Death Weekend (also known as The House by the Lake) is a 1976 Canadian horror/thriller film directed by William Fruet, produced by Ivan Reitman, and starring Brenda Vaccaro, Don Stroud, and Chuck Shamata. Set over a 24 hour period on a cold winter day in rural Ontario, the film focuses on fashion model Diane (Vaccaro) and wealthy playboy Harry (Shamata), whose weekend party at a remote country house turns into a nightmare following an encounter with a quartet of drunken thugs led by Lep (Stroud).
This film provides examples of the following tropes:
- Bittersweet Ending: Bordering on Downer Ending. Diane successfully manages to fight back and kill Lep and his accomplices, but Harry is dead and the whole ordeal has left her exhausted and traumatized, and it's very likely she'll never truly recover.
- Car Fu: Lep meets his demise while attempting to stop Diane from escaping in Harry's car; he climbs onto the roof of the moving vehicle and tries to wrest her away from the controls, only for her to shake him off the hood and run him over.
- Cool Car: Harry owns a very nice 1970 Corvette. Also, in a villainous example, the thugs' 1967 Camaro.
- Disproportionate Retribution: For Lep, running his car off the road is punishable by kidnapping, rape, and murder.
- Extremely Short Timespan: The entire film takes place over a 24-hour period.
- Pretty in Mink: Diane wears a lynx fur jacket in the opening.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Lep truly cements his status as irredeemably evil when he rapes Diane as punishment for her attempting to escape his clutches.
- Slashed Throat: Diane kills Runt by slashing his throat with a broken piece of mirror glass.
