Hot Shots of the Week: The Helen Shaver Weekend

Sam Peckinpah’s swan song, The Osterman Weekend (1983) is largely considered a dud. It’s a shame the hard-living director of The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia went out on such a forgettable note before dying of heart failure the following year. Despite a stellar cast—Rutger Hauer! Dennis Hopper! Craig T. Nelson! Meg Foster!—I’ve never seen the film, and nor have I ever heard a friend recommend it or a reviewer write anything good about it. Still, I’m mildly curious, thanks almost entirely to hot shots like this of costar Helen Shaver:

Shaver?? I hardly know her!

As Hopper’s coked up, slutty wife—if you were married to Hopper in the early ‘80s you’d be coked up and slutty too—Shaver utters lascivious lines while doing bumps at the dinner table, but only when she’s not busy lounging about in seductive lingerie. Sheesh, why didn’t Peckinpah just trash the rest of the movie and follow Shaver’s character around for two hours instead? I’d buy a ticket to that!