Open Season

A cross between Straw Dogs and Deliverance, although its references are considerably wider and the plot itself is another reworking of The Hounds of Zaroff. Fonda, Law and Lynch - three clean-cut American boys who played football and served in Vietnam together - like to prove they are men two weeks in the year by going into the mountains to indulge in a little swimming, hunting, drinking, comradeship, murder and rape. Unfortunately Collinson is no Peckinpah or Boorman; so he has to rely on self-indulgent camerawork (soft focus and telephoto), ironic music, and overstressed dialogue ('Your licence to kill ran out after the war...but they forgot to tell you') to make sure the message gets across. And the hamfisted structure - fatal to this type of movie - makes even the Hitchcockian techniques fall flat. But there is plenty of nastiness, if that's what turns you on.