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THE HILLS HAVE EYES
USA 1977
Run time: 89 minutes
Director: Wes Craven
AKA: Blood
Relations, Slagterbanden
DVD release: Anchor Bay Entertainment
Review by
Christian
Povlsen |
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After Wes Craven’s merciless and gritty feature film debut with the rape and revenge classic The Last House On The Left (1972), who would have though that he had an even bigger, badder and better family tragedy up his sleeve? Well he did and Wes Craven’s second horror film The Hills Have Eyes is by far one of the best horror movies out there.
The film opens with an old man named Fred at his gas station that nervously looks around the rocks and dirty landscape. He is about to escape from what he reefers to as “Them”. Suddenly a young girl called Ruby (Janus Blythe) comes by to beg for food. Fred refuses to have anything to do with her. It is then revealed that Ruby is actually one of “Them” - a cannibalistic inbred family living in the mountains in the desert and preying on bypassing travelers. Ruby is not quite like her other family members as she doesn’t approve of their way of life. She wants to escape together with Fred, but again he refuses. In the meantime a family consistent of Bob and Ethel Carter (Russ Grieve and Virginia Vincent), their children Bobby (Robert Houston), Brenda (Susan Lanier) and Lynne (Dee Wallace), Lynne's husband Doug (Martin Speer), their baby Katy (Brenda Marinoff) and the two family dogs, are driving across the desert, heading to California for a nice family vacation. They stop at old Fred's gas station for fuel. They are then warned by him to stay on the main road only and not to take any shortcuts - an advice that isn't followed as the Carter family drives off the main road and end up driving in the bumpy desert. When they suddenly crash they find themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere. Soon the mountain cannibals begin to prey on each and every one of them, and the Carter family must stick together as much as humanly possible to overcome the terrors from the hills.
In the 1960s and 70s the notion of what the everyday man thought to be scary in horror films changed radically. Gone was the fear of the classic movie monsters, such as Dracula and Frankenstein from the 1930s, gone was the fear of the unknown, symbolized in the alien invasion and the rampaging giant monster movies of the 1950s. People began to fear the very own society they live in. The novelty of the perfect post-atom war family the fifties showed us were about to crack. The divorce rates went higher then ever, women and gay activist groups saw the light of day and abortion became legal. What frightened the people at that time were the lack of control and the fear of the uncertainty turn the society had taken. The fear was their neighbors, their friends and families and at last themselves.
A lot of horror movies that saw the light of day back then show us great examples of just that. Many movies show us members and even whole families gone berserk and making their own twisted little world to live in. Some well known examples are The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) which has a cannibalistic maniac family hunt down a group of innocent teenagers, and Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978) with a very young Michael Myers killing his sister with a kitchen knife. It all runs in the family and The Hills Have Eyes is also one of those movies, only here we’re not only shown the breakdown of one family, but of two - the inbred and mutated cannibals of the desert mountains, as a result of nuclear bomb testing in their area, and the civilized Carter family who must put aside their manners and civilized way of dealing with their problems, in order to defeat the frightening situation they find them self in, once their car breaks down is the desert.
The Hills Have Eyes is a good old fashioned revenge story - a theme that has and always will work on film. The film starts out with the Carter family simply trying to find their way out of the desert, but soon that's all put aside for the simple cause of taking down the cannibals, as these civilized people’s primal instinct for survival and vengeance surfaces. Wes Craven have said that he got the idea for the story from reading about the legend of Sawney Beane and his cannibal family, that terrorized the highlands of Scotland in the 1400s by capturing and eating people. They were eventually captured by the King only to be tortured and humiliated, and eventually executed in gruesome manner. Wes Craven found the fact that the civilized man actually became even more violent and sadistic then the savage barbarians of the wild, who just wanted food to stay alive, very appealing. And that premise is exactly the same in this movie.
The movie is indeed a nasty experience. As you are watching it there are scenes that feel so uncomfortable watching, that you think the movie must have been directed be a dysfunctional maniac. Wes Craven is truly a master of horror and with The Hills Have Eyes he sets the standard for the rest of his career. The skills he displays here are astounding and you can really feel the despair and isolation from the modern day society in every single scene. The actors all do a really great job portraying the characters as well. It's very unlikely for this type of film, but this one definitely feature some career defining performances. Especially the young Dee Wallace who would later go on to star in big budget Hollywood movies such as Steven Spielberg's E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Peter Jackson's The Frighteners (1996). Another actor worth mentioning is the strange looking Michael Berryman, in the role of the cannibal Pluto - he really steals the show for me.
Overall The Hills Have Eyes is by far one of the greatest horror movies ever produced and it shares the same tone and nihilistic atmosphere as Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre which definitely isn’t a bad thing. French filmmaker Alexandre Aja directed a remake of the film in 2006, and that movie is actually one of the better horror remakes out there, but of cause nowhere near as good as Craven’s original masterpiece.
DVD: Anchor Bay Entertainment has always produced great DVD releases and this R1 release of The Hills Have Eyes is no exception. The nice and shiny keep case holds two discs and a booklet. It's very nice to see such a great release for this kind of movie. The main feature comes in a nice grainy 1:85:1 widescreen presentation and features astounding 5.1 Dolby Digital EX and 6.1 DTS-ES sound.
On
the first disc (besides the movie of course), we find an interesting audio
commentary with Wes Craven and producer Peter Locke. The second disc is packed
with goodies. There are two one hour documentaries: “Looking Back on The Hills
Have Eyes”, produced specially for this release by Anchor Bay and an episode of
“The Directors” that gives us a great retrospect of Mr. Craven’s career. There’s
also an alternative ending, trailers and TV spots plus more exiting stuff.
The booklet in
this release features an interesting text written by Jon Putnam of
www.dvdmaniacs.net
along with some great poster art and the scene selection. |
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