Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Nice effects though.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

This is one of those films I acquired in the 50-pack Drive-in Collection. This is another one of their filler films. We all know that there will be some awful films in a 50-pack and this is one of them.It's another stereo-typical slasher film in way out in the backwoods of nowhere with lots of bluegrass music, women showing their boobs, sex and of course some killing. The story is lame - nothing to hold my attention for very long.I am going to rate this film a 2 instead of a 1 because I got a chuckle at the end of the film. Two guys fighting - the one grabs a machete and the other a chainsaw. The machete guy was wining then the 3rd guy pops up to grab the chainsaw and he ends the film.2/10

"Savage Weekend" has Marie, a recently separated mother going away to upstate New York with her new boyfriend and her sister, Shirley, and their gay pal Nicky to a remote farmhouse. There, a massive boat is being built on the property with the help of a lazy and potentially unhinged country local, Otis. Shortly after their arrival, someone shows up on the property, lurking about with a sinister mask.It is to my utter surprise that after over a decade of being a die-hard fan of the genre, this film just now came to my attention. Where have I been? Or, maybe the question is, where has this film been? "Savage Weekend" is a flick that seems to have been relegated to the realm of low-budget obscurity for various reasons. Filmed in 1976, it was not released until three years later, and was probably never given a second thought. Given that it predates most slasher films by many accounts (aside from "Texas Chain Saw," which appears to have been a bit of an influence), the positioning of the film in the horror genre's historical timeline is certainly worthy of attention.On the surface, "Savage Weekend" has all the hallmarks of a bad movie: quirky and uneven performances, utterly bizarre music choices (a strange mixture of synthesizers and twangy backwater banjo), and some of the most horrendous editing I've ever seen in a movie. Why did I like it? Well, as a longtime genre fan, I take a lot of the film's surface pitfalls for granted. It's a B-movie, no doubt, but it's got a lot of heart in it.The characters, despite some hammy performances, are uniquely drawn, for one. They are not cookie cutter slasher characters, nor are they teenagers (probably because the filmmakers didn't have that trend to ride on in 1975), so there are some unusual dynamics operating here for a film of this nature— these people are established, worldly adults, not babes in the woods. The inclusion of the gay male character is a bit surprising for a seventies film, even in spite of the slight stereotyping that occurs — we do get a rather funny scene in the beginning however where he beats the living hell out of two rednecks pestering him in a bar, followed by "I wasn't raised in the South Bronx for nothing" retort. It's the weird moments like these that also help make the film stand out— that, and his goofy, sexually-charged dance with Caitlin O'Heaney in the upstairs of the farmhouse.The movie is actually rife with sexual dynamics, and even social and political themes that bubble up within the narrative to varying degrees. There's commentary on class, sexism, sexuality, power, and jealousy, all of which are rather hefty themes for a shoestring grindhouse flick, and I think that is maybe the central reason I found this little picture so fascinating. Slasher fans of course will be pleased with the sinister face mask and the killer hiding out in the barn and lurking around the upstairs of the house; these classic genre elements come in full swing in the film's last act. Some have said the film is slow, and I would tend to agree, though it is certainly not boring. I'd actually almost hesitate to label it a slasher film, as it comes across as more of a twisted psychothriller that may have ended up inadvertently lending some blueprints to the slasher canon, yet doesn't actually meet (and pre-dates) "slasher" qualifications. The murders are essentially bloodless, and the body count low; there is a well-played twist ending that is still mildly surprising even today.As I said before, the film does have a lot of surface problems, especially in terms of choppiness and continuity, but under the technical dirt is one of the most unusual and thematically rife horror films to ever fall under the label of the purportedly "mindless" slasher genre. "Savage Weekend" is definitely a B-movie and may pass as a slasher in the textbooks, but it is not a stupid film, and for that I commend it— no matter how much I may curse the editing department. 8/10.

Savage Weekend (1979) * 1/2 (out of 4) Five New Yorkers head to the country so that one of them can check on a boat that he's having built. Once there they settle in but soon a psycho in a mask shows up and starts killing them off.SAVAGE WEEKEND might seem like a Friday THE 13TH or HALLOWEEN clone but this here was actually made in 1976 but not released until 1979. With that in mind, it's easy to see why this thing wasn't released because outside of a few good things there's really not too much here worth watching. The biggest problem with this picture is that it's pretty much deadly dull and you're just waiting around forever for something fun or interesting to happen but you just keep waiting and waiting.The boredom is the film's biggest fault as we're introduced to some slightly interesting characters but absolutely nothing is done with them. We get incredibly boring subplots that just drag the film down even more. The characters are pretty much what you'd expect from a one-note film like this. You've got the divorced woman fearful of her ex but she's still with her new boyfriend. You've got the slut friend and of course there's a good-looking man there for her. The fifth member of the group is a gay man who is basically just comic relief but I will admit that he's the best thing about the film. Not only do we get some funny scenes with him but he also manages to beat up some rednecks in a local bar.The murder sequences are all mostly forgettable as there's not enough memorable violence or gore to recommend this to horror fans. The actual mystery is kept fairly well but at the same time you don't really care who is killing everyone. The film ends with a decent machete versus chainsaw battle and I will admit that the set-up of the picture pays off nicely at the end. Still, SAVAGE WEEKEND is a forgettable horror film that not even the non-stop nudity can save.

A group of well-to-do New Yorkers go on a weekend trip into the country and get picked off by a mask-wielding psycho.There's a lot of plot exposition setting up one character in particular as the killer, so it's not much of a surprise that this person ends up not being the killer, and it's also not much of a surprise when we find out who the killer is, despite the moment being treated like a big reveal. The killings are far too tame to appease gore hounds, but there's plenty of nudity for those looking for it. The film's pretty entertaining, actually, the kind of bad movie that you can laugh at despite it's being so sleazy. There are numerous bizarre choices made throughout, like the inclusion of a snarky gay character who beats up two rednecks in a bar and has some sort of sexual dysfunction that's introduced but never developed, and a seduction scene that revolves around the milking of a cow.No one in the film was recognizable, for obviously good reasons once you see them act, with the exception of the actor who went on to play Larry on the T.V. show "Newhart." Grade: C+