‘To escape… she’ll have to kill!’
Death Weekend is a 1976 Canadian thriller film about a sleazy dentist who invites his girlfriend to his countryside house. On their, they have a run-in with four crazed local thugs, who follow the couple and terrorise them. The plot was loosely based on a real-life home invasion in Canada involving a dentist after he was involved in a traffic altercation, as well as director William Fruet‘s own experience of being harassed by a group of men while on a road trip in rural Alberta.
The movie was written and directed by William Fruet (Blue Monkey aka Insect!; Bedroom Eyes; Killer Party; Spasms; Trapped; Cries in the Night; Search and Destroy). Produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff (executive producer), Don Carmody (associate producer), John Dunning (executive producer), André Link (executive producer) and Ivan Reitman (Shivers; Ghostbusters; producer).
The production stars Brenda Vaccaro (The Masque of the Red Death; Midnight Cowboy), Don Stroud, Chuck Shamata, Richard Ayres, Kyle Edwards, Don Granbery, Ed McNamara and Michael Kirby.
Plot [includes spoilers]:
Diane (Brenda Vaccaro), a former fashion model, meets Harry, a wealthy dentist and playboy. After a whirlwind romance, she decides to accompany Harry to party at his remote lakeside country house on a November weekend. En route in Harry’s Corvette, Diane asks Harry to let her drive.
They soon encounter a red-colored 1967 Camaro loaded with four drunken thugs, led by Lep, and get into a fit of road rage where Diane forces the punks off the road and into a creek bed, wrecking their car. At the lake house, Harry surreptitiously photographs Diane while she showers. Diane soon learns that there are no other guests joining them at the house, and that Harry has brought her there intending only to use her for sex.
Meanwhile, the gang rampages through a camping park looking for the car that ran them off the road. They find Harry’s Corvette parked at a rural gas station where Harry had left it to be looked after while taking a less flashy station wagon to the country house. After intimidating the drunk station owners to disclose Harry’s residence, Lep and his friends drive off to their destination.
The four thugs break into the lake house and hold both Diane and Harry hostage. Over the rest of the day and night, Lep and his three cohorts Runt, Frankie, and Stanley, terrorize, harass, and humiliate their two captives. The group vandalize the house and steal and wreck Harry’s speedboat, killing two townspeople in the process. When Diane attempts to escape, Lep recaptures her and, as punishment, rapes her in an abandoned shack.
At nightfall, the gang becomes more out of control while drinking and smoking marijuana. Harry confronts them with a pump-action shotgun, but he hesitates to shoot and Lep snatches the weapon from his hands. Lep then uses it to kill Harry as he attempts to flee from the house, and Diane is taken to a bedroom to be raped again, this time by Runt. Diane fights back and eventually kills Runt by slashing his neck with a shard of mirror glass and she manages to flee from the house. She later traps Frankie in the boathouse and sets it on fire, leaving him to burn to death. She then lures the pursuing Stanley to a nearby bog where he falls into a quicksand pit and drowns.
In the morning, Diane and the shotgun-toting Lep face off in a final confrontation in an open field where she attempts to hotwire and escape in Harry’s car (with Harry’s dead body in the front seat) as Lep tries to shoot her with the shotgun. When Lep runs out of ammunition, he climbs on top of the moving car to stop Diane attempting to drive away. The confrontation ends when Diane manages to shake Lep off the hood, and then runs him over, killing him.
Diane drives the bullet-ridden car away to a paved road where the car stalls on the side of the road. Exhausted and dazed, she exits the damaged car and stares down the empty road.
Choice dialogue:
Harry [Chuck Shamata]: “It’s just that I’m a great admirer of the female form.”
Cast and characters:
Brenda Vaccaro … Diane
Don Stroud … Lep
Chuck Shamata … Harry
Richard Ayres … Runt
Kyle Edwards … Frankie
Don Granbery … Stanley (as Don Granberry)
Ed McNamara … Spragg
Michael Kirby … Ralph
Richard Donat … Policeman
Denver Mattson … Smokey
Al Bernardo … Mr Doobie
Roselle Stone … Mrs Doobie
Elaine Yarish … Campground Girl
Filming locations:
Eaton Hall, King City, Ontario, Canada (The weekend getaway home)
King Vaughan Road, Vaughan, Ontario, Canada
(Bridge crash scene)
Kipling Avenue and King Vaughan Road, Vaughan, Ontario, Canada
(Car crash intersection)
King Road, King Township, Ontario, Canada
(Opening sequence)
7th Concession Road, King Township, Ontario, Canada
(Car chase scenes)
Cinespace Film Studios – 11030 Highway 27, Kleinburg, Ontario, Canada
(studio)
Kleinburg, Ontario, Canada
(studio) (studio lot)
Maple, Ontario, Canada
Seneca College, North York, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Filming dates:
27th October 1975 to 1st December 1975
Release:
Death Weekend was distributed by Cinépix Film Properties in Canada, premiering in Ontario on September 17, 1976 in seventeen venues. The film screened in Quebec under the French-language title Fin De Semaine Infernale beginning on October 8, 1976, in five venues.
In the United Kingdom, it was released in some regions on December 10, 1976. The film was released in the US in 1977 by American International Pictures (AIP) as The House by the Lake to cash-in on Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left (1972).
VHS editions of the film were seized and confiscated in the United Kingdom during the 1980s video nasty panic.
Censorship:
Despite being described as an “appalling orgy of destruction” by the British Film Institute’s Monthly Film Bulletin the film was passed relatively intact by the BBFC after a personal visit by Brenda Vaccaro to chief censor James Ferman to plead for a certificate. Some of the female examiners on the board described the film’s violence as “acceptable, even justifiable” and the only cut made to the movie was the removal of the word “c*nt”.
Trailer:
TV spot:
Japanese DVD trailer:
Diane drives the corvette clip:
Harry and Diane fall-out clip:
Free to watch online on YouTube:
More William Fruet movies:
BLUE MONKEY aka INSECT! Free on Fawesome, Plex, Tubi and YouTube
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