Cheap Last Place on Earth (DVD) (Shaw, Ousdal, Von Sydow, Wooldrid, Martin Shaw) Price

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Customer Reviews of Last Place on Earth

Definitely Five Stars!!!
I first watched this film when it was aired on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre back in 1984. Roland Huntford's account of the big race between Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott speaks out the truth that was omitted when Scott's diary was first published, and kept from public interest so that Scott could be claimed as a hero throughout the British Empire. Though Amundsen claimed the South Pole one month ahead of Scott, the British looked upon him as an inferior and giving Scott all the glory. I've had the opportunity as a boy to meet the real Tryggve Gran, the youngest member of the South Pole Expedition more than once, who accompanied Scott to Antarctica as ski instructor. Gran, who was in his late seventies when I met him at his home in Norway, had written several books about the South Pole Expeditions of the two men. Gran knew that Scott was in trouble from the very beginning. The filming sequence was shot in the Arctic regions of northern Canada and Greenland where the actors could experience the real effects that those they portrayed had felt. Temperatures dipped down as low as -60ºF and howling winds were prevalent. This was done in order to get as close to reality as possible. I highly reccomend this video.

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One of the best historical dramas!
I love historical drama and this is one of the best. I am passionate about this production which I first saw in 1986. In spite of its length, I never tire of it. I've watched it many, many times. I learn and understand new things each time I watch it. It led me to read and study the book and many other books, documentaries and material on the subject. This movie is incredibly accurate, realistic and detailed. It inspires me in many ways. It teaches much about the value of meticulous preparation, the nature of honest leadership and human will.

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Superb Iconoclasm
Superb dramatization of Roland Huntford's iconoclstic book of Scott and Amundsen making for the South Pole. The acting is first-rate, with veterans (Stephen Moore, Max von Sydow) and (then) rising talent (Michael Maloney, Hugh Grant) enduring some hardships in Antarctic-like conditions. There was no stinting on this production. The only problem with the script is its determination to tarnish Scott. It not only has to make him a bungler and -- in extreme cases -- a fool, it makes him mean and dominated by his wife (perhaps he went to the pole to die just to get away from her)

One caveat: Since Huntford's book new evidence has thrown his interpretation of events into doubt. Huntford is a first-rate biographer of polar explorers (Nansen, Shakleton). He seems to be determinedly anti-Scott. But Scott's expedition was meticulously planned, employing the latest of science and technology; his use of ponies was not the failure depicted here. He was not as mercurial and indecisive as this drama depicts him. Nor was Amundsen so saintly and all-knowing as depicted here. In an effort to give Amundsen "his due" they thought it necessary to bury altogether the already fading repuation of a heroic explorer who had a run of bad luck (as Amundsen had a run of good luck -- and neither man could budget for luck).

It would be interesting to see a miniseries of this quality that shows Amundsen as a hero and Scott as a tragic hero in light of the new evidence of climatology, based on recent books by Diana Preston and Susan Solomon. There's no reason to take anything away from Amundsen by saying he benefitted from a run of luck Scott lacked. It's too bad this show, following Huntford's thesis but without the corroborating detail, becomes, in the end, not merely a cynical exercise in iconoclasm, but perhaps in character assassination.

Still, for what it is, it's first-rate. But it should be released with a companion disk showing a 2002 "Secrets of the Dead" program that tries to rectify the record on Scott. Scott made mistakes -- the worst was probably taking seaman Evans on the last leg, which was an early bit of "diversity" on his part. But he wasn't quite the monster Martin Shaw devolves into.