StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Michael Ledo Greg Pettis (Jeff Pomerantz) former spokesman for a governor that committed suicide has his son (Adam Hirsch) for the weekend. His ex-wife is off for the weekend or so with her boyfriend Robert Fathwood (Jim Doerr). He is having a boat being built. The group includes broker friend Jay Alsop (Devin Goldenberg), Shirley Sales (Caitlin O'Heaney) and the flamboyant Nicky (Christopher Allport) who has all the best lines. There is a story about a girl being branded with an "H" for "whore" by Otis (William Sanderson). Toward the end of the film a slasher appears.The film opens with a teaser that happens at the end of the film. Greg wears a black suit with a black tie when we first meet him. There are three scenes where the microphone appear and a fourth where there is a microphone shadow. Nicky was great in his bits and they needed to fit him more into the script. Much of the film was "so bad it is good." I watched this on a 50 DVD pack which showed the branding scene and plenty of nudity.Guide: Sex and nudity (Marilyn Hamlin, Caitlin O'Heaney)

Red-Barracuda 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 from 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.

Michael_Elliott 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.

Wizard-8 Though the 1978 "Halloween" is seen by many to be the horror movie that gave birth to the slasher genre, in actual fact the seven or so years leading up to that movie had other filmmakers make stabs (ahem) in horror movies with remarkable similarities to the modern slasher movie. "Savage Weekend" was one of them, filmed before "Halloween" though released after that other movie became a big hit. But despite beating "Halloween" to the punch, it's not very memorable. True, the direction occasionally has some atmosphere, and there are some welcome scenes of nudity and sex. It's also fun to see a pre-fame William Sanderson. But for the most part the movie is a big bore. We are stuck watching forgettable character for the longest time. Over half the movie passes before the first person get killed, and the kills that there are aren't that spectacular - very little blood, for one thing. And it's pretty easy to figure out who the killer is, since the movie doesn't exactly give us a big list of suspects. If you must watch the movie, make a little game by counting how many times the boom mike (or its shadow) makes an appearance.