Harry (Chuck Shamata), a rich lothario dentist, invites model Diane (Brenda Vaccaro, who, at 37, is perhaps a little too old for the part) to spend the weekend with him at his remote lake-side mansion. On their way to the house, the couple have a run-in with four loutish locals who attempt to force their car off the road. After a high speed chase along winding dirt tracks, Brenda (who is at the wheel) succeeds in forcing the thugs to crash into a river. Peeved at having been bested by a woman, head thug Lep (Don Stroud) vows to find the couple and make them pay.
Tracking them to their weekend retreat, the gang terrorise the couple before finally killing Harry and raping Brenda. However, the feisty model eventually gets her revenge; she manages to escape from the house and proceeds to bump off her tormentors one-by-one.
Death Weekend, a violent rape/revenge thriller in the same vein as the infamous The Last House on the Left, contains all of the ingredients one might expect from such a filma pretty protagonist, a gang of thoroughly vile bad guys, and violent retributionbut, thanks to particularly poor pacing and not enough in the way of graphic nastiness, winds up being less effective than many a movie from the same genre.
My main gripe with Death Weekend is that it takes ages to get going (an hour passes before the gang begin to kill and rape); whilst this admittedly gives us plenty of time to get to really hate Lep and Co. (a nasty bunch made all the more repulsive thanks to the way that they continually delight in mocking their victims with high pitched laughter), it doesn't leave enough time for a truly satisfying finalé.
Not only does Brenda dispatch all of the thugs in very quick succession, but she also does so in a fairly bloodless manner. Being a gore-hound, I wanted her to get real nasty, but instead of buckets of gore, we get a tame throat slashing, an immolation, a drowning, and death by car.
Death Weekend will definitely be of interest to fans of gritty, 'grindhouse' cinema, but I certainly wouldn't class it as essential viewing.
Tracking them to their weekend retreat, the gang terrorise the couple before finally killing Harry and raping Brenda. However, the feisty model eventually gets her revenge; she manages to escape from the house and proceeds to bump off her tormentors one-by-one.
Death Weekend, a violent rape/revenge thriller in the same vein as the infamous The Last House on the Left, contains all of the ingredients one might expect from such a filma pretty protagonist, a gang of thoroughly vile bad guys, and violent retributionbut, thanks to particularly poor pacing and not enough in the way of graphic nastiness, winds up being less effective than many a movie from the same genre.
My main gripe with Death Weekend is that it takes ages to get going (an hour passes before the gang begin to kill and rape); whilst this admittedly gives us plenty of time to get to really hate Lep and Co. (a nasty bunch made all the more repulsive thanks to the way that they continually delight in mocking their victims with high pitched laughter), it doesn't leave enough time for a truly satisfying finalé.
Not only does Brenda dispatch all of the thugs in very quick succession, but she also does so in a fairly bloodless manner. Being a gore-hound, I wanted her to get real nasty, but instead of buckets of gore, we get a tame throat slashing, an immolation, a drowning, and death by car.
Death Weekend will definitely be of interest to fans of gritty, 'grindhouse' cinema, but I certainly wouldn't class it as essential viewing.