Savage Weekend (1979)

Greg Pettis (Jeff Pomerantz) former spokesman for a governor that committed suicide has his son (Adam Hirsch) for the weekend. His ex-wife is off for the weekend or so with her boyfriend Robert Fathwood (Jim Doerr). He is having a boat being built. The group includes broker friend Jay Alsop (Devin Goldenberg), Shirley Sales (Caitlin O'Heaney) and the flamboyant Nicky (Christopher Allport) who has all the best lines. There is a story about a girl being branded with an "H" for "whore" by Otis (William Sanderson). Toward the end of the film a slasher appears.The film opens with a teaser that happens at the end of the film. Greg wears a black suit with a black tie when we first meet him. There are three scenes where the microphone appear and a fourth where there is a microphone shadow. Nicky was great in his bits and they needed to fit him more into the script. Much of the film was "so bad it is good." I watched this on a 50 DVD pack which showed the branding scene and plenty of nudity.Guide: Sex and nudity (Marilyn Hamlin, Caitlin O'Heaney)

I think this is the first case of a slasher film taking a slight nose dive once the killing begins. Luckily, there's still a lot to recommend in this film. Instead of a bunch of teenagers running around arguing, drinking and having sex, you've got a bunch of adults, er arguing, drinking and having sex.Two couples whose names I've forgotten head out to the country to see how construction is going on a large schooner (being built by crazy hick William Sanderson). Also in tow is hard as nails gay guy Nick, who seems to get off on getting a into fights with the locals and basically flaunting it, baby. Our two couples are a bit less interesting. One is a divorcée (and her new boyfriend is having the boat built) the other is her sister, who's playing sexual games with the other guy, including having sex with him out in a field while Nick watches (and injures himself on a barbed wire fence).However, there does seem to be someone else hanging around. The first indication of this is a dead bat nailed to the door of where the couples are staying. We also see someone picking up a mask to wear while they do something. Is it Sanderson, who talks to a grave? Or David Gale, a local fisherman type with eyes for one of the chicks? Or is it someone else? Well, you have to wait almost an hour for the killings to start so a little patience is needed.The problem is, there are several folks in here that would have made perfect heroes, but a lot of them are dispatched by the killer, kind of reducing the cast to the less interesting ones. It's still worth a look if you're into proto-slasher films. There's little gore but a bit of atmosphere, although it's easy to peg who the killer is.This is usually found on 50 movies packs, one in particular also having another seventies slasher film, Creeper, on it too. I like that better to be honest.

Though the 1978 "Halloween" is seen by many to be the horror movie that gave birth to the slasher genre, in actual fact the seven or so years leading up to that movie had other filmmakers make stabs (ahem) in horror movies with remarkable similarities to the modern slasher movie. "Savage Weekend" was one of them, filmed before "Halloween" though released after that other movie became a big hit. But despite beating "Halloween" to the punch, it's not very memorable. True, the direction occasionally has some atmosphere, and there are some welcome scenes of nudity and sex. It's also fun to see a pre-fame William Sanderson. But for the most part the movie is a big bore. We are stuck watching forgettable character for the longest time. Over half the movie passes before the first person get killed, and the kills that there are aren't that spectacular - very little blood, for one thing. And it's pretty easy to figure out who the killer is, since the movie doesn't exactly give us a big list of suspects. If you must watch the movie, make a little game by counting how many times the boom mike (or its shadow) makes an appearance.

Struggling through "Savage Weekend", I was instantly reminded of "Deliverance". Not necessarily because the film also takes place in a remote backwoods area or because there's banjo music playing during the opening credits, but merely because this is such an incompetent and amateurish production that it looks as if it were written and directed by that infamous mentally underdeveloped Banjo Kid from that classic film! This movie is bad, and not just low-budget bad but really BAD to the third degree. We're talking incoherent screenplay, insufferable characters, long stretches of boredom where absolutely nothing happens, predictable twists, laughable killing sequences and utterly senseless dialogs. There's already something very wrong with the title of this dud. "Savage Weekend" is misleading because there's no savagery going on at all. 45 minutes of sheer boredom and then a handful of lousy and bloodless murders does not equal savage in my dictionary. "Sleazy Weekend" I would have accepted, since there's really a lot of sex and female nudity, and "Nonsensical Weekend" would have even been better! Two couples and one flamboyant gay boy head out to a woodsy region to check up on the construction of a boat owned by one of them; a wealthy stockbroker. A considerable amount of time later, we witness someone putting on a reasonably unsettling mask and going on a killer rampage. One of the boat's workmen – Otis – has a grisly past and behaves suspiciously, but the film tries too hard to make him look guilty so you quickly know that it won't be him. There isn't a single moment of genuine suspense or horrific excitement and even the sex sequences start to look tedious and work on your nerves after a while. That's just never a good sign. According to the trivia section on this website, the finished film remained shelved for several years. Well, in my humble opinion, it should have remained shelved for all eternity.