Directed by Stacy Title in 1995, and written by Dan Rosen. This relatively low budget black comedy boasts an impressive ensemble cast which has only grown in value since the release of the film. It was an obscure title at the time of release despite staring Cameron Diaz (a then rising star) in one of the central roles, and in the intervening fourteen years it hasn’t elevated itself beyond being a minor cult hit. The story follows a group of graduate students who live in a shared house, there is Jude (played by Diaz) a psychology student with a tendency to switch majors from time to time; Pete (played by Ron Eldard of ER and Homicide: Life on the Street fame) a law student from a privileged background; Paulie (played by Annabeth Gish, best known as an addition to The X Files cast in the final season) and her art student boyfriend Marc (played by the directors husband Jonathan Penner); and finally Luke who is studying for his PHD in political science (played by Courtney B. Vance, probably best known as the underwater sound expert in The Hunt For the Red October). These five graduate students have been inviting a different person around for Sunday dinner plus discussion and debate on the various matters they study, during a violent thunderstorm Pete’s car breaks down and he catches a lift with truck driver Zack (played by Bill Paxton). Thankful for Zack’s assistance Pete invites him to be their guest at the dinner table, he reluctantly accepts. It soon becomes apparent that Zack is something of a bigot who makes bold statements such as “Hitler had the right idea” and accuses the Jews of fixing the numbers of dead in World War II, the conversation turns into a heated argument at which point Zack berates them for being a bunch of bleeding heart liberals who mocked soldiers during The Gulf War, “protest is for pusseys” he spits at them before pulling a knife and threatening to rape Paulie, during the following confrontation Zack is stabbed in the back by Marc. Knowing that Zack is a Gulf War Hero and given the way in which he has died the group eventually agree to burying him in the back garden, they justify this action to themselves “Zack’s death makes the world a better place” they say, why should Marc needlessly go to prison? During the subsequent discussions about the event the group come to realise that Zack was right, Liberals protest but never take action whilst the Conservatives do whatever they like; before Zack died he proclaimed that dying for a cause is easy, there’s nothing heroic about dying, but killing for a cause – that takes real guts. The group decide that they will invite a different right-winged guest to the dinner table every Sunday and if they can dissuade them from their bigoted ideals then they’ll let them live but if not they’ll poison them using wine spiked with arsenic and burry them in the back garden along with good ol’ Zack. The latter is exactly what they do as a homophobic priest, an anti-environmentalist, a pro-life member, a homeless basher, and many more visit the Graduate’s house for their titular last supper. Meanwhile a local Sheriff is searching for a missing girl, Jenny Tyler, her investigation crosses paths with the Grad-students homicidal dinner dates and she begins to suspect foul play.
What really makes The Last Supper stand out is the clear characters, they stay in your memory long after the film has finished, it isn’t realistic that a group of graduate students would be studying such diverse subjects and living in the same house, but this is not a major issue for the film. Not only the graduates, but also the guests, Paxton’s turn as Zack, Charles Durning as the homophobic reverend, Jason Alexander (of Sienfeld fame) as the anti-environmentalist and of course Ron Perlman as Norman the Republican politician, who’s vocal and provocative television show plays in the background throughout the film. Perlman gets all the best lines: “These angry feminists and I say ‘angry feminists’ as if there’s some other kind”. Through his outrageously right-winged opinions and his chimpanzee-like-face, Perlman effortlessly steals the film. There is also the character of Sheriff Alice Stanley played by Nora Dunn, an instantly likable character who is affable and believable as a law enforcement officer – she ties the story together in a sense and like Luke she does not fulfil any of the usual female-cop stereotypes - although her investigative prowess suffers continually from severe stultification the likes of which even a Friday the 13th Sheriff’s deputy would be ashamed to admit...
The Last Supper boasts an impressive cast of largely television actors, a simple and almost theatrical script (indeed the film could very easily be a play with a few modifications). Mark Mothersbaugh’s original score and the 1970’s influenced soundtrack are both funky and memorable. Visually the film has a few interesting tricks as Title uses tomatoes to substitute for blood and gore. The group plant tomatoes bushes on all of their victim’s graves and all forms of tomatoes (sun dried or pealed) overwhelm the house as the cupboards are filled with the little red fruit – Marc becomes queasy with all the tomatoes - what he actually means is he’s sick of all the blood shed. The Last Supper is an overlooked gem that succeeds because of its simplicity, most of the action takes place around the dinner table and yet the action never becomes stagnant or placid. The Last Supper is a thought-provoking if somewhat blunt black comedy which will make you laugh and ponders some of the more basic questions of politics. This is a film aimed at audiences of all ages but is particularly pertinent to younger people who are just coming to grips with political ideology as it teaches you to remain faithful to your beliefs and by extension to remain faithful to yourself. M.Dawson |
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What would you do if you met a young art student named Adolph Hitler in Austria in 1909? Knowing what this man would eventually do, despite his innocence at that present moment. Do you kill him to save millions or do you let him go? This question is central to the ethical conundrum of The Last Supper.
The films premise is very simple, the films run time is very short, and at just under ninety minutes it is just long enough to sustain the central conceit and just light hearted enough for the high body count not to raise disturbing suspicions about the central characters morality for the majority of the film. Rosen’s script and Title’s direction carefully explore the switching moral compasses within the group. Paulie and Pete are against the plan from the beginning, but slowly their killer instincts emerge, Pete shoots skeet as a hobby and he begins shooting birds instead. Paulie, the shy and morally forthright girl becomes increasingly sexualised – masturbating instead of having sex with Marc. Jude and Marc on the other hand begin positive about the scheme, but the increasing number of dead bodies begin to take their toll as the act of killing becomes more important to some members of the group than trying to convince these right wingers to see the errors of their ways. At one point a homeless basher has his glass of poisoned wine pressed against his lips, he’s about to take a swig when he ponders if what the group have been saying to him was right, the group don’t know what to do, so Luke takes the opportunity to spur him on, “of course you are entitled to your opinion” he encourages him, the homeless basher takes the reassurance and takes the poison with it. Luke is the most interesting character of the group, he remains positive about the action throughout, he is the main instigator, he sits at the head of the table opposite the guest of honour and he causally continues to eat his dinner as the victims slowly die agonising deaths and he becomes increasingly unstable - one guest refuses to drink the wine so he stabs her in the back. Luke studies political science and as is the case of the potential future leader of the Labour Party David Miliband – people who’ve only studied politics should not be allowed to practice it; a politician requires some sort of anchoring within the real world, be it as a soldier, an accountant, a lawyer, a union leader, a researcher etc. A politician should always have done something before politics, for if he or she hasn’t then they are in it for the politics and not for the people. Luke is single-minded when it comes to his own twisted political agenda, he believes that they’re making a difference as a group and he refuses to acknowledge anyone else’s logic but his own. Also interestingly for this character, he is the only African-American in the group but is far from a token character. He fulfils none of the usual stereotypes for his ethnicity: he’s not a basketball star or some kind of sports hero, he’s not a member of the nation of Islam, he’s not a gangster, he’s not the impoverished black man who’s managed to get himself off the streets – he’s just a man, a human being, the leader of the pack and the most morally unscrupulous of them all. The films rejection of tokenism is arguably it’s most praiseworthy asset. 
The political side of The Last Supper is of particular interest, the politics are not particularly sophisticated. The examples of right and left wing political opinions are blunt, one-sided and unsubtle. But The Last Supper never claims to offer any kind of incites into the world of American politics but instead satirises it through caricaturistic portraits. I first saw The Last Supper in 1995, I was thirteen at the time and found the political side of the story to be very interesting. It brings us back to the initial question, would you kill an innocent Hitler if you had the chance? My knee-jerk reaction, like the protagonists, is to answer “yes”, of course you would kill Hitler to save the millions of lives he’d destroy in the future “I’d use something blunt like a mother-fucking chair” as Marc proclaims. But in saying this you are destroying several of the crucial virtues of liberal idealism. Firstly, liberals are not supposed to kill, they are against the death penalty, they are against murder – state sanctioned or not – so by killing Hitler they would break a cardinal rule, which is of course what our liberal heroes are doing throughout the film. Secondly, liberals believe that a man is innocent until he is proven guilty, if we were to meet Hitler before he’d killed anyone then he would be an innocent, he is not guilty of anything at that time, so we’re judging him for actions he has yet to take, again this is what the protagonists do throughout the film. It is an interesting hypothetical question and perhaps the practical answer is “yes” but the liberal answer is “no”, the same question would later be explored in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report - but of course The Last Supper is a much better film. Zack taught the group that killing for what you believe in is the sign of a real ideology, but who have they taken this lesson from? A violent, racist, killer who fought in the Gulf war. As the end of the story draws closer, the error of their ways becomes more apparent and some realise that what they’ve been doing goes against every principle they have, they’ve become worse than the people they’ve been killing and forget why they were doing this in the first place – their hypocrisy is exposed. A liberal ideal is the freedom of speech, the right to have your own opinion, your own ideals – a liberal may disagree with a conservative’s opinion but should defend his or her right to have that opinion – within The Last Supper opinions which differ from the protagonists are silenced through murder - murder has become a form of praxis. Only a last minute twist and the final potent image questions the climatic reversal. Protest is a powerful tool, it can be more powerful than fighting a war – somewhere along the road the graduates forgot or chose to forget this most basic of historical facts.
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