Review of The House by the Lake (1976) by Ola G — 15 May 2013

The fashion model Diane (Brenda Vaccaro) has decided to follow the wealthy playboy dentist Harry (Chuck Shamata) for a weekend getaway at Harry's remote country house by a lake in Ontario. On their way to Harry's country house they had encountered a car load of drunken thugs, led by Lep (Don Stroud) and had got into a fit of road rage where Diane forces the punks off the road, wrecking them. Little do Diane and Harry know that the angry gang has followed them, looking for some vicious revenge against the arguing, unhappy and unarmed couple...

"Death Weekend" or "The House by the Lake" which title it was released under in America due to the fact that the distributors felt under that particular title it would be more marketable as Wes Craven's similarly-themed film "Last House on the Left" (1972) had been such a hit, is a classic rape-revenge flick that carries connections to Sam Peckinpah´s "Straw Dogs". The fact is that William Fruet actually wrote the film several years earlier, but didn't pursue shooting it at the time because "Straw Dogs" had just came out and he feared Death Weekend would be viewed as an imitator of that film. And it´s hard to not see the resemblance. I remember this movie being banned back in the days and I got hold of a VHS tape of it in the beginning of the 90s that didn´t work! Thus, almost 20 years later I finally get to see "Death Weekend", and I it´s hard to see why it was banned as I write this in 2013. Yes, the atmosphere is threatning at times and Don Stroud does put on a solid performance of a nasty thug. But, it´s not a movie.

That makes that much of an impression and it´s not banning material if you ask me. Not bad within the rape-revenge genre, but nothing special either. "Straw Dogs" is better in my opinion.