"Death Weekend" or "House by the Lake", which actually is a much more appropriate title in case you know a bit about the sub genre is another obscure and unscrupulous rip-off of Wes Craven's "Last House on the Left", filmed without much of a budget but containing loads of extremely brutal and sadistic images. A stone-cold cult favorite, in other words, and a must-have for avid collectors of this genre even though the film itself features absolutely no originality or interesting story lines. The movie is pretty much identical to "House on the Edge of the Park", "Straw Dogs", "Night Train Murders", "I spit on your Grave" and "Last House on the Beach", yet all of them are worth tracking down since they represent pure terror and formidably portray the darkest side of human behavior and abuse of physical power. A wealthy dentist (who made a second profession out of luring gorgeous women to his remote mansion) and his love for the weekend encounter four savage macho men on their way to his...house by the lake. Frustrated by losing a car race, the four brutes track the couple down and invade the house. With no living soul around for miles, they can extendedly torture the dentist, demolish his house and sexually humiliate the female guest. It even takes one casualty before strong-minded Diane turns to deadly revenge. Of course, there isn't any fancy camera-work or sublime acting to enjoy here, but director William Fruet ("Funeral Home", "Spasms") maintains the disturbing tone and raw atmosphere throughout the entire movie. The lake area, with its primitive appeal and natural death traps, forms an excellent location for an exploitation movie like this and the fast car race at the opening of the film is rudimentary exciting. Diane's vengeance when approaching the climax is marvelous, with some of the coolest deaths ever (including a top-five grossest throat slit!). "House by the Lake" also has a fairly good soundtrack and it's interesting to know that one of the main producers was Ivan Reitman ("Ghostbusters", "Junior"), who also started his career as an exploitation filmmaker. Highly recommended!
Review of The House by the Lake
