The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

Film: The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

Stars: Russ Grieve, Virginia Vincent, Susan Lanier, Robert Houston, Dee Wallace, John Steadman

Director: Wes Craven

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

Independent horror films had their biggest heyday in the New Hollywood era, with movies like Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Halloween dominating the box office & cultural landscape.  This led to new voices in horror, including our director today, Wes Craven.  The Hills Have Eyes is actually Craven's second movie after his surprise hit The Last House on the Left, but this was made with a bigger budget, and spawned a proper horror franchise.  I will own that of all of the titles this month, this was the one I was most dreading given that it was Craven's ode to Texas Chain Saw, a movie I actively hated.  After watching, I was right to be concerned...though Hills is a much better picture.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in rural Nevada, in the true middle-of-nowhere, where a family decides not to heed the warning of a local gas station proprietor Fred (Steadman) and instead go "the scenic route" when they promptly have troubles with their camper (as an active road tripper, sticking to the main road is always a good idea).  Stuck, their dogs run off, one of them is killed, and strange things start to happen in the dark.  It turns out, they're being stalked by a family of maniacal cannibals, and as cannibals are wont to do, they start to kill the family, and in one case rape beautiful Brenda (Lanier), the family's daughter.  When they kidnap their baby Katy, the family sets off to try to find them, eventually killing most of the cannibals (save for two of the women), but in the process half of the people they started the journey with are dead, and the living are forever scarred.

The movie does a better job than Texas Chain Saw of humanizing these figures, both the victims and the killers.  In Texas Chain Saw, it felt on a lot of levels like we were watching a snuff film, one where the only purpose was mutilating the bodies of young people for sport & shock.  That's not the case for Hills Have Eyes, where the cannibals are given a structure to their family hierarchy, and while the victims are all two-dimensional, they have a dimension, even if by the end I was less rooting for them to survive (save the baby and the surviving dog, both of whom I was actively rooting for) and more just wanting the madness to stop.

Craven doesn't give this enough of his trademark humor, but he bestows on us a strong sense of intelligence, especially with the ways that the cannibals are eventually undermined by the out-of-their-league family they're tormenting.  The performances aren't good, but they're raw, and the horror feels very lived-in.  Leave it to Master of Horror Wes Craven to improve upon a film regarded by many (though not me) as a classic.  I will say that I didn't actually like this movie, because I hate this kind of movie (where it feels like you're just watching torture porn after a point), but I can objectively say this is well-made.  I just never want to see it again.

Past Horror Month Reviews

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Omen, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Child's Play, The Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist

1990's-Present: The Blair Witch Project, Scream