Although the most influential of the 70s slasher movies, Halloween (1978) was by no means the first and prior to Carpenter’s classic there were numerous psycho-on-the-loose-armed-with-a-knife movies that failed to impress. Made the same year as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), itself an important milestone in the development of the slasher movie, Michael Walters’ long-forgotten Have a Nice Weekend is one of the many that fell by the wayside. Set on a remote island, it details the messy events of one weekend during which Chris, recently returned from a tour of duty in Vietnam and suffering the obligatory flashbacks, invites his family and friends to the familial summer home where they are slaughtered by an unseen assailant.
Or at least that’s what it should have been – by the fade out only three members of the fairly sizeable cast have been murdered, all of them killed in the most anaemic manner, which probably goes some way to explaining why Have a Nice Weekend is so relatively unknown. Add to that dull and unappealing characters, dreadful acting and stilted dialogue and it seems unlikely that Have a Nice Weekend will be getting the rediscovery treatment any time soon.
The script, written by Walters, John Byrum and Marsha Sheiness, goes to great and often ludicrous lengths to keep the audience guessing as to who the killer might be, giving just about everyone some sort of psychological kink – patriarch Paul fondles a knife inexplicably given to his wife by his daughter’s college friend as a present, cooing over its appearance and distractedly wondering where his hunting knife went to; Chris is a total psycho, given to torching his own clothes and smashing radios when they report from Vietnam; neighbours Donald and Joan Crab are a bickering couple, he in particular acting in the most laughably ‘sinister’ way you can imagine; and one hilariously contrived moment involving a cut-throat razor.
Technically, the film is a disaster – no-one seemed to notice the hair caught in the camera gate during some shots (the audience can’t miss it though), the lighting is flat, the music (especially the mock classical stuff) is terrible and Walter’s direction is so ham-fisted that he seems to have given up after this one and never directed again. He makes no good use of his locations (indeed we rarely get the feeling that we’re actually on an island after the initial boat journey) and although one might just be able to use the excuse that the drab clothing, sets and lighting are meant to reflect the autumnal setting, it actually just makes the film look lacklustre and dowdy.
The script is so muddled that when the end finally comes into sight and you think that maybe it’s all over, we get a “The End” caption, immediately followed by “An Epilogue”, a ridiculous further few minutes in which a psychiatrist tries to explain to one of the survivors what has happened and why the killer behaved the way they did. Yeah, like we care…
Have a Nice Weekend was once available in the UK on video from Fright-Nite-Films but doesn’t seem to be available any more and may not have been released very widely elsewhere. Don’t hold your breath waiting for it to show up any time soon and certainly don’t lose any sleep over not seeing it – you’re really not missing anything at all.
The EOFFTV Review 