LAST SUMMER (1969)
Label: Warner Archive
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: R
Duration: 97 Minutes 8 Seconds
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1)
Director: Frank Perry
Cast: Barbara Hershey, Bruce Davison, Richard Thomas, Catherine Burns
The dark summer vacation drama Last Summer (1969) come to us from the husband-wife team of director Frank Perry (The Swimmer, Rancho Deluxe) and screenwriter Eleanor Perry, based on the 1968 novel of the same name by Evan Hunter. It offers a chilling exploration of four teens vacationing on Fire Island of the coast of Long island. The film opens with pals Dan (Bruce Davison, Willard) and Peter (Richard Thomas, TV's The Waltons) walking on the beach when they encounter the attractive teen Sandy (Barbara Hershey, The Entity) who is nursing a wounded seagull she has found injured. The two teens are attracted to Sandy and don't really care about the bird initially, but they stick to her and help nurse the bird back to health. As they bond they drink beer, smoking weed and dabble with some coming-of-age sexual experimentation, becoming inseparable. They become a foursome when freckle-faced wallflower Rhoda (Catherine Burns, ABC Movie of the Week Night of Terror - watch it for free on YouTube HERE) shows up one day to scold them on the beach about their treatment of the seagull, which she believes is cruel. The threesome becomes a improbably foursome, and things take a dark turn when the seagull is found dead, it's at this point that the teens turn to malicious pranks to keep themselves entertaining, like when Sandy arranges a blind date on the mainland with older man, Anibal (Ernesto Gonzalez, The Possession of Joel Delaney) through a nascent computer dating services and forcing Rhoda to take her place, the group getting him good and drink before leaving him to have the snot beat out of him by mainland bullies, which upsets Rhoda.
The film is a naked examination of youth left on their own, parents are nowhere to be found here, Rhoda's father (Peter Turgeon, The Possession of Joel Delaney) shows up in exactly one scene, they bored, willing to try new stuff, and often find themselves committing increasing dark acts of mischief, lead by Sandy, who seems to be the dark influencer among them, with Dana and Peter drawn into her dark orbit, while Rhoda, who initially seems to have a good head on her shoulders and a true moral compass, eventually succumbs to the per pressure and the need for approval, conforming to the group dynamic, which eventually result in a horrifically group sexual assault, that the film leers in on, and then rolls the credits, leaving you in shock of what you just witnessed. The magic of Perry's film is it is presented in such a non-judgmental way, it starts off slow, and it build, there's a darkness rom the get-go, an ambiguos atmosphere of teen tragedy is being broadcast early on, and it slowly increases with Sandy's psychological bullying, the boys kowtowing to her darker impulses, while Sandy, who initially fights against it, also gets swept up in it, too.
The young cast is wonderful, they capture that dark magnetism of youth, and how easily in a peer group you're suspectable to those darker impulses as you test boundaries, especially without the guardrails of attentive parenting, that teens left to their own devices, compounded by boredom and an excess of freedom, will sometimes find themselves doing some pretty heinous things. Catherine Burns gives a particularly raw and emotionally tuned performance as the wallflower Rhoda, giving a monologue about a tragedy she suffered when her mom drowned years earlier. Up until that scene she was sort of the fourth somewhat hanger-on character, but after that scene she's our newly established POV, and we continue to experience the film through her eyes. It seems a shame to me that her acting career did not take off after this, when her three other co-stars who have had pretty durable careers to this day. The film starts of with vibes of a lazy summer coming-of-age film story slowly turns around and becomes something unusually cruel and ugly, but it's told in a disarming and non-exploitative way, which is why it's such a gut-punch when the horror arrives.
Audio/Video: Last Summer (1969) has long been hard to come by, never having had a legitimate release in the digital age, till now. The film makes it's miraculous HD debut on Blu-ray from Warner Archive, who continue to do the Cinema Lords work, presenting the film in 1080p HD framed in 1.85:1 widescreen. This is a restoration and reconstruction sourced from a new 4K scan of the best-available preservation elements. These elements include the first four reels of Last Summer's original camera negative, with the remaining footage loving reconstructed from two different sources, an interpositive and an internegative. Film grain is course and natural looking, textures are string and fine detail. Colors look terrific, clothing, bathing suits and beach towels, blue ocean waters, greens of the beach grass, and the warm glow of summer sun are all conveyed convincingly. The cinematography has a soft hazy look by design, which i thought conveyed the summery feels quite nicely, it sort of reminded me of that hazy vision you get after swimming, which was quite fitting.
Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 2.0 dual-mono with optional English subtitles. The track is good and clean sounding, it's authentically flat sounding, a lot of the dialogue was added in post so it has that odd quality to it. The Joe Simon soundtrack and songs sound great.
Onto the extras, this is a special occasion indeed, as Warner Archive release, as good as they look and sound are typically limited to offering legacy extras that previously existed. With Last Summer they know they have something special and have treated in quite well, with some tasty extras, which are appropriately Larry Karaszewski-centric, because he has been a champion of this film for years and was integral to the restoration process. We start off with a brand new Audio Commentary by Golden Globe-winning Screenwriter Larry Karaszewski and film historian/author Justin Bozung, which is a proper celebration of the film, noting the production history, cast and crew, various iterations of the script and how it differs from the source novel, the complex themes, and it's very brief home video history and what it took to finally bring it to HD.
We also get two 2026 post-screening Q&A from, the first is a 30-min March 29, 2026 post-screening Q&A at the American Cinematheque in Santa Monica with Larry Karaszewski, with co-stars Barbara Hershey and Bruce Davison, they offer warm memories of the making of the film, their time on Fore Island, bonding experiences, and giving tribute to the late Catherine Burns, as well as discussing the death of one of the seagulls used in the film which deeply affected Hershey, so much so that she temporarily changed her acting named to Barbara Seagull! We also get a 24-min Post-screening Q&A at the Paris Theatre in New York with Larry Karazewski and Richard Thomas from May 3, 2026 who also has warm recollections of the making of the film, being somewhat critical of his own performed while noting that it opened a lot of doors for him professionally.
Additionally we get a Trailers from Hell with Commentary by Larry Karaszewski, a 3-min Allied Artist Promotional Reel, 2-min Theatrical Trailer, plus a 4-min Deleted Scene with Richard Thomas and Ralphe Waite, who would go onto portray the father of Thomas's character in the beloved TV series The Waltons.
The single-disc release arrives in a standard keepcase with a single-sided wrap featuring the original movie poster artwork. Tucked away inside is a 4-Page Booklet with Writing by Larry Karaszewski, and a we even get a Slipcover
featuring a slight variation on the same poster artwork as the wrap. The slipcover is quite a rare treat for a Warner Archive release, that is something usually reserved for their 4K Ultra HD releases (The Searchers, Get Carter, High Society, The Curse of Frankenstein), and a precious few other past Blu-ray titles The Huckleberry Hound Show: The Complete Collection, the Tom and Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology set, the Hanna-Barbera's Superstars 10 set, and the Colt .45 - The Complete Series Blu-ray set.
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary by Golden Globe-winning Screenwriter Larry Karaszewski and film historian/author Justin Bozung
- 3/29/2026 post-screening Q&A at the American Cinematheque in Santa Monica with Larry Karaszewskie, Barbara Hershey and Bruve Davison (29:40)
- 5/3/2026 post-screening Q&A at the Paris Theatre in New York with Larry Karazewski and Richard Thomas (33:36)
- Trailers from Hell with Commentary by Larry Karaszewski (2:34)
- Allied Artist Promotional Reel (2:56)
- Theatrical Trailer (2:19)
- 4 Page Booklet with Writing by Larry Karaszewski
- Deleted Scene with Richard Thomas and Ralphe Waite (The Waltons) (3:43)
Screenshots from the Warner Archive Blu-ray:
Buy it!
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