Brenda Vaccaro stars as a fashion model spending the weekend with her dentist boyfriend (Death Wish V’s Chuck Shamata). While on their way to his lakeside retreat, they are terrorized by a gang of hooligans in a hot rod. Little do they know Vaccaro can really drive and she manages to run the creeps off the road. Eventually, the goons find out where they are staying and set out to get revenge.
Produced by Ivan Reitman and written and directed by William (Funeral Home) Fruet, this Canadian-lensed thriller is anchored by a fine performance by Vaccaro. She’s allowed to be stronger and more capable than many of the women in jeopardy you usually see in these kinds of films. She certainly shows more backbone than her boyfriend and puts up a heck of a lot more of a fight. It’s Don Stroud who steals the movie as the psycho ringleader of the gang of crazies. Stroud always excelled at playing unhinged characters, but this is one of his best performances.
Death Weekend proves to be a little better than you’d expect at just about every turn. Just when the film looks like it’s going to settle down into a lull, Fruet will introduce a nasty little touch to keep it interesting. Take for instance the scene where Vacarro is getting settled in her room and the camera cuts back to show that maybe Shamata isn’t such a nice guy after all. Another little touch I liked was when the camera shows a “No Trespassing” sign and then slowly pans down to show that someone is indeed trespassing. Fruet’s handling of the opening chase sequence is even much better than you’d expect.
There’s also a bit of a class warfare element here. The blue-collar thugs are having way too much fun dressing down the well-to-do dentist and his interior design choices. They also relish taking advantage of the classy fashion model that is clearly out of their league.
While Death Weekend is technically a rape n’ revenge movie, they don’t spend as much time on the rape as you might think, and it’s not done in an overly gratuitous manner. It was made in between Straw Dogs and I Spit on Your Grave and contains elements of both of those films. While not on the same level, it remains a crackling and effective thriller in its own right.
The revenge sequences are pretty sweet too. They involve stabbing, explosions, vehicular manslaughter, and my favorite, quicksand. When I was a kid, I had a fear of quicksand, so every time, I see someone die via quicksand in a movie, it gets to me. As a connoisseur of quicksand scenes in cinema, it delights me to say, Death Weekend has one of the best.
AKA: The House by the Lake.
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