Written, edited, and directed by Wes Craven
Cinematography by Eric Saarinen
Music by Don Peake
Produced by Peter Locke
Starring
Russ Grieve as Bob
VIrginia Vincent as Ethel
Dee Wallace as Lynne
Martin Speer as Doug
Susan Lanier as Brenda
Robert Houston as Bobby
John Steadman as Fred
Michael Berryman as Pluto
James Whitworth as Jupiter
Janus Blythe as Ruby
Corey Clark as Mama
. . .
"What’s the matter? You don't like dog anymore?"
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
The Hills Have Eyes for the suffering of hapless outsiders who think they are on vacation to Los Angeles but are actually on a nonstop death trip to hell. It's not enough for the hill dwellers to just kill and eat their victims. They must first taunt and torment them until their bodies are full of fear. And then, of course, proper torture and meal prep can begin in earnest.
A family is traveling to Los Angeles. They end up driving on the periphery of an Air Force testing ground out in the Nevada desert. Stock documentary footage of zooming fighter jets invades the frame and seems to terrorize the family into driving off the road, shattering an axle into the bargain. So much for taking the scenic route.
The family is led by a white racist patriarch named Bob Carter, recently retired from the police. He's one of these guys who still likes to flash his badge and pack a .357 Magnum revolver. I think writer/director/editor Wes Craven is setting this guy up as a pisstake commentary on the Charles Bronson type of self-righteous avenger. Too bad about his heart condition. Not a good health problem to have if you need to run from cannibal killers in the scorching desert heat.
The retired cop's wife is a fussy Christian fundamentalist named Ethel. In a pinch, I suppose she can pray the cannibals away, or even convert them. I fantasized a deleted scene where she tries to save the souls of the cannibals by hitting them with a handful of those odious Chick Tract comics.
Bob and Ethel are hauling a travel camper containing the rest of the fam: teenage spawn Bobby and Brenda; adult daughter Lynne and her hubby Doug Wood plus baby daughter Katy; and a pair of dogs named Beauty and Beast. The characterization of most is pared to the minimum. Patriarch Bob gives a cynical, racist speech casually dropping the n-word like a character out of a Joseph Wambaugh novel, and wifey-poo Ethel gets to yammer about Jesus, and that's it. The rest of the Carter-Wood clan is young and functional.
Now, there is another family in this movie. The family of cannibals. They maneuver among the rocks and crevasses of the desert hills, communicating by walkie-talkies, and coordinating their attacks on the stranded family with zeal and precision. Bob the Elder discovers via his police investigatory skills the grotesque origin of the cannibal family, and this precipitates a campaign of terror. The truth gets you tortured and killed and eaten in The Hills Have Eyes.
But the younger Carter-Woods people are resourceful, and they do fight back-even the dog becomes a vengeful character once its mate is butchered and killed. The stripped down approach to the characterizations also keeps you guessing as to who will live, and who will die. There are no heroes in this film, just desperate survivors.
I guess that doggo is pretty damn heroic.
The cannibal family is almost cartoonishly depraved, and I suppose that's the point. I wasn't entirely convinced by some of their costuming and make-up. But the modest budget doesn't sabotage the storytelling, the brutal themes, the tension inducing hardscrabble locations, the frantic violence, or the atmosphere of terror and desperation. The Hills Have Eyes is a hardcore horror film that makes no effort to reassure the audience.
It's also funny in the sicko style that I tend to appreciate. It's got a vengeful canine as a proper character which is funny but also pretty formidable.
The music is disquieting, hard to pin down, and incorporates creepy voices in just the right proportion to set you on edge.
The cinematography is willfully disgusting and antirealistic-night in the desert is lit like a big box store parking lot, but this only increases the abject despair of the characters. It's grimy and unwholesome, and makes you want to scald yourself with boiling water and scour your body with sand paper when you're done.
As far as I can tell, it is all filmed on actual desolate outdoor locations. You gotta wonder how many broken ankles and other injuries occurred. You see real humans contending with some very tough natural settings. The effect is as unnerving as the crazed cannibals' whispers and snarls.
The Hills Have Eyes is definitely a post The Texas Chainsaw Massacre flick. You even have a scene where a cannibal waves his machete wildly like when Leatherface waltzed with his chainsaw, but it goes by pretty quick. I think Wes Craven wants to let you know where he's coming from by giving a nod to Tobe Hooper's work, but then keep it on its feet, stampeding towards an abrupt and fatal conclusion. Craven's vision also differs from Hooper's in that the potential for mayhem exists within the Carter-Woods clan as well as the cannibals.
It all borders on being a strange hybrid of violent action and horror movie. But the fact that the victims of the cannibal attackers are so average, so anonymous, so not-up-to-the-fight keeps it grounded, and thereby short-circuits any sort of action movie escapism functions.
I have great admiration for The Hills Have Eyes as an expression of grimy, disgusting, despairing horror cinema.
I really do.
