Savage Weekend is quite an interesting movie. It's intriguing because, while it looks like many of the countless slice and dice flicks that made up the slasher cycle, it was in fact made some time before these films became popularised and clichéd. It displays some facets that would go on to constitute the classic style slasher film, yet it was made in 1976 and only released three years later in the wake of the huge success of Halloween (1978). It seems to clearly have been a movie somewhat ahead of its time in this respect. Its story is one that would go on to become fairly standard in this sub-genre. A group of rich urban friends travel to a remote location for some R&R, before long a masked psychopath begins picking them off.
Notably, the characters here are adults, in this respect it deviates from the later slasher template which focused almost exclusively on teenagers. One thing these adults do have in common with their teenage descendants, however, is that they seem to spend an inordinate amount of time having sex. In fact Savage Weekend is pretty ram packed with abundant nudity. On the other hand, it also spends an unusually long time on the plot set-up, with a reasonable amount of character development before the killer finally kicks into action. Maybe it spends a little too long on the build-up in fairness, as it does feel at times that the movie could do with a little more thrills and suspense but in the final half hour, the bloody action is certainly ramped up.
The cast was also quite notable for featuring a couple of actors who would go on to star in two 80's cult classics - William (Blade Runner) Sanderson and David (Re-Animator) Gale play a couple of the local hicks. The other most prominent presence in the film was unquestionably the boom mic, which popped up so often and in such hilariously prominent ways that I felt that it should really have been given a special mention in the end credits.
