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Savage Weekend
Where the mustaches roam free
1979
Review: October 26, 2007
Director: David Paulsen
Starring: Christopher Allport, Jim Doerr, David Gale, Devin Goldenberg, Marilyn Hamlin
Indeedy-do.
THE SETUP:
Repulsive New Yorkers go away for a weekend amongst the rednecks.
DISCUSSION:
I read a review of this online which made it sound like a bizarre collection of weird wonder, punctuated, it was said, by a large collection of rural mustache styles. So obviously it gained top priority. Unfortunately, what I discovered after getting it is that the version on the DVD is edited within an inch of its viability, much of the sex and violence removed. It’s still amusing enough, but it’s like watching it on an airplane.
We open with a strange prelude in which a woman is being chased through the woods by a creep. He grabs the nearest available chainsaw, which just happens to be sitting around, and comes at her, while she trembles. This movie hails from a point of view which holds that the smartest thing you can do when under attack by a chainsaw-wielding maniac is to stand in place and whimper.
Our scene shifts to Manhattan where a bunch of friends are going to the country for the weekend. The lead woman, who reminded me so much of Annette Funicello were just going to refer to her as Annette, leaves her husband at home, while she takes off with her new lover. Her husband had a breakdown and was just released from a mental hospital, and he’s going to stay home with their kid. Surely you see nothing amiss in allowing a recently-released mental patient to care for your children for a few days. Also on hand are Robert and Jay, and this highly-preening homosexual Nicky, who bemoans that he “can’t even escape my lovers in the men’s room.”
So they go off to the country, stopping at a local store where the other brunette peruses the mask collection, and decides to buy this horror mask for Nicky, because that would just be a scream. I have to admire the wide selection at these local stores—the hardware store in Halloween also carried a selection of masks. I guess the demand for horror masks has decreased in recent years, so that mom-and-pop convenience stores and laundromats and pet stores no longer carry them. Meanwhile, Nicky goes into the bar [convenience store / bar, yeah] where he offends the locals with his imperious queeniness as he snidely instructs then how to make a martini. Some of the dudes come to harass him, but Nicky beats the shit out of them, smashing barstools over backs and such. Those who gain an unaccountable thrill from seeing a bottle broken and wielded as a weapon will find their yearning satisfied. It is said that in this scene, and in many others throughout, the boom mike is clearly visible, so keep a look out if you like. I just don’t really notice such things, and never saw it.
So they arrive at their country home, where a ship is being built. After settling in, Annette decides to sunbathe on the front of the rowboat as Robert and this local, Mac McCauley, tie worms and fish. Mac carries the bulk of the mustache load here, with his big Sam Elliott-type stache, and he’s the kind of deep-voiced, horny redneck man’s man that, well, my pause and “slow” buttons were receiving heavy usage. Mmmm, Mac. Cheesy Mac. Okay, that's gross. So Mac tells the story, in his intimidating, lust-tinged voice, of Otis, the local creepy goon who is at that moment working on the ship they’re building, and how he found out that his wife was cheating, and branded an ‘H’ on her chest—for ‘whore.’ Otis clearly did not subscribe to Hooked on Phonics. Then Robert gets a hook in his foot and swims back to shore, leaving Annette and her oiled breasts to heave right under Mac’s nose, as he passes a knife across his open mouth and says “If I had a woman like you, I sure wouldn’t let her alone.” I was, of course, fainting.
Meanwhile at home, Nicky plays with his nipple as he watches his friends cavort around the property while listening to evangelical radio. The other two, Jay and—we’ll call her Rita [I couldn’t really get any of their names]—go out to where the ship is being built, where they are observed by the creeping Otis. He finally reveals himself, and they talk about him and what a creep goon he is while he is plainly within earshot. This makes Otis angry, so he retreats to the local cemetery, where he carries on a conversation with the headstone of his deceased buddy. By the way, I haven’t mentioned that all of this is shot through about eight layers of Vaseline.
SPOILERS > > >
So then Annette goes on about how she can’t feel anything—anything but fear! Then Jay and Shirley—that’s the other brunette, not Rita, Shirley—run off on a boat to fuck because she heard he was some rich playboy or whatever. Meanwhile, Annette is in the barn getting sensually aroused by the cows, caressing their full udders. Who should happen by but Mac, who asks her “You ever tasted it fresh?” Apparently in the unedited version he squirts some out into his hand and offers it to her, but that ain’t here no more. But he does start feeling her breasts and means to take her when she sees her husband—the one who is supposed to be back in New York minding the boy—and this ruins her mood. She clubs Mac on the head with a nearby pulley and gets away. Cut back to Shirley, who was NOT satisfied with Jay’s lovemaking, and lets him know so in no uncertain terms. Then there’s a little useless information in that we find out what happened to the husband is some political case “destroyed him.” And soon Jay is hung. This is one of the places the editing is really obvious, as we see a guy leap from behind him with a rope, and the next thing we see are his hanging feet.
That night all the Manhattanites gather for dinner, and Nicky wears a big blouse to serve a Turkey. They all wonder where Jay is. Robert and Annette go out to look for him, whereupon Shirley decides to costume herself in this whole Victorian getup and perform a strip-tease for Nicky, set to this long, simple and repetitive amateur attempt at tango. This music goes on forever. Meanwhile, the killer, now in the mask they bought at the convenience mart / bar / costume store, is pacing upstairs. He eventually comes down and kills Nicky with a hat pin [apparently it doesn’t take much to kill a Nicky], then comes after Shirley, who is still cavorting to the still-playing tango music. She finally sees the killer and stops running, taking several pauses to look both ways while entering each room. She eschews running outside to safety, instead finding it more prudent to run down the small, confining basement. She demands to know “Who are you?” over and over and over, which, while a pertinent question, doesn’t seem to be the most important bit of information to inquire after as he approaches to kill her. So she buys it.
When Annette and Robert comes back, Robert gets wasted and the husband reveals himself as the killer. He is kind of a cute blond guy who looks like a 70s porn star. Annette decides to stand against the wall with her chin up, heaving, as he reveals his sinister plan. He’s going to take her out in the lake and kill her. In the morning. That leaves them a few hours to kill, which we are invited to believe passed with Annette photogenically preening and heaving against the wall, chin way, way up.
Oh, I clean forgot one of the more delightful contrivances of this film. The husband didn’t actually kill Shirley, but tied her over a wheel saw [which is going to cause some issues with her lumbar vertebrae], and plugs it into the light—when someone flicks on the light, she’ll be minced. The killer flicks the switch and—the light is on some other circuit! He leaves her there, but when Mac comes by in the morning, he flicks on the power, and I think we are to believe that Shirley gets pureed, but with the editing and no power saw sound effect, it’s hard to know.
Anyway, after a long night of preening, the husband, who has let us know that the reason he snapped was the pressures of his job, takes Annette out to prepare for her death. He’s so trusting he thinks she’ll politely just wait outside the barn while he gathers his instruments of murder. She doesn’t, and we have a showdown in the woods, which we discover that the stalking from the beginning was a flash-forward, complete with conveniently-placed chainsaw just a’layin’ around.
< < < SPOILERS END
It was amusing, with several odd characters and askew scenes, but throughout one can’t help but be aware of all that has been edited out, and how much more fun the movie would have been if we got to see all that. You also sort of feel like you’re wasting your time, as you should probably hunt down the unedited version on VHS and watch that, if you’re going to watch it at all, but now you’re not because you’re seeing this—and why are we doing this again? It’s also very odd, yes, but the story has no real resonance—what are all these people being killed for? Did they offend the husband in some way?—and nothing about it really goes anywhere. There’s all the stuff about the sheltered city people vs. the rednecks, but even that is just pointless coloring, it doesn’t really matter. I’d love to see the unedited version [well, maybe not NOW], but if you can’t find that one, it’s a real toss up whether you should watch this at all.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
If you can find the unedited VHS, definitely. As it is on DVD, totally optional and decidedly unnecessary.
