MovieChat Forums > Long Weekend (1979) Discussion > some major influences

some major influences

posted 18 years ago by gunstonenorm
2 replies | jump to latest

i watched this film last night for the first time and was pleasantly surprised
it showed influences in both directions with a little bit of tcm which came before e.g the lorry at the end and the feeling of complete isolation throughout and also wolf creek which came long after e.g the confrontation in the bar at the start, possible paranormal activity which remains unexplained
like most people on here really gratefull i watched this movie, i watched taxi driver the night before and enjoyed this more there you go

how do you know where im at if you havent been where ive been understand where im coming from ?

[–] CalDexter 18 years ago

i always found it a very frightening film in much the same way that Picnic At Hanging Rock was. Something thats not seen but heard or around causing fear and terror, i always remember the John Hargreaves character discovering the corpse of someone under water stuck in a sunken camper van. Grim...

[–] penny_dreadful 18 years ago

I agree. I too find 'Long Weekend' unsettling in the same way that 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' is.

After first seeing 'Long Weekend' a few years ago, I became obsessed with Australian films, especially horror/thrillers. Some other films I found similarly creepy are 'The Last Wave' (Peter Weir, 1977), in which Aboriginal voodoo enters the life of a lawyer in modern-day Australia; and something called 'The Lost Tribe' (John Laing, 1983),in which a woman and her brother-in-law search for her anthropologist husband who has gone missing while searching for the graves of a lost tribe of Maori on an island off New Zealand (I know, New Zealand and Australia are not the same).

Of other films (a little closer to home) which fulfill the slow-moving-but-with-impending-doom-atmosphere, I'd go with the original 'The Wicker Man' (Robin Hardy, 1973), in which a police inspector is summoned to a remote island to search for a girl, and he is very much the outsider (Don't even think about watching the remake, it's terrible!); and a small US horror release, 'Let's Scare Jessica to Death' (John D. Hancock, 1971), in which a woman who has just been released from a mental hospital moves into a big old house (which may or may not be haunted) with a group of friends. One of my all-time favorites!

Not really influences, I know, but if you enjoyed 'Long Weekend' as much as I did (and my boyfriend does not share my enthusiasm -- not enough action, apparently), you may enjoy these others as well.