Long Weekend (1978 version) #175 (B-)

This flick is not to be confused with the awesome (I'm sarcastically guessing that it is awesome) movie from 2005 staring Chris Klein...this version of "Long Weekend" was from 1978 and is placed in Australia.  There is no connection here other than the names.  Now that we are clear on this....on to the review.

So far I'm 11 minutes in and I had to press pause to state something about what's occurred so far.  A couple (at least I think they are an item) met up in the morning to head out on some sort of vacation.  Prior to knocking on the woman's door, the man pulled out a rifle and put the scope on her face as she walked around her kitchen on the 2nd floor.  Odd.  Then on their drive out to holiday, they spent the time screaming at each other...followed by the dude almost crashing into a van, a few minutes/hours later trying to go around a car and almost hitting another car head on, then the guy threw a match or cigarette out the window and caught the side of the road on fire, and finally he nailed a wallaby square on killing it dead.  All while not paying attention.  This movie is crazy so far.  Not sure if that is in a good way however.

I'm finished watching now.  It was pretty entertaining.  Basically this couple is going on a retreat to the outback/beach, as the have been having troubles with their relationship (and as it turns out the wife had an abortion due to getting knocked up by another guy, which is divulged mid way).  Along the way to the beach and also while at the beach, they commit unnecessary acts against nature.  For instance they shoot animals, the man chops down a tree just because, they smash an eagle egg and they shoot a sea cow.  The remaining plot is nature turns on them until everyone dies.  The last 30 minutes are pretty gripping.  I rewound the last scene 3 times including some screen by screen slow motion.  It was an "ooooooh!" scene for sure.

Here is a small conversation between the couple:

Peter: "You preoccupied Marcia?"
Marcia: "Let's go home"
Peter: "We just got here"
Marcia: "I'll make it worth your wild gorgeous"
Peter: "Home is where I leave my dirty socks"
Marcia: "Should have married your mother"
Peter: "You've got better tits"
Marcia: "I'm serious Pete"
Peter: "About marrying my mother?"
Marcia: "About going home.."
Peter: "Why?"
Marcia: "To beat the traffic"

After watching this I was listening to another podcast by the Mondo Movie guys, and they mentioned Long Weekend.  Then they mentioned that Jim Caviezal was involved in a remake of this movie.  I looked it up and found out that it is true and the remake is called Nature's Grave (also listed as Long Weekend depending on where you look).  I noted that the Jim's character was named Peter and the dog was still Cricket, but they renamed the wife to Carla (versus Marcia).  I wonder why changes like that occur?