The Canyon
One of the 127 ripoffs, this has an eloped couple. It came out the year before, so it’s technically in the clear, I guess. Rates pretty high on the cosmopolitrometer, I would say a 7.
Young couple of über-Aryan extraction (seriously, it’s like Barbie and Ken in human form, the telltale sign of a very low budget Hollywood production) escape from her family, get married in Vegas, and go on a honeymoon on the Grand Canyon. For having violated the most sacred institution, they get only pain and degradation.
Their guide is a local drunk boaster at a local bar. She thinks she’s got it all figured out, he’s trying to con them into earning some money, but as it turns out he’s on up-and-up, just a little eccentric, as it befalls a member of AA.
While plot wise the hubby was right all along, it’s the woman that does all the survival labour, and gets basically nothing in return. The guide is attacked by rattlesnakes and dies after a few days (!), they wander around, try to climb a big rock and the husband falls into a crevice, breaking his leg. She takes over, stabs some wolves, cuts off his leg and drags them away, stabbing some more wolves on the way. The husband dies just as the rescue helicopter is arriving, the end. Her family hates her, her husband is now dead, serves her right for marrying for love (you can almost hear the script saying).
The guide, playful tobacco-chewing hillbilly, is played by Will Patton, the woman is a very young Yvonne Strahovski, and the pseudo James Franco is just a random guy.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.