With October being a fun month for horror, I’ve been searching for some scary movies that I’ve never seen before. As I was browsing the horror genre on Tubi the other day, I came across this little Canadian movie called DEATH WEEKEND. Also known as “The House by the Lake,” I noticed it has a simple story, a solid cast and a short running time. I decided to give it a shot.
The movie opens with a playboy dentist named Harry (Chuck Shamata from DEATH WISH 5) and his fashion model girlfriend Diane (Brenda Vaccaro) driving out to his countryside home for a weekend getaway. While on the way, they cross paths with a group of crazy, drunk guys in a fast car, led by Lep (Don Stroud), and end up engaging in a dangerous game of road rage. They’re finally able to give them the slip, but they’ve made some enemies who are determined to find them and get even. When they track the couple to the home, the weekend is now set for death!
I have to admit I was very uncomfortable with this one from the very beginning. The guys are truly awful. Lep and the drunken thugs terrorize the couple on the road for no other reason than they can. And when the couple gets away, with a woman behind the wheel, no less, they use this as an excuse to track them to the home, and this is where things get really disturbing. They are cruel, vicious people, and the movie doesn’t give us any more information about them. They just seem to enjoy rape and murder. This nihilistic behavior seemed to go on and on and was hard for me to watch.
There’s no hope for Harry, either. He had lied to Diane about the entire weekend. They were supposed to be there with other couples, but Harry had set the whole thing up for them to be alone just so he could get laid. What a jerk! And when the thugs take over, he’s a perfect coward much more worried about his safety and his property than he is about Diane. I can understand being scared and wanting to survive, but he’s revealed as a completely selfish person and about as unlikable as it gets.
The only person who has a shred of humanity in this film is Diane. Of course, this being a 70’s movie, she’s terrorized, abused, and raped. I know I may be coming off as a hypocrite, because I love Charles Bronson and his DEATH WISH franchise notoriously features brutal scenes of rape. Well, those scenes are sickening to me, and I don’t like to watch them. And I didn’t like watching this one either. This movie seemed to revel in cruelty for the sake of cruelty and nothing else. I won’t say that I didn’t enjoy it when she finally gets a chance to get some revenge, but I wish the movie had given us more time to enjoy it. After everything she goes through, I wanted a little more satisfaction out of seeing her fight back. I will give the movie props for one impressive throat slash death, though.
I did think that the actors were fine in their various roles. Don Stroud was effectively crazy as the lead murderer / rapist, Chuck Shamata made me really dislike his lecherous liar, and you can’t help but pull for Brenda Vaccaro after what she goes through. But at the end of the day, I can’t say that I enjoyed the movie that surrounded them very much. This movie presented relentless cruelty for most of its run time before finally giving Diane a few minutes to try to get some payback. Not only did the movie make me uncomfortable, it also left me feeling unsatisfied.
