THE LAST SUPPER (1996)

THE LAST SUPPER (Sony Pictures, R) Director Stacy Title and screenwriter Dan Rosen have fun blowing the more insufferable tenets of political correctness to infinity and beyond in this cheerily hyper-dramatic black comedy: Five smug liberal grad students bump off a procession of smug right-wingers, each of whom is first invited to join the communal dinner table and fulminate about such evils as homosexuality and abortion. There are a few too many stylistic doodads draped on the one-joke premise -- arty camera sequences, horror-flick lighting, creepy thunderstorms, ominous music, and a heavy-handed visual fixation on the tomatoes that overrun the corpse-enriched backyard. And the performance quality varies from only passable (housemates Cameron Diaz, Annabeth Gish, Courtney B. Vance, Ron Eldard, and Jonathan Penner) to good and gleeful (guests Bill Paxton, Charles Durning, Jason Alexander, and Ron Perlman). But in among the tomatoes is a peach of an idea. And it's great to see Nora Dunn working as a sheriff who wanders into this whacked-out secret garden. B

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