A couple weeks ago I wrote about Not Quite Hollywood (2008), a documentary about Australian expoitation films that’s getting a  limited theatrical release. In that film, Quentin Tarantino gives enthuasistic endoresements to many offbeat titles, but the one that he put on a top-ten short list was Long Weekend (1978). Long Weekend was directed by Colin Eggleston (1941 – 2002) and stars John Hargreaves, as Peter, and Briony Behets as Marcia. Peter and Marcia are a bickering married couple that, along with their dog, Cricket, go on a camping trip riddled with bad omens followed by serious consequences.

Peter has spent a lot of money on camping gear and a new rifle and is eager to use them. He figures it might also help with his troubled marriage to Marcia. But Marcia just wants to go to a luxury hotel and is clearly not an outdoorsy type. Peter’s not exactly a Sierra Club member himself; he tosses a lit cigarrette out his car window, runs over a kangaroo, rolls over beach-life with his four-wheel-drive, tries to chop down a tree for no reason, shoots his gun at the clouds, and later guns down a sea cow. For her part, Marcia is like a walking aerosol can, spraying as much insecticide as is humanly possible and then ferociously smashing a birds egg in a revealing bit of nasty behavior. Even when this squabbling couple finally gets its comeuppance you’d be hard-pressed to label this a “nature-attacks” film when it’s clearly more of a “nature-defends-itself” story.

Long Weekend differentiates itself from the pack by immersing the viewer in nicely composed wide-screen compositions that make good use of its natural landscapes. It is also to be commended for creating a genuine sense of horror via a string of inexplicable and eerie events that, while plausible, also introduce other unsettling possibilities as to what might be closing in on our unconscientious duo. Atmosphere and mood here are key and, although some viewers may take a jaded view to both the deliberate pacing or the ways in which animals were represented, Long Weekend provided me with a welcome reprieve from senseless C.G.I. effects, silly A.D.D.-editing,  and the kind of claustrophobic close-ups that currently seem to dominate the cinema. 30 years later, Long Weekend feels like a blast of fresh air.

Tarantino suggests that Long Weekend is a timeless film that could be slapped back on the screen right now without dating itself, and he’s right. Aside for Peter’s exceptionally tight, white shorts and a few establishing shots at the beginning, most of the story shows us two people interacting (badly) with nature – and on metaphoric level this is one message that keeps getting more timely as humans sail past the tipping point for CO2 levels in the atmosphere or add to the plastic trash that is twice the size of the continental United States that’s currently swirling around in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Small wonder that a remake of Long Weekend is already in post production, this time with Urban Legend director Jamie Blanks at the helm. Thankfully, he’ll be working with the same writer of the original film, Everett De Roche, who also scripted several other films that were mentioned in Not Quite Hollywood, including Patrtick (1978), Harlequin (1980), and Razorback (1984).