DVD Review: SAVAGE WEEKEND (1979)

Title: SAVAGE WEEKEND

Distributor: Cheezy Flicks

Written and Directed by: David Paulsen

I have to admit, I had never heard of this film before. I thought I was pretty aware of most every Horror film, esp those from the late 70's and 80's, the greatest era of Horror films in my opinion. Somehow I didn't know about this one.

Here is the basic plot from the Cheezy Flicks website:

Nicky, Shirley, Marie, and two others from NYC travel deep into upstate New York for a long weekend vacation. Once at their destination they mix with Otis, Mac Macauley, and some locals who offer supplies, lumber, eggs, erotic cow-milking lessons, and they even like to tell strange tales. While the weekend vacationers have their fun with fishing, boating, nude sunbathing, relieving their sexual frustrations, and throwing costume dinner parties, there also marks the appearance of a masked killer who is dead set on ruining this weekend with whatever weapons are handy.

Ok, so maybe there is a reason I didn't know about this one. Any film that involving "erotic cow-milking" probably isn't going to be a mainstream Horror film. This is probably one of the strangest Horror films I have ever seen. Does that make it bad? No. Does that make it good? Well, No. This films falls somewhere in between. I have always liked weird films. Slasher flicks that follow the same plot line can get pretty boring, so at least this one changes things up a bit. Overall, compared to other slasher films this is pretty tame in terms of the killings. There are only a few kills and there is very little blood overall. This is a not a film for gore hounds. This almost reminds me of an old Italian Giallo film mixed with a slasher in the woods film. I think after watching this film, that will make more sense.

Now, that being said, there are a few memorable scenes, one involving a chainsaw, and the other is a scene of a woman being branded with a red hot branding iron. While most films would cut away and just show the end result, this film shows you the entire thing. This was a very good effect and looked very realistic for an older, low budget film. Congrats to the special effects crew on that shot alone.

The masked killer was another highlight....although he only shows up in the last half of the film, I really enjoyed the scenes he was involved in. The killers mask is very creepy looking, sort of a cross between Leatherface and Michael Myers.

With a larger budget and some more kills, this could have been a classic, unfortunately it falls a little short overall. While I don't think most mainstream Horror fans will like this one, I think there is a section of Horror fans out there looking for something different, and who like weird, off the wall films. This definitely falls into that latter category, and fans of obscure 70's Horror films should give this one a try.

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