Savage Weekend 1979

Marie Pettis [Marilyn Hamlin] has recently divorced her politician husband Greg Pettis [Jeff Pomerantz], whose high-profile scandal in New York City has kept the press buzzing. To decompress, she escapes for a weekend in upstate New York with her new stockbroker boyfriend Robert Fathwood [James Doerr], her sister Shirley Sales [Caitlin O’Heaney], and their openly gay friend Nicky [Christopher Allport]. The group rolls into a quiet, secluded area and makes a pit stop in a small town before heading to a remote farmhouse that Robert has just purchased from Otis [William Sanderson], a local man whose father recently passed away. In the barn on the property, a massive schooner project looms, crafted under the watchful eye of Jay Alsop [Devin Goldenberg], an engineer brought in to oversee the work.

Along the way, Marie hears a troubling local rumor through Mac Macauley [David Gale], a lumberman supplying the wood for the boat. He hints that Otis might be involved in something darker than a simple tragedy, a story that seems to echo the danger hinted at in the past. As the day unfolds, Jay takes a shine to Shirley, while Marie finds herself drawn to Mac, setting up a tangled web of attraction and suspicion among the secluded group.

The next afternoon, Jay heads down to the barn to check on the progress and is abruptly murdered by a killer donning the mask Shirley purchased the day before, his body left hanging to mimic suicide. That evening, after a formal dinner at the house, Marie and Robert wander the property and uncover Jay’s corpse, a discovery that sends a chill through the group.

Back inside, Shirley climbs upstairs and, amid a playful tango interlude with Nicky, their flirtation shifts into a tense danger. The killer strikes again, stabbing Nicky through the head with a large sewing needle, then torches into the basement where Shirley is bound to a table saw. The tool falters at the power switch, leaving her alive but terrified, while Robert and Marie return to confront the intruder. They find Nicky dead upstairs, and Robert is fatally hurled from a second-story window in a brutal twist of fate. The killer descends to the ground floor and reveals himself: Greg. He declares his plan to lure Marie to the lake for a murder–suicide, turning a weekend away into a nightmare of domestic betrayal.

The following morning, Mac arrives to search an empty house. When he flips on a light in the basement, Shirley, still strapped to the table saw, is killed as the blade suddenly activates. Panicked, Mac escapes into the yard, where he encounters Greg attempting to drag Marie toward the lake. The two men fight, tumbly to the ground, until Otis arrives and intervenes, ending the terror by killing Greg with a chainsaw. In the aftermath, the farmhouse sits silent, the danger of the weekend finally over, but the memory of how quickly trust can fracture under pressure lingers in the cold upstate air.