can sense their imminent desire to break free of social restrictions, and at various points they test the boundaries—when Sandy (off-screen) kills a gull they had previously saved and trained and later when they trick an older man (Ernesto Gonzalez) into a date with Rhoda and use it as an excuse to get him drunk and then abandon him to a group of vicious bullies. These scenes suggest a darker potential, one that we sense is out there even if we are never fully sure if and when it will emerge.

But, emerge it does in the final 10 minutes, when a deeply disturbing act of violence occurs that, within the context of the story, makes perfect, horrible sense. It is shocking because we realize the whole film has been building up to this one awful event; far from a random act of violence, it is the result of tensions and frustrations accumulated throughout the previous 90 minutes. Just like the children in Lord of the Flies, these unrestrained teenagers finally give in to their intrinsic evil, and the results are more than they are willing to accept, leaving them hollow and wordless in the end.

In this regard, Hunter's novel is even darker, as the protagonists happily go on with the rest of their summer as if nothing has happened; their violence has not disturbed them, but rather energized them (the fact that the novel is told from Peter's perspective makes it all the more haunting). The screenplay by Eleanor Perry, who at the time was married to director Frank Perry and had collaborated with him on David and Lisa (1962) and The Swimmer (1968), suggests a lasting consequence for the violence that Hunter's novel studiously avoids. The film ends with Sandy, Peter, and Dan walking up the beach, the deadened look of innocence destroyed—not just lost, but destroyed—etched on their faces. And then we finally understand the full implications of the title Last Summer, which is withheld until the end credits: This was the last summer they lived as innocents, and for their rest of their lives they will be forced to live under the haunting weight of a terrible secret, made all the worse because they brought it on themselves.

Copyright © 2026 James Kendrick

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