I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

As its re-titling suggests, LAST HOUSE ON THE BEACH is one of the many rip-offs that came out in the wake of Wes Craven's terrifying shocker LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. Each film is caught in a '70s time capsule of sleaze and perversion, depicting innocent young women being terrorised by ruthless criminals. There are two types of rip-off in this case: the low budget US grindhouse flick, and the Italian knock-off. LAST HOUSE ON THE BEACH is one of the latter and it's one of the most boring of the rip offs I've seen. I'd admit right away that these films aren't my idea of entertainment anyway; I'll watch them for the sake of completeness, but I'd rather watch a gore or kung fu flick than see women being raped.Of the ones I've seen, the little-known DAY OF VIOLENCE has been the best and has this one beat hands down. The problem with LAST HOUSE ON THE BEACH is that there's a lot of sitting around and waiting around in between the inevitable bursts of violence, and there's no tension or suspense to be had during these long, drawn out moments. There's a certain repetitiveness to the action which makes this one a chore to watch. For me, these types of hostage films should be all about the suspense but there's little to none here.Instead, what we do get are a couple of deeply unpleasant rape sequences which are played out in bizarre slow motion. It's as if director Franco Prosperi saw Sam Peckinpah's unique editing during the rape of Susan George in STRAW DOGS so decided to try and make his own rape scenes as unforgettable. It certainly highlights the cruelty of the criminals and one scene, involving a woman impaled on a guy's walking stick, crosses way over the line of taste and decency. The only good thing is that the film is far from graphic, keeping things off screen so the viewer uses their imagination instead, but in a way this makes the horrors only more effective. I don't think I'm spoiling too much to say that the trio end up getting their just desserts, but this is annoying as the punishment definitely doesn't fit the crime and is over all too soon (unlike in the Craven film).A few neat camera tricks – disguising the participants in the robbery to begin with, for instance – help to lift this one a little, and there's also a good cast of Euro stalwarts doing their bit. Lead Florinda Bolkan, subject to much humiliation here, was familiar from lots of '70s giallo flicks like Lucio Fulci's DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING, as well as playing the title role in FLAVIA THE HERETIC (clearly the inspiration for her role as a nun here). Ray Lovelock is well known for his turn as the hero of THE LIVING DEAD AT THE MANCHESTER MORGUE, and he carved out a niche in quite a few crime flicks as well. Victims Laura Trotter and Sherry Buchanan starred in a couple of zombie flicks, NIGHTMARE CITY and ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST respectively. Director Franco Prosperi was no stranger to exploitation, having been the guy who kicked off the mondo genre with 1962's MONDO CANE. This is far from his best film.

Not a surprise that The Last House on the Left would have remakes. This is one of them with a twist - it is also a nunsploitation film.Florinda Bolkan (Flavia the Heretic) is Sister Cristina, who has some Catholic schoolgirls in a beach house rehearsing a play when some dastardly evildoers crash the party.The maid (Isabel Pisano) gets killed almost immediately and this serves to terrorize the group. When they strip the nun and make her put on her habit, the camera is on everyone but her. They even rape her off-camera. They did brutally rape one of the schoolgirls (Sherry Buchanan - Zombie 3), and raped and killed another with a stick.Sister Cristina has had enough. As one of the thieves is suffering and pleading for help, she put him out of his misery. She then shows her capability with his gun. All the girls join in and have their fun with the last one.Not nasty enough to be banned by Britain, but nasty enough.

Wes Craven's 1972 shocker THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (itself "inspired" by Bergman's THE VIRGIN SPRING) was such a popular and notorious film during its day that it spawned a whole slew of wannabes, imposters and imitators, particularly in Europe. Some of these movies were actually rip-offs, while others merely tried to cash in on the familiar title but actually had little else in common with Craven's film. At one point, distributors even tried to pass off Mario Bava's REAZIONE A CATENA (aka BAY OF BLOOD), filmed a year before "Last House," as a sequel. There was also "Hitch Hike: Last House on the Left" (better known as simply HITCH HIKE), "The New House on the Left" (aka NIGHT TRAIN MURDERS), THE HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK (1980), LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET (1977), TERROR EXPRESS (1979) and many others. The formula was pretty simple - have a group of criminals/thugs/ killers/psychos take a random group of people (normally women) hostage and proceed to humiliate, abuse, terrorize, rape and kill some of them off before allowing the survivors to turn the tables on their attackers and get revenge. And that brings us to Franco Prosperi's 1978 cash-in LAST HOUSE ON THE BEACH, which was originally filmed as LA SETTIMA DONNA (THE SEVENTH WOMAN) and was also released under the more generic title TERROR. It follows the above formula pace-for-pace, plot point-for-plot point and though it's watchable for the most part, it brings absolutely nothing new or all that interesting to the subgenre.Florinda Bolkan (who is too talented to be appearing in ripoffs such as this one) stars as Cristina, a teacher and sister-of-the-cloth who is spending an extended weekend at a remote beach house preparing for a Shakespeare performance with five female students. Elsewhere, three thugs; Aldo (Ray Lovelock), Walter (Flavio Andreini) and Nino (Stefano Cedrati), have just robbed a bank and left several dead bodies in their wake. They end up needing a place to hide out for a few days and stumble upon the beach house, where they quickly murder the maid (with an iron to the head) and take Cristina and her nubile students hostage. From then on out, the films plays out basically as a series of sexual humiliations, gropings, beatings, attempted rapes and actual rapes. The captors do such nice things as making Cristina strip and change into her nun's habit in front of her students, sticking their hands down the girls panties to see if they're still virgins and forcing Cristina to watch one of her students get bent over and raped (in slow motion, no less). The guys finally send Cristina over the edge when they rape one of the more troublesome girls, Eliza (Sherry Buchanan), to death with a cane. The final revenge exacted by the women is almost as bland as it is predictable.Though numerous scenarios play out in an unpleasant way, the film isn't nearly as harrowing or impactful as it could have been. One reason is the stereotypically obnoxious portrayal of the three bad guys, which is so frequently OTT and one-dimensionally sleazy that it detracts from the overall realism of the film. Another is the portrayal of the anonymous wide-eyed schoolgirls, who aren't allowed even a glimpse of individual personality. These are simply evil oversexed bad guys versus virginal cowering good girls of the cardboard cut-out variety that don't make one care much either way about what's going on to whom at any given time. Bolkan helps out the best she can. She's the type of actress who is able to convey a lot in a subtle, quiet way - minus the hysterics - and she did a fair job contrasting the grating OTT male attackers to an extent.So while this film is basically a lesser copy of something better (and even sits in the shadow of some of the other lesser imitations), it's still fairly well scored and photographed for what it is. The beach house setting itself was pretty good setting, and there's enough nudity, sleaze and sexual violence directed toward underage-looking teenage girls for those wanting to see that. Personally though, I can't say that I was all that impressed. There aren't very many suspenseful or thrilling moments, just lots of progressively tedious attacks scenes leading to a predictable and ho-hum finale.

Last House on the Beach (1978) * (out of 4) Yet another Italian rip off of Wes Craven's Last House on the Left, which of course was nothing but a rip of Ingmar Bergman's masterful The Virgin Spring. A nun and her five students are practicing a concert in a house far away from anyone when three thugs, running from the police, break in on them. Soon the thugs are raping, torturing and beating the girls so the nun finally gets fed up and takes her own revenge. I've seen a lot of these rips over the years but this one here is without a doubt the worst of the bunch. If you're looking for a watered down version of the Craven film then this is the movie for you as the violence all takes place off screen and we're often just shown the aftermath. The rape sequences are very tame and often don't even feature any nudity. As with the Bergman film, this movie tries to use religion as an undertone but it never works. The entire film is very lazy but what makes the film unwatchable are all of the characters who are annoying from the start and only get worse. The performances are what you'd expect from a film like this but the direction is quite horrid as Prosper brings no energy, suspense or drama to the film. Florinda Bolkan, a Euro Horror favorite to many, plays the nun and does a decent job with the role.