After a bank robbery goes wrong a group of thugs are desperately in need of a safe hideaway for a few days. They find themselves in a deserted piece of beach with only one house that seems deserted so the thugs decide to take control. Unfortunately a Nun (Florinda Bolkan) is giving her school students a well deserved break. The thugs led by Aldo (Ray Lovelock) decide that not only will they take the house but the occupants too, using them to quench their erotic hunger.

Last House On The Beach is not dissimilar to about half a dozen other Italian exploitation movies of the time two of which were named in my opening paragraph. The only difference is that this movie is the most seldom seen, and in the UK it never legally made it into the country at all. Even now it's a pretty hard DVD to fin with just one company in the world producing the DVD in a lovingly restored form.

The movie is seen as a rip off of other films, but that's not its only offence. If you were around in the 70's you may remember Roxy Music's Let's Stick Together, if you do you might be offended by the movie's opening moments as a cheap Italian band use the music and create different words for the song choosing to call it "The Landing"; just minutes later a similar musical offense occurs again with another well known song that sadly alludes me, the pain of the rehash being too much for my little head to contend with.

Moving on to the story, it's a typical tired tale of thugs having control until they push their captives too far and they turn on their captors. I won't even try to tell you that this is a better offering, because it's not; all I can say in this movies favour is that of all these types of movie that this is the most beautifully shot. And I'm not just talking scenes, the imagery is amazing, as is the piecing together of the story from a perspective of direction, but this is where the good stuff ends.

The story is incredibly bad, it lacks the power of the twist in power that other movies of a similar nature have, and it's obvious that the balance of power might change. It's also obvious that Sister Cristina (Florinda Bolken) will be the one out of the captives to snap first, you can see it in her eyes from the movies first shots.

As is customary for this sort of movie power comes in the form of sexuality, and the need for sex; the captors feeling it's their God given right to turn things nasty by literally deflowering each one of the virgins one by one.

Unlike a lot of similar movies, all that nasty stuff takes place offscreen instead opting to show you close up slow motion shots of the thug's faces, and I guess this is another plus point for the movie. Those that get a certain sick satisfaction from these sort of movies will be sad to discover that you don't even get to clearly see a pair of breasts, and let's be honest it's going to be a strong portion of buyers that will be buying for this reason. In case you thinking "Ahh! why did he watch it?" to be honest from the basis of completion, I'm deeply passionate about Italian horror, Giallo, and exploitation movies and I needed to see it to help with my historical gatherings of the genre.

Of the cast Florinda though the lead is not the most defined character, simply using her name as bankability of the project, the actress being highly successful in movies like Don't Torture A Duckling, Flavia The Heretic, and Lizard In A Woman's Skin. The most accomplished performance here comes from Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue (Let Sleeping Corpses Lie) star Ray Lovelock. Here looking a little better groomed than he does in the aforementioned movie, as Aldo the lead thug he plays a persuasive act in the sense that he is the only character with secrets, and as a result it makes him the only three dimensional character. Of the rest of the cast all the men are there to just be unpleasant, while the women are there to look pretty and struggle when their turn to be assaulted comes to the fray.

The movie is best known for a scene involving a cane, and a young innocent girl; I'm sure I need draw no pictures here. All I will say is like the other scenes this is worse in thought than reality, and you could easily believe something different is occurring, though equally as unpleasant.

La Settima Donna (Last House On The Beach) is as like myself for completists, it helps to look at the genre with a little more insight, but as a movie is not something I'd recommend. The story is hollow, and filled with holes, and the majority of the performers could easily have been picked up off the street, the girls beautiful, the guys pretty ugly with the exception of Lovelock. On the plus side one of the men, Walter played by Flavio Andreini does amuse by his gradual transformation during the movie. As the movie progresses his make-up gets worse and worse, and in one scene he looks like a very bad drag artist.

Special Features

The DVD has two trailers one a German trailer the other Italian, both exactly thesame but with different wording. There is also a different opening credits for the German version of the movie, again nothing new and nothing to write homeabout.

Also included is the movies score as a separate CD, some nice pieces but mainly dirge and missing those oh so special musical rehashes.

Holy Beauty Vs. Evil Beasts is a documentary looking at the movie, but it's more like the Ray Lovelock show as he explains how he a genuine Italian has a name like Ray Lovelock (and it's not a stage name), how he became an actor thanks to performing Rolling Stones numbers with fellow actor Thomas Milian, and some fairly pointless anecdotes.

Finally the usual and often pointless photo gallery.