LONG WEEKEND
dir. Colin Eggleston, 1978
97 mins. Australia.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 3 – MIDNIGHT
SATURDAY, AUGUST 10 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, AUGUST 23 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 30 – MIDNIGHT
“Their crime was against nature. Nature found them guilty.”
Given the crushing heat waves and our full throttle race to planet-death, it seems as good a time as any to give LONG WEEKEND another look. Safe to say its aged entirely too well.
Peter and Marcia are going through a bit of a rough patch, so the natural solve is, of course, go camping. Marcia wanted to go away for the weekend with their good friends, but Peter is set on a long weekend of camping on a remote beach. Thinly buried resentments quickly bubble to the surface as they take out their frustrations on the natural world around them in increasingly egregious ways.
One of the best when nature attacks films ever made, it has some of the spirit of Daphne du Maurier’s original short story of THE BIRDS, diving full on into the existential dread of man’s ignorance and impotence in the face of nature’s wrath.
