Why Long Week­end remains an Ozploita­tion classic

In the 1960s, film­mak­ing in Aus­tralia ground to an almost com­plete stop. But in the ear­ly ​’70s, bat­tle-scarred Prime Min­is­ter John Gor­ton imple­ment­ed poli­cies that would have a huge impact on this and oth­er impor­tant social and cul­tur­al aspects of the coun­try. Not only did he imple­ment equal pay for men and women and free health care for the nation’s poor, he also increased arts fund­ing and estab­lished the Aus­tralian Coun­cil for the Arts, the Aus­tralian Film Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion and the Nation­al Film and Tele­vi­sion Train­ing School. This set in motion the most pro­duc­tive peri­od in Aus­tralian cin­e­ma history.

Between 1970 – 1985 the so-called Aus­tralian New Wave pro­duced almost 400 fea­tures and put the Aus­tralian film indus­try on the map with the likes of Walk­a­bout, Pic­nic at Hang­ing Rock, the Mad Max tril­o­gy and The Year of Liv­ing Dan­ger­ous­ly. With­in the New Wave was a sub­genre that took advan­tage of the new­ly devised R rat­ing and fea­tured more sex, vio­lence and hor­ror. In his 2008 doc­u­men­tary Not Quite Hol­ly­wood: The Wild, Untold Sto­ry of Ozploita­tion! Mark Hart­ley coined the port­man­teau term ​“Ozploita­tion”, which char­ac­teris­es the films made at the time by their low-bud­get exploita­tive gen­res that were inex­tri­ca­bly tied in with the stereo­types of Aus­tralian culture.

One such film, Col­in Eggleston’s 1978 mys­tery thriller Long Week­end, cel­e­brates its 40^th Anniver­sary with a first ever Blu-ray release cour­tesy of Sec­ond Sight Films. Notable both with­in the Aus­tralian New Wave and Ozploita­tion gen­res, the film described as a ​“mas­ter­piece of min­i­mal­ist hor­ror” by the Guardian stars John Har­g­reaves as the bel­liger­ent Peter and Briony Behets as the affect­ed Mar­cia. In the midst of a cri­sis they take to the Bush for the long week­end to try and work it out. From the moment they set off though, the cou­ple seem set on a path of destruc­tion – both in terms of their rela­tion­ship to each oth­er and with the world around them.

While reviews at the time focused on Peter and Briony’s blasé atti­tude to every­thing from pet care and lit­ter­ing to the wan­ton destruc­tion of flo­ra and fau­na, it’s their atti­tudes to each oth­er that packs an equal­ly fierce punch. A com­bi­na­tion of karmic jus­tice and Moth­er Nature’s revenge, the nat­ur­al pow­ers of the uni­verse take action upon on this caus­tic cou­ple in series of ​‘acci­dents’ that begin benign­ly enough but build in inten­si­ty result­ing in their ulti­mate demise. The pac­ing of the nar­ra­tive and the drip-fed rev­e­la­tions of their per­son­al cri­sis build a creep­ing dread to rival the equal­ly latent threat of the Aus­tralian bush.

Long Week­end pro­duc­er Richard Bren­nan was there at the start of the New Wave and worked on the ear­ly films of direc­tors includ­ing Peter Weir, Bruce Beres­ford, Bri­an Tren­chard Smith, Fred Schep­isi and Phillip Noyce. His fourth col­lab­o­ra­tion with Har­g­reaves came to him via Eggle­ston. ​“The script for Long Week­end was the first screen­play that Everett de Roche had writ­ten,” says Bren­nan, ​“I thought that it was quite out­stand­ing and I was very dis­ap­point­ed by the recep­tion for the film at the AFI awards.” It also fared poor­ly on its com­mer­cial release in Australia.

The recep­tion at the 1978 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, how­ev­er, was anoth­er mat­ter. Long Week­end achieved bet­ter sales than any of the oth­er Aus­tralian films which pre­miered at the fes­ti­val that year, includ­ing News­front, The Chant of Jim­mie Black­smith, Patrick, The Get­ting of Wis­dom and The Last Wave. It won major prizes at Sit­ges, Paris, Avo­riaz and else­where and its suc­cess con­tin­ues 40 years lat­er. ​“Quentin Taran­ti­no con­sid­ers it to be one of the half dozen best Aus­tralian films,” Bren­nan hap­pi­ly reports.

The inter­na­tion­al suc­cess of the film, Bren­nan believes, was down to ​“John’s mag­nif­i­cent per­for­mance and the deci­sion to shoot in anamor­phic [2.40:1] ratio.” Shoot­ing in this aspect was uncom­mon for hor­ror films at the time, although John Car­pen­ter did so for Hal­loween, released the same year. Long Week­end also utilised the new­ly-invent­ed Steadicam sys­tem, which allowed hand-held cam­era work for track­ing shots to be as steady as a cam­era mount­ed on a dol­ly. With the excep­tion of the night dri­ving scenes, the film was shot entire­ly on loca­tion; the Bush and beach scenes filmed at Bourn­da Nation­al Park in New South Wales.

The mythol­o­gy and machi­na­tions of Long Week­end are only hint­ed at by a series of por­tents (like the flock­ing cock­ies) and mys­ter­ies (the strange geo­graph­ic loop they seem to have entered) leav­ing plen­ty of space for the audi­ence to fol­low the trail and enjoy the high­ly antic­i­pat­ed, if a lit­tle drawn-out finale. It remains an uncom­fort­ably authen­tic look at Aus­tralian life, chal­leng­ing audi­ences’ expec­ta­tions of what might hap­pen if they didn’t respect the law of the big brown land.

Long Week­end is out now cour­tesy of Sec­ond Sight Films.