The Last Supper

(1995) ***½


Jude, Pete, Paulie, Marc, and Luke are five liberal graduate students who share a house together. Out in the middle of nowhere Pete gets stuck, and Zach a truck driver, gives him a lift home. As his housemates are about to have dinner, Pete asks Zach to join them to show his thanks. The mood turns sour when during a dinner discussion they pose the question, “ If you met Adolph Hitler when he was just a struggling cartoonist, wouldn't you have done the world a big favor by murdering him?” The housemates decide they would kill him but Zach doesn't share their point of view. When he proclaims Hitler had the right idea, the argument gets heated, rapidly advancing to a fight. Suddenly Zach whips out a knife, the housemates struggle to get the knife from him and during the struggle Zach is accidentally killed. They decide to bury his body in the backyard vegetable garden. Afterward they have a lengthy discussion about the evening’s events. They come to the conclusion that the world would be better off without a terrible hateful person like Zach. Furthermore, they would be doing the world a great justice if they killed more ignorant people just like him. They make a decision to have a weekly dinner party and each of them would take turns bringing a guest. If the group considers the guest okay they get to live. But, if the guest gets the thumbs down then a special mixture of poisoned wine is served to them and they wind up keeping Zach company in the veggie patch. All is well and good until the local sheriff starts poking around in the tomato plants.

This is a nice example of how a good idea in theory, sometimes doesn’t work out so well when it’s executed. As the bodies pile up the tension between the housemates escalates. Some are a little too eager for the kill while others are starting to question the whole process. When the sheriff begins questioning them about a missing child they become unnerved. They start arguing amongst themselves and begin to doubt each other’s trustworthiness. As the stress level rises they begin to get a little sloppy, everyone is nervous and edgy and things begin to fall apart. I loved the choices of dinner guests including a priest, a skin head & an annoying teenage abortion activist. The discussions that precede the inevitable murders are classic. The cast works well, I especially loved Courtney B. Vance. He was just so into the killing, he was hysterical. I liked this film the first time I saw it somewhere in the late 90’s and have to say that it has retained it’s magic for me some 10 years later. Very entertaining and intellectually witty.