My review was written in March 1983 after a Lyric theater screening on Manhattan's 42nd St.
"Savage Weekend" is a poorly-made terror film lensed in 1976 as "The Killer Behind the Mask" and released domestically by Cannon in 1981. Picture is also known under the title "The Upstate Murders", and is reviewed here for the record.
Story has several couples (adults; this film precedes the successful "teens in jeopardy" horror format of late) visiting an upstate N. Y. country house for the weekend. Undeveloped (and oddly distracting) subplot has a vast wooden ship half-built in the barn, with the men discussing its completion schedule.
Apart from nominal story values, "Weekend" is structured as a softcore pornography film, with frequent extraneous sex and/or nude scenes, and even the genre's utilitarian fantasy flashbacks. WIth soft photography by Zoli Vidor, no horror atmosphere is created during this lazy idyll, and the closeup gore shots when a killer-in-a-mask starts picking off the cast seem tacked on.
Lethargic dialog readings and poor scene construction (Director Paulsen emphasizes one-shot closeups that don't cut together well) make for rough going until some minimal suspense in the final reel. Paulsen demonstrated a more professional approach in his subsequent Cannon assignment, the 1980 "Schizoid" (aka "Murder by Mail").
"Savage Weekend" is a poorly-made terror film lensed in 1976 as "The Killer Behind the Mask" and released domestically by Cannon in 1981. Picture is also known under the title "The Upstate Murders", and is reviewed here for the record.
Story has several couples (adults; this film precedes the successful "teens in jeopardy" horror format of late) visiting an upstate N. Y. country house for the weekend. Undeveloped (and oddly distracting) subplot has a vast wooden ship half-built in the barn, with the men discussing its completion schedule.
Apart from nominal story values, "Weekend" is structured as a softcore pornography film, with frequent extraneous sex and/or nude scenes, and even the genre's utilitarian fantasy flashbacks. WIth soft photography by Zoli Vidor, no horror atmosphere is created during this lazy idyll, and the closeup gore shots when a killer-in-a-mask starts picking off the cast seem tacked on.
Lethargic dialog readings and poor scene construction (Director Paulsen emphasizes one-shot closeups that don't cut together well) make for rough going until some minimal suspense in the final reel. Paulsen demonstrated a more professional approach in his subsequent Cannon assignment, the 1980 "Schizoid" (aka "Murder by Mail").