Dirty Weekend

This is a nasty and crude little offering from Mr Winner, which has quite a lot of heinous and cruel male characters in it. All set amongst the splendid flowers and apparent tranquility that is Southern England. But no, we are treated to some despicable men, such as a two-timing rotter; a psychopathic threatening phone-caller; a lecherous copper; a randy, grotesquely obese chap; a dentist who forces a woman to give him fellatio; and three nefarious blokes who savour in trying to set fire to an old vagrant woman. The picture has a definite menacing air to it throughout, has the lead lady Bella is repeatedly threatened by the said men and takes revenge and eventually gets her justice. I'm not going to entirely condemn the film, it has some moments, but it is difficult to watch. Only really for vigilante and Michael Winner film fans.

Despite having a vigilante theme it's very difficult to believe that Michael Winner had anything to do with this movie . All through the running the subtext screams " Men are sexual sadists , you can't trust any of them , kill them all " which is far closer to a deluded feminist world view , and what ever you think of Mr Winner there's no way you can describe him as a feminist . But the penny drops the more the film goes on when you realise it's not meant to be a serious film and couldn't have been made by a serious film maker

The plot revolves around a woman called Bella who moves to Brighton and is the victim of a stalker who phones her when she's alone , though the stalker is both written and played in such an over the top manner that he's somewhat difficult to take seriously . Bella then takes advice from an Iranian clairvoyent ( As I'm sure anyone in her situation would do ) then it's revenge against the penis people all the way

As you can imagine I had this sussed out as a role reversal of DEATH WISH but about two thirds of the way through the entire tone of the movie changes when we're introduced to " The lady in red and spanky fat boy " . I wasn't convinced farcical black comedy was part of the masterplan at development stage , it's like Winner and co have got fed up making a straightforward revenge drama and had decided to lighten things up a little . Unfortunately the production started off bad and this black comedy element makes the film even worse

DIRTY WEEKEND is a bad movie , badly written , badly produced and badly cast ( Lia Williams goes through the movie with one expression ) but what makes it really bad is the offensive portrayal of men . There are a lot of nasty b@stards out there but it's ridiculous the way Bella runs into every creep , pervert and rapist in the country which gives coincidence a bad name . Though perhaps the movie isn't supposed to be taken seriously and I guess some people might see the movie as a guilty pleasure

I first saw this film at the cinema and found it quite funny in a sick sort of way. What I liked about it was the British feel to it. The story is a Death Wish type clone (Death Wish also directed by Mr Winner)it has some memorable characters in and also some memorable places from Brighton. If your after a bit of fun and don't mind some sick scenes you may like this. Also this film was banned from video release for a few years back in the mid 90's. There are some scenes cut out from the cinema release, but that does not affect the film in any way. Oh I also liked the soundtrack which suited the film very well. Even by today's standard this film has a dark and moody feel to it and may even find it's very own cult status one day.

I only saw this as I was writing a review for a college magazine at the time and thought it would be easier to write about a bad movie than a good one. I didn't realise just how easy it wou ld be. I saw it on a wet afternoon in a mutliplex, and 4 of the 6 people in the cinema walked out. I wish I was one. Awful in every possible respect, if Edison had known that this would happen to his great invention he would have hid the patent. Not out of curiosity, masochism or desperation should you give this a look.

Dirty weekend is a very well made film- as you would expect from Michael Winner. To sum it up, it is basically a feminist version of Death Wish about a woman who gets pushed around, experiences her own powerlessness and one day decides she's had enough. Needless to say that she then spends a weekend with a gun meeting a lot of creeps. Some of ther performances are great. David McCallum as psyohopathic dentist alone is worth watching the film. As always Winner plays effectively with audience by getting us to actually want her to pull the trigger. Of course, it is all black/and white in terms of morals and the likelihood of meeting such an assortment of scumbags in one weekend is not really that big. But all in all the film is well made. What impressed me most was the very effective use of music in the film. I found it remarkable that the French film "Baise Moi" allegedly a feminist masterpiece is a shameless rip off of Dirty Weekend, lifting complete scenbes from Winner's film.