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#382 Last Summer

Watched: August 9 2026

Director: Frank Perry

Starring: Barbara Hershey, Catherine Burns, Richard Thomas, Bruce Davison

Year: 1969

Runtime: 1h 35min

We continue our streak of feelbad movies with this horrible gem from Frank Perry. Teenagers Sandy (Hershey), Dan (Davison) and Peter (Thomas) meet on Fire Island one summer and bond over a dying seagull. After some improvised veterinary (ornithological?) surgery, Peter becomes Sandy’s new hero and the three of them become inseperable for the season. Both boys are smitten with the fairly uninhibited Sandy, and as they nurse the seagull back to health, get up to drunken shenanigans and laugh together about sexual assault (WTF Sandy’s stepdad???), they develop an unhealthy us-against-the-world mentality.

Fortunately, nothing has ever gone wrong when you mix horned up teenagers, drugs and alcohol, and no adult supervision with summer, sun and rivalry.

Sandy keeps the gull as a pet, but when it does what wild animals do and bites her, she takes it into the woods and brutally murders it. This is what we in the business refers to as “Chekov’s Seagull™” (ok, so it’s not really that, just your run-of-the-mill foreshadowing, but the phrase is just too good to pass up).

“Hot girls keep literary devices as pets”

The trio gradually start hanging out with Rhoda (Burns) who, despite seeming younger, or at least less worldly than them, is not initially intimidated by Sandy and her two minions. They follow the mean girl playbook of adopting her and including her just enough for her to crave their approval, but not enough to actually become part of the crew. More of a pet, really… The only exception is Peter, who seems to genuine like the new girl, at least most of the time.

When he isn’t busy liking Sandy and Dan’s approval more, that is.

We went into this blind, and were intrigued from the start. There are a lot of WTF-moments, such as the normalization of sexually assaulting young girls (both girls have stories about their parents’ friends that are NOT ok). Also, the three guys chasing after them after they’ve been to the cinema (to watch Bergman, it seems – our old dog would have loved it!) – they really decided to go after a girl flanked by two men in order to rape and/or rob her? Seems a bit much, even for rapists. Then there’s Sandy’s psychopathic tendencies and the seagull…

“I may or may not be sleeping with your mother, little girl, but that doesn’t mean a guy can’t shoot his shot?”

Last Summer is a very tense movie and it made us extremely worried, stressed and scared. Rhoda (and Catherine Burns!) was amazing though – despite her insecurities she was the only one who would stand up to Sandy and even in the end, she challenged her “superiority.” Sandy and Dan were just bullies, but we ended up hating Peter the most. He followed along with everything the other two decided to do but then felt really bad afterwards, ok? Like, he’s actually a really nice guy, you see. He didn’t really mean the things he did, he swears. In fact, he didn’t even reeeeally do any of it, he just sort of… participated. But not actively. So you can’t exactly blame him, all right? The other two initiated everything, so they’re the bad guys, really. Honestly, he’s a victim too! Really!

“Besides, if (other) people don’t want to be victims, they should stop putting themselves in vulnerable positions. Such as hanging out with their friends. Or trying to find love through dating ads.”

What we learned: If you keep doing horrible things but then feel bad about them afterwards, it actually changes nothing. You are the literal worst.

MVP: Rhoda. And #Chekovsseagull.

Next time: Midnight Cowboy (1969)

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#381 Kes

Watched: August 6 2026

Director: Ken Loach

Starring: David Bradley, Brian Glover, Freddie Fletcher, Lynne Perrie, Colin Welland, Bob Bowes

Year: 1969

Runtime: 1h 51min

Billy Casper (Bradley) is a working class boy who lives with his mum (Perrie) and his asshole big brother Jud (Fletcher) in Yorkshire. When he’s not in school, he helps support the household through his paper route and petty crime. He’s a cheeky little bastard, but overall very charming and likeable. He is also the poster boy for ADHD.

Literally the poster for ADHD*
*citation needed

Billy decides he’s in his kestrel era when he comes across a nest of the birds. After an unsuccessful attempt at conning a librarian into giving him a library card, he ends up (quite elegantly) stealing a book on falconry from a book shop instead. And then he starts studying.

The librarian clearly did not know about the code of librarians everywhere – if a child wants to learn, you let them fool you into giving them a library card. (There is of course the possibility that she is a Night Vale Librarian… In which case Billy’s lucky to escape with his life.)

Now, Billy may not be the brightest or most attentive student in school, and several people tease him for not being able to read, but when that hyperfocus kicks in it really kicks in. He reads diligently, kidnaps (chicknaps..?) one of the young kestrels and, with the book to guide him, starts training her.

Ah – the time before YouTube tutorials! Just a boy and his stolen book.

One of his teachers, Mr Farthing (Welland), picks up on his student’s new obsession and gets him to explain and teach his process to the other kids in his class. This in particular is a lovely scene which seems to be the only time Billy has ever been given any sort of praise and positive attention in school.

Thank the gods for Mr Farthing. Every other faculty member in the film is perpetuating the harmful stereotype that all teachers are failures, sadists, making up for being losers in school themselves, or just there to relive their glory days as they never amounted to anything. In reality, that is only true of some of us…

OK, Edgar, we know we haven’t exactly been vigorous in our blogging and we may have been letting you down a bit, but why are you determined to break our hearts like this??? We swear we’re good people deep down. Just easily distracted and somewhat lacking in the follow-through department. But we don’t deserve to be hurt this way…

Low key the best football scene in movie history though. We were more engaged than during the World Cup!

That being said, we loved a lot of things about this movie. Billy was awesome, Mr Sugden (Glover) was hilarious in the absolute worst way possible, the aforementioned scene where Billy is given the stage in class was beautiful, and there was a lot of good people and things sprinkled in amid all the horrible and depressing stuff. The overall feeling after watching it isn’t entirely bleak either – there is a lot of hope here. Still, the second half of the movie had us increasingly stressed as we suspected a happy ending was not forthcoming… Is it worth the watch? Yes, definitely. However, be prepared to feel many things.

Don’t worry – Billy and Kes became a rich and famous falconry act and lived happily ever after. Cheeky bastards.

What we learned: We stand by our decision that this movie should be titled Exploring ADHD With Kestrels.

MVP: Hyperfocus.

Next time: Last Summer (1969)

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#380 I Start Counting

Watched: May 27 2026

Director: David Greene

Starring: Jenny Agutter, Bryan Marshall, Clare Sutcliffe, Simon Ward, Gregory Phillips, Lana Morris, Billy Russell, Madge Ryan, Michael Feast

Year: 1969

Runtime: 1h 45min

The List has once more been updated, and thus our numbering has changed. For details on how we deal with this, look here. While we skip back a couple of numbers, we’re still in 1969, and today we’re serving up a movie we had never heard of (which honestly says more about us than the film) but that we ended up enjoying very much indeed: I Start Counting. (Also, as an added note, we’re having more and more trouble finding movie posters in landscape format, which works a lot better in a blog context than the more classic format above. We rue the day lobby cards went out of fashion…)

Word of warning – the creep factor in this is fairly high at times…

15 (or 14..? De lærde strides [Norwegian expression meaning something along the lines of “the scholars (in this case, the internet) are not in agreement.” Did this minor detail deserve such a long digression? Probably not. But you’re welcome for the language lesson. Now back to our regularly scheduled broadcast]) year old Wynne (Agutter) lives with her adopted family and haunted stuffed rabbit. Her hobbies include Catholicism, brushing her hair, and having secret and inappropriate sexual thoughts about her 32 year old “brother” George (Marshall). We did mention that she’s adopted, right..? Somehow, that fact only makes it slightly less disturbing…

The teenager might be the one with the crush, but honestly the 32-year-old doesn’t do much to make their relationship more appropriate…

As if the fact that the object of her sexual awakening is part of her immediate family (and over twice her age) didn’t complicate things enough, Wynne begins to suspect that George is also the local serial killer, responsible for the deaths of several young women in the area. Particularly the area surrounding their former residence, where a lot of the action takes place. She starts investigating, occasionally aided by her best friend Corinne (Sutcliffe). Can this messy situation ever be happily resolved?

“I take it this suspicion immediately quelled any romantic feelings you’ve been nursing for him, right?”
“Weeeeeeell…….”

I Start Counting was a great watch! Jenny Agutter is amazing as Wynne, and we also thoroughly enjoyed Clare Sutcliffe as her bff. We loved the portrayal of teenage girls impatient to grow up, although their focus on older men was creepy af. Then again, the boys their age weren’t exactly positively portrayed in the movie either, so we can sort of see where they were coming from. Additionally, we loved Wynne’s other brother Len the Stoner (Phillips) (and his friend Jim [Feast]), the school girls during the priest’s visit (“What does the pope have against the pill?”), the soundtrack, drunk Wynne, and most of all the teenage dynamic between the two best friends.

No, but what DOES the pope have against the pill though???

We always enjoy a good murder mystery. However, in this case, the murder part was definitely the least interesting thing about the film, which says a lot about the rest of it. This movie is intriguing, occasionally tense, often hilarious, and overall a good time, with some great performances. Whether you’re here for crime or the coming-of-age story of a young girl (both of which could easily be classified under “horror”), I Start Counting is definitely worth the watch.

We mentioned the haunted (or possible possessed, cursed, bedevilled, damned or similar) stuffed rabbit, right? We spent half the movie scared that Wynne might accidentally spill blood on it and bring it to life in a sort of Dusk Till Dawn/Parasite-esque genre shifting twist. We will not spoil anything by revealing more…

What we learned: Incels are nothing new…

MVP: The Friendships of Teenage Girls

Next time: Kes (1969)