DEATH WEEKEND

Canada, 1976, 87 minutes, Colour.
Brenda Vaccaro, Don Stroud, Chuck Shamata.
Directed by William Fruet.

Death Weekend is a rather lurid story of a crazed gang terrorising a rich playboy dentist and his model girlfriend. The film appeared in the aftermath of Death Wish and was typical of quite a number of revenge films of the period. The plot is conventional – but the treatment is rather graphic, and at many stages, too brutal.

William Fruet was a Canadian writer who moved into direction – making films on similar horror themes as well as directing for television, including episodes in the television series of Friday the 13th.

1. Interest in this film and response to its violence? The purpose of the film-making? The title telling all?

2. The values and standpoint of the film makers, morally and socially?

3. How real were the characters and the situations, how contrived? Audience identification with the victims, the brutal aspects'? A woman identifying with the heroine?

4. The amount of visual violence? The relationship with real violence? Audience response, sharing? Being excited, repelled?

5. How much of the violence was brutality or sadism? The response to this, the mayhem being wreaked, the deaths?

6. The truths in revenge and its motives?

7. The theme of survival and the legitimate use of violence to survive? How excessive can this be?

8. The tranquil opening, the illicit week end? The shift from the morals of the weekend to the violence?

9. The callousness of the man, his plan, themes, our voyeurism? And exploited? Did it matter when he was killed?

10. The significance of his death and the ruin of his house? What did it profit him?

11. The girl and her values, her capacity for driving, taunting the louts? Her ordinariness, breaking off the weekend, the violent intrusion and the rape? Her wanting to survive, her ruthlessness in killing?

12. The portrayal of the gang, the mindless race, the vengeance? Pride and the ugliness of revenge?

13. The details of the gang's tracking the couple down, the rape, the wilful destruction of the house? Was there any humanity in the presentation of this?

14. The leader and his attitudes? His killing the man, his attitude towards his friends' deaths, towards the girl, trying to kill her, his own death?

15. The violence of the deaths and their visual portrayal? For the girl’s survival? What was the moral viewpoint and the attitude towards violence and survival in this film?