‘Their crime was against nature… and nature found them guilty.’
Long Weekend is a 1977 Australian ecological horror film produced and directed by Colin Eggleston from a screenplay by Everett de Roche (Razorback, Patrick). The movie stars John Hargreaves and Briony Behets.
The film flopped on its original release but its reputation has grown over the years. Thus, in 2008, Australian director Jamie Blanks shot a remake of the film (alternately titled Nature’s Grave) starring James Caviezel and Claudia Karvan.
<img class=”aligncenter wp-image-173757″ src=”https://moviesandmania.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Long-Weekend-Second-Sight-Blu-ray-801×1024.png” alt=”” width=”273″ height=”350″ /
On 5 November 2018, Second Sight released Long Weekend on Blu-ray in the UK. The special features are:
Audio Commentary with Executive Producer Richard Brennan and Cinematographer Vincent
Monton
• ‘Nature Found Them Guilty: Examining Long Weekend’ – Panel Discussion with Film Historians
Lee Gambin, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Emma Westwood and Sally Christie
• Uncut ‘Not Quite Hollywood’ interviews with Everett De Roche, Briony Behets and Vincent
Monton
• Extensive Stills Gallery Accompanied by Audio Interview with Actor John Hargreaves
• Original Theatrical Trailer
• SDH English subtitles for the hearing impaired
Plot:
A couple, Peter (Hargreaves) and Marcia (Behets), go for a weekend camping trip. The pair show incredible disrespect for nature, such as polluting, killing a dugong, throwing lit cigarette butts in dry bush, and spraying insecticide, among other transgressions. As tensions between the couple escalate, nature is not pleased with their environmental wrongdoing and starts to strike back, first by an eagle and possum attacking Peter, and then through more insidious means…
Buy Blu-ray: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary from Producer Richard Brennan and Cinematographer Vincent Monton
- Motion Still Gallery Featuring an Audio Interview with Actor John Hargreaves
- Theatrical Trailer
Reviews:
“The cool, irresistible appeal of De Roche’s script is way it handles Peter and Marcia’s tormentors. The villains are everywhere, omnipotent, and they tap into something much greater than individual aggressors. There is no convenient explanation: the Wizard of Oz in this film is the Wizard of Oz, not the man behind the curtains.” Luke Buckmaster, In Film Australia
“Long Weekend is undoubtedly more of a character study with horrific elements more than it is a straight-up horror film or a true animals run amok flick. Over the course of the film, we slowly come to realize the basis for Peter and Marcia’s marital strife, and to be honest, they’re not very likeable people – but that doesn’t make them uninteresting to watch. The film centers on two people in little more than one location, and the fact that such a conceit is tolerable at all owes a great debt to the deft direction, the beautiful cinematography, and the actors themselves.” Final Girl
“A remarkable movie that is at once low-key and yet manages to achieve levels of claustrophobic hysteria unsurpassed in a subgenre that includes George McCowan’s Frogs (1972), and William Girdler’s Day of the Animals (1977). However, where those movies had some sympathetic human characters, Long Weekend has none, and the viewer finds themselves rooting for nature pretty much from the start.” John Llewellyn Probert, House of Mortal Cinema
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