Savage Weekend

SAVAGE WEEKEND has some problems. However, it has some good points as well, including the character named Otis (William Sanderson). Sanderson plays him with just the right mixture of backward hick and unbalanced menace.

The nefarious Mac Macauley (David Gale) is also quite good in a wicked "macho man" sort of way. His dialogue on the fishing boat is priceless, especially during the branding iron flashback sequence.

As for the rest of the cast, they're very dull indeed, in spite of their disrobing every few minutes.

THE PROBLEMS: #1- It takes over half the movie's running time before anyone gets killed! #2- The acting can get pretty wooden -like a sentient forest- at times! #3- The boom mic is visible in several scenes, making them painful to watch!

Incredibly, even with all of its flaws, once the killer puts on the mask this becomes an effective horror movie. Made two years after TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and BLACK CHRISTMAS, and pre-dating HALLOWEEN by two years, WEEKEND gets points for originality, a nice twist, and a boffo finale!

Be sure to watch the uncut version only...

There is just something compelling about this little known slasher/mystery, produced in the late 70's. The acting is solid, the characters seem realistic, and even though not much happens in the first 40 or so minutes, the trashy sex scenes and slow character development keep you hooked, until the murders start. The murders are seriously not the most memorable, (except for maybe the needle in the head) but Savage Weekend keeps the viewer watching, with a lurid story filled with sex and climaxing with violent murders. The revealing of the killer is not exactly shocking, if you pay attention either. Consider it a slasher with some melodrama.

Low budget "slasher" film of a very odd, sometimes interesting nature about a group of people going to upstate New York for the weekend only to find death. It seems that the man who owns the property there is building/restoring a boat - which otherwise does not figure prominently into the story. While some of the scenes are very tense and horrific, the film also has oodles of gratuitous nudity, a homosexual man flaunting it and sticking sharp objects into himself for no apparent reasons, and some really strange locals that make upstate New York look like Hillbilly land. The cast is made up of unknowns, but most of them are adequate in their limited roles. There is a bizarre sexual current throughout the film. The first "real" death doesn't come for almost an hour, so this isn't that fast-paced in any way. Yet, despite its inadequacies, Savage Weekend is not your average, run-of-the-mill slasher film. There are, as previously mentioned, some very shockingly filmed scenes. The basement scene with the saw being one EXCEPT for the resolution of that scene. The film has a hanging, a duel with a machete and a chainsaw, an impaling, and one individual is needled in the most extreme manner. What was that whole scene with the hook about?

Savage Weekend is quite an interesting movie. It's intriguing because, while it looks like many of the countless slice and dice flicks that made up the slasher cycle, it was in fact made some time before these films became popularised and clichéd. It displays some facets that would go on to constitute the classic style slasher film, yet it was made in 1976 and only released three years later in the wake of the huge success of Halloween (1978). It seems to clearly have been a movie somewhat ahead of its time in this respect. Its story is one that would go on to become fairly standard in this sub-genre. A group of rich urban friends travel to a remote location for some R&R, before long a masked psychopath begins picking them off.

Notably, the characters here are adults, in this respect it deviates from the later slasher template which focused almost exclusively on teenagers. One thing these adults do have in common with their teenage descendants, however, is that they seem to spend an inordinate amount of time having sex. In fact Savage Weekend is pretty ram packed with abundant nudity. On the other hand, it also spends an unusually long time on the plot set-up, with a reasonable amount of character development before the killer finally kicks into action. Maybe it spends a little too long on the build-up in fairness, as it does feel at times that the movie could do with a little more thrills and suspense but in the final half hour, the bloody action is certainly ramped up.

The cast was also quite notable for featuring a couple of actors who would go on to star in two 80's cult classics - William (Blade Runner) Sanderson and David (Re-Animator) Gale play a couple of the local hicks. The other most prominent presence in the film was unquestionably the boom mic, which popped up so often and in such hilariously prominent ways that I felt that it should really have been given a special mention in the end credits.

"Makes 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' look like kids stuff", the back of the VHS box boldly proclaims. It can dream. "Savage Weekend", made in 1976 as "The Killer Behind the Mask" but not securing a release until '79, is completely lacking in a lot of things - competent editing and storytelling being the major things - but it is one mad film and is very enjoyable. Also, it predates "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th", making it a serious contender for being the granddaddy of the slasher sub-genre, thus demanding of attention. There is quite a lot of good beneath the madness and rough edges here. Inspired by Giallo and working in elements of the splatter sub-genre - I can only presume that writer/director David Paulsen had seen the infamous and genre flag-carrier "Blood Feast" - Paulsen aimed for something original and frightening with his meagre budget, and although it is far from a graceful or even coherent picture at times, Paulsen did just enough here to get his name in the books.

We are introduced to the motliest of motley crews. Marie is recently separated from her husband. She leaves her kid with him for the weekend as she sets off into the countryside with her new lover, who is taking her and her sister with the man she is currently seeing, and a gay best friend, out to his cabin for the weekend as he inspects the progress being made on the reconstruction of a boat he has bought. It's being done by a local lunatic of a redneck, who may or may not want to kill them all when they get down there. David Gale of talking-head "Re-Animator" fame plays another hostile local in a very early leading role. I confess that I didn't even recognise him!

So what happens? A lot or very little depending on your view. There's a lot of messing about but the characters are so fun and interesting that this is the strongest point of the film. Christopher Allport as the gay man Nicky is brilliant. And I have to say that his character was really ahead of it's time. A flamboyant, but strong, homosexual man, who easily dispatches two braindead rednecks who give him hassle in a bar. I don't think too many filmmakers were doing such portrayals in the early 70s. The other actors provide surprisingly good performances, also. I loved Jim Doerr's acting in the scenes where he finds the victims of the mysterious killer - "Marie! ... Oh My God!" From one scene to another, it's surprisingly very natural and realistic! Usually you have actors going over-the-top but something about Doerr in these scenes stood out to me from the thousands of other horror films I've seen. "Savage Weekend" is of serious cult status and I actually found it difficult to rate. On one hand it is absolutely terrible. The editing is very bad at times - especially at the end with the saw scene. The music and sound effects are horrendous. But the performances, the grainy, trashy 1970s colour and look - the only similarity that this has with the great "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", I might add, despite the marketing's bold claims - along with the sheer undeniable originality that this had at the time in terms of a killer stalker a group of people and dispatching them one by one - junior films of a similar vintage such as "Halloween" would do it better, but anyway - make this something of an ugly gem. I feel compelled to watch it again. Maybe it will become a Halloween season favourite of mine? Maybe it will earn a higher rating from me in the future? "Savage Weekend" definitely sails in 'so bad it's good' waters, but it sails stronger than others.