Is It Monday Yet?

In case my eagerness to insert Frogs or Empire of the Ants into any unrelated conversation has gotten past you, I really, really really, really really really, and did I mention really? love the strange pocket of genre cinema known as Nature Strikes Back. Whether we’re dealing with two-story high chickens or Leslie Nielson wrestling a bear bare-chested, there’s just something about animals banding together to take us silly opposable thumb wielders down that never fails to make me smile.

Colin Eggleston’s Long Weekend (with a script from Patrick scribe Everett de Roche) is best described as the arthouse interpretation of what is otherwise considered a fairly silly (yet incredibly enjoyable) batch of films. Think of it as Day of the Animals That Are Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

Quick Plot: Marcia and Peter are an incredibly unhappy married couple with some disposable income and a lot of harmful secrets. To maybe mend some of their troubles, they begrudgingly embark upon a small road trip to what they expect to be a secluded beach located deep into the forests of Australia. Though Marcia would rather be basking in the comfort of a five-star hotel, Peter insists on lugging his expensive camping gear and chubby dog Cricket for one of those manly back-to-nature vacations that only rich people can actually take.

The ride there is not without its difficulty. Peter receives some strangely contradictory information at a local gas station that seems to be urging him away from his destination, although it’s the brutal running-over-of-a-kangaroo that sets an eerie tone. As news reports drop hints about bird attacks and Eggleston’s camera glares ominously at wayward wombats (band name trademark pending), we get the increasing sensation that nature isn’t crazy about these bickering humans.

Neither are we. Ever so slowly, Marcia and Peter reveal some of the reasons for their coldness towards each other, including infidelity and unwanted abortion. Throughout it all, Marcia seems to share our sentiment that something in this natural paradise wants them out. A sea cow (yes, it’s apparently a thing) washes up onshore. Peter gets Fabio’d by a giant seagull. 

Harpoons shoot on their own. A grime coated Barbie doll with Marcia’s haircut ominously shows up naked as Marcia sunbathes a few feet away. 

Something is off, and perhaps, the film surmises, deservedly so, as we witness Peter litter and nonchalantly chop down a tree while Marcia sprays pesticide at innocent ants. Their disregard for the outdoors is noted.

Long Weekend is a supremely strange film, one that sort of uses the guise of Nature Strikes Back to serve up a far more haunting story about a toxic relationship. Although we do get hints that animals are misbehaving elsewhere in the country, the two-character thrust of the film could almost lead you to believe all these seemingly ‘unnatural’ natural acts are actually part of our leads’ unraveling psyches. Certainly the fate of one character seems, albeit unclearly, to be more an act of human than god or goose. 

Some might find it pretentious, especially since the film is often categorized alongside much lighter fare like Food of the Gods. This is a horror movie in the way that Picnic At Hanging Rock is a horror movie: something supernatural is at work, but that’s ultimately just an excuse. The horror exists between a man and woman who seem to derive more pleasure in hurting their partner than loving them, and yet, as Peter points out so pointedly to Marcia, as clear as it is that the love is gone, the need for one another will probably never die. These people have ruined each other, and therefore, who else can take them?

Long Weekend isn’t shy about its metaphors (re: broken egg), but Eggleston makes them work by creating such a haunting and unusual mood through his depiction of nature. From both an audio and visual point of view, Long Weekend is incredibly atmospheric. Once you plop the saga of Peter and Marcia inside such a landscape, the results are bound to be intense.

High Points
Enough can’t be said about the look of the film, lovingly captured by director of photography Vincent Monton. In an age of forced perspective effects or artful editing around ever putting an animal in the same frame as a human, Monton finds ways to use close shots of creatures to hauntingly brilliant effect

John Hargreaves and Briony Behets have an uphill battle in playing two extremely unlikable characters, and credit must go to both for making such strong commitments 

Without spoiling, let me say that I adored everything about the ending of this film

Low Points
Well, the thing is that the very nature of Long Weekend feels like an uncomfortably long weekend where you ended up stuck tagging along as a third wheel to the most miserably married couple in Australia. So this isn’t exactly a fun romp, which can, you know, be a bit of a drag

Lessons Learned
A domesticated pet is, to the natural animals of the wildness, something of an uncle tom

Whatever you do, do not feed the possums

It’s not smart to leave your dog home alone unsupervised for three days, but when all is said and done, it might be preferable to spending a dreadful weekend in your company

Rent/Bury/Buy
Remade in 2008, Long Weekend is something truly unusual and well worth a quiet night of watching. The Synapse released DVD includes a fascinating commentary track and photo still gallery with an audio interview of the late Hargreaves (which comes with a spoiler warning, something I find endearingly adorable). White it won’t give you that fun beer & friends party night feeling like Frogs, Long Weekend is an eerie descent into marital hell that just so happens to be spoken in the language of animals amuck. Give it a try.

And watch your back. A koala might be doing the same.

Day of the Nielsen

If we continue to damage the ozone layer, the following will happen:

That’s right. Leslie Nielson will shirtlessly hug a bear and rats will be thrown at your face.

In other words, rev up your camping gear kiddos! It’s time to experience Day of the Animals.

Quick Plot: A touristy hike through the mountains gets moving, filled with an assorted group of white people and one Native American. Though the landscape is lovely, the paying customers get a trip that wasn’t on the brochure when some chemical imbalances cause the region’s wildlife to gang up and declare open season on all humans.

Boy do I love animalsploitation. Socially relevant AND adorable. Day of the Animals takes a cue from Frogs and knows that a good killer wilderness film is a diverse killer wilderness film, and thusly do we get a nice assortment of killer rodents, mountain lions, wolves, dogs, rats, and birds...so very many birds.

But really, let’s address the main reason Day of the Animals still gets talked about in film and teenage girl circles: shirtless Leslie Nielsen wrestles a bear. He also attempts rape and acts like the most raging “hate this guy” character I may have ever seen onscreen, but because it’s Frank Drebin, that is completely okay. Watching him insult and literally throw annoying children down mountains is a plus, plain and simple.

His ghost can babysit my phantom children any day.


There’s actually a surprisingly amount of poor child-rearing, which makes for (again) an inappropriately enjoyable little film. A subplot involves a little Them!-like girl who shuffles through the wilderness and ghost town with a man who has just about no idea how to treat a kid. Nielsen refers to his bratty companion as a “little cockroach” on multiple occasions. For whatever reason, these things made me quite happy.

High Points

Day of the Animals introduces a pretty large group of victims, but it does a surprisingly good job of making each character memorable enough to care of at least acknowledge their deaths. We don’t necessarily know all their names, but we know exactly who they are, even when they’re stuck under a pack of wolves

Lynda Day George’s Terry isn’t the beacon of feminism, but it’s nice to see a woman helping out to beat off a band of angry mountain lions

Low Points

...only to spend the next major attack scene standing in a corner with her hands over her face, then wining about how she can’t swim when survival moves down to the river

It’s a shame that the sound quality is so awful as to muffle much of the dialogue. It’s a bigger shame that the DVD inexplicably is sans subtitles

Lessons Learned

When the going gets tough, the tough order pineapple pie with ice cream on top

An ideal solution to disciplining children is to threaten to scalp them

Rats are adorable, even when being thrown at your face

The Winning Line

“I use my head all the time. A lot of people use their butts.”

I know he’s dead, but I’m just saying: Leslie Nielsen can use his butt on me whenever he feels like it

Rent/Bury/Buy

I own my copy of Day of the Animals (it shares a three-room box with Grizzly and Devil Dog) and without question, I’ll put it on as background noise sometime in the future. It’s an enjoyable and goofy lil ‘70s treasure filled with about zero scares but high camp, though in fairness, it’s also a whole lot more competent than some of its dreadfully awesome peers (Frogs and Food of the Gods come to mind). Leslie Nielsen fans owe it to themselves to see him play the baddie, plus, did I mention he wrestles a bear?