The Last Supper

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The Last Supper is a 1995 movie featuring a pre-Farley Brothers Cameron Diaz, Courtney B. Vance and Ron Perlman with minor appearances by Jason Alexander and Mark Harmon. The movie highlights the possible dangers of making judgments against those that disagree with you and letting very bad things snowball out of control.

The key point is that by taking extreme measures against extremism, one ends up as objectionable and blinkered as the people you oppose.

[edit] Plot

Five youngish seemingly affluent liberal graduate students share a house and a fairly intellectual lifestyle together in Iowa, doing their own gardening, having philosophical and political discussions, badmouthing a conservative blowhard (played by Perlman as a likeness of Rush Limbaugh) and generally being good liberals. One of the students assists a Desert Storm veteran with his car, then invites him over for dinner. The man turns out to be a Holocaust denier and a Neo-Nazi and, in a fit of PTSD, tries to rape one of the female housemates. Another roommate stabs him to death. Even though it's a clear case of defending another's life, they decide to cover it up by burying the veteran's body in the back under tomato plants.

Another housemate suggests that the world is better without a bigot living in it, and the housemates decide to have other dinner guests over, whom they poison to death through a carafe of wine. After killing and burying ten guests of various bigoted and conservative persuasions (many of which are discussed on this site as batshit crazy), things start to get ugly and they begin to have misgivings when they try to force a somewhat naive teenage abstinence education advocate to drink the poisoned wine. In addition, the local sheriff starts snooping around while investigating the original Desert Storm veteran (who, it turns out, was also a pedophile), and one of the housemates kills her too.

They agree to let things cool down, but are tempted by the biggest of opportunities when two of the housemates meet and bring home the aforementioned conservative blowhard for dinner. During dinner, however, it turns out that Perlman's character is actually quite a reasonable, intelligent, moderate and progressive individual, and his reactionary views are purely an act. The housemates then discuss among themselves the problem with killing him. While doing so, Perlman notices the tomato plants, looks at the two carafes of wine (one unknowingly poisoned, the other not), sees something on television about missing people, puts two-and-two together, and pours the bad wine into the housemates' glasses.

[edit] External links


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