Long Weekend [DVD] (1978)

This film carries a very powerful message indeed and I urge everyone to watch it.

This is a horror film quite unlike most others, as it deals with the natural aspect of the supernatural. The Urbanite couple of the film (Peter, played by John Hargreaves and Marcia, played by Briony Behets) are experiencing marriage problems following an abortion. So they decide to utilise the holiday weekend and go back to nature by camping in the woodlands beside the coast. While on the way there Peter runs over a Kangaroo. Instead of stopping to check if the animal was ok he runs over it completely, quite a vivid, disturbing scene. After hitting it and stopping briefly he later tells his wife about it, who is even less bothered about it than him.

Some of the creepiest parts of the film are on the heavily wooded track with overhanging trees on the way towards the spot they stop at. There is also the screaming they hear at night and as the film goes on it happens during the day as well. It is a sound of an animal in distress, but with a mix of other natural sounds. Very creepy.

The lead characters create no sympathy as they continue to make a bad situation worse by damaging the local wildlife and not treating the beautiful area with the respect it deserves. If anything both of the characters are seriously annoying as they have ample opportunity to try and correct the situation, but instead they are so wrapped up in their own shallow lives that they fail to see the bigger picture of what is happening around them. By the time they do realise it is too late.

What happens to them is never properly explained, but that is part of the beauty of this film (as with a lot of 70's horror/thriller films). There are a few plot holes; the most noticeable being the camper van and the other couple along the beach from the main characters. You are left to speculate about that situation.

I seriously can't emphasise how excellent this film is with the raw sound quality and camera work. I don't understand why this film is not wider known, as it really is appropriate for modern times and if anything the main protagonists are not as careless or destructive as alot of people are these days.

If you want a claustrophobic/impending atmosphere, suggestive horror and a truly chilling film, then this piece of celluloid is for you.

One of a cycle of similarly themed films that came out of Australia in the 1970s, but perhaps the least well known of any of them, Long Weekend is a tale of enigmatic, lurking environmental threat made manifest. Like Peter Weir's Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975) and The Last Wave (1970), as well as being related to Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout (1971), it's a work which steadily relates landscape to the faceless presence of elemental forces bound up in nature, especially those ready to snatch at humankind. And like Hitchcock's related The Birds (1963), with which it shares its serious tone, it has the intelligence to leave humans to draw their own conclusions as to what went wrong.

It's also director Colin Eggleston's first, and best film. Eggleston, who also made films of such different quality as Fantasm Comes Again (1977) and Outback Vampires (1987) - this last admittedly admired by Tarantino - served out his apprenticeship in television, a training which paid dividends when he was able to first spread his wings in using the Panavision process in Long Weekend, but also enabled the director to work wonders with a still modest budget. Aided by an excellent script by Everett de Roche, who was also responsible for Razorback (1984), another film where nature's representative wrecks havoc on people, the present film is a prime example of the 'they don't make anymore' variety, being distinguished by subtlety, atmosphere and a mounting terror which the modern, CGI-laden Hollywood horror product usually only dreams of.

Long Weekend consists principally of the fraught interaction between just two characters, Peter (John Hargreaves) and Marcia (Briony Behets). For the first part of the film there is some doubt of the source of their marital friction, a masterstroke of scripting which considerably adds to the growing unease. Instead their unspecified frustrations and alienation are externalised, in a process that starts when the husband accidentally runs over a kangaroo, as between them the couple smash eggs, hack at trees, shoot off a gun wildly, and kill a dugong. Marcia wants to return to the comfort of a hotel; Peter does not. Eventually we discover or deduce the real reasons for their recriminations, but by then a third, more ominous character has entered the drama: that of Nature, who apparently has little time for the self-centred couple so unkindly intruding into her realm.

It's clear however that not everything can be explained even by the end of the film, and indeed one of its strengths is that Long Weekend ultimately refuses, or needs, to. Instead the spectacle of a couple tearing their relationship apart is mirrored by their increasingly aggressive surroundings, as if Nature itself has little patience with their attitudes, either towards each other or their environment - a condemnation of selfishness on a public and private level which seems ever more relevant and modern today in these times. "Spare me the grotty symbolism," says the wife at one point; but its clear that is exactly what, on one level, the couple are: symbols either of an unwelcome intrusion into a natural landscape or of a modern, spiritual ugliness which has no welcome amongst the old. Thus nature's attacks can be seen as punishment for the couple's repeated and unthinking transgressions against its fabric, and the unforgiving landscape, elemental and unhelpful, read as a metaphor for the childless relationship they now endure. But unlike The Birds, there is no feeling that Nature is turning against all of mankind, merely these two, who treat their surroundings with as much care as they do their relationship.

All of this is helped immeasurably by the cinematography, which, despite the film's low budget origins, is often breathtaking in its depiction of the lurking and elemental. Whether following through the crowded bush threatening the couple, recording the assorted creature attacks, or merely recording the misty, primeval sunrises that start their eventful days, Vincent Monton's camerawork (apparently at times he used a prototype 'steadicam') is a model of restraint, never forcing the pace, merely mounting suspense further without undue pyrotechnics. Add to this an award-worthy soundtrack, which subtly amplifies the threatening groans and rustles of surrounding nature into an ambience of unspoken threat, and you have a film which succeeds often through its sheer intelligence and design. In some ways this reminds one of the early work of John Carpenter, where one looks for threat from within the carefully arranged frame rather from outside it, and where the camera's unhurried gaze at trapped characters is its own arbiter of terror.

That's not to say that there are no moments of shock. While largely eschewing horrific set pieces, Eggleston and de Roche do build in a couple of memorable shock moments such as the fate of the rival campers, while the dugong (a harmless black sea cow, shot as a threat by Peter) apparently making its tortured way, unseen, back up the shore line is truly the stuff of nightmares, and the one that most people remember most about the film.

Those who intend buying the disc should look primarily at the region 1 special edition, which has an interesting audio commentary with the film's producer and cinematographer (both director and star having sadly passed away) as well an extensive stills gallery, accompanied by an audio interview with Hargeaves from some years ago. The anamorphic transfer looks well, albeit a bit grainy after the style of many Australian films of this period. One's only regret is that the film's female star was not available to contribute especially as she is apparently still active. The region 2 disc, alas, lacks the commentary and for this alone is second choice. Synapse Films are to be congratulated in restoring such a worthwhile film to general circulation in such an excellent package.

Long Weekend hasn't held up quite so well as memory has it, but it's still worth a look. Misleadingly sold as an outright Evil Dead horror film, it's a lot more subtle than that. If anything, it's an early eco-allegory crossed with a domestic drama as argumentative couple John Hargreaves and Briony Behets find their trip to a remote beach turning nasty as nature starts to turn on them. It's well staged and holds the attention, but there's still something rather slight to it and the ending is a little too pat. Nonetheless, it's good to see an attempt to do something human with the if-you-go-down-to-the-woods genre. Moral of the tale: if an eagle attacks you and your spear gun goes off unexpectedly, it's time to go home NOW.

If you can find a copy, it's worth going for the Australian PAL DVD over the barebones UK release - the Australian special edition has a good 2.35:1 widescreen transfer and includes an audio commentary by Richard Brennan and Vincent Monton, stills gallery with audio interview with John Hargreaves and the original theatrical trailer.