THE HILLS HAVE EYES (2006)

 

(Director/co-screenwriter: Alexandre Aja. Co-screenwriter: Grégory Levasseur, billed as Gregory Levasseur.)

Plot: A vacationing family, lost in a desert, are hunted by mutants.

 

Review

Aja’s remake of Wes Craven’s 1977 shocker is a slicker, less raw, more-tightly scripted film. The savagery─malicious violence, rape and killing is still in-your-face and gory, and the underpinnings of national unease are still there. Also: this remake shows more of the nuclear test town and the automotive graveyard; and the remake is more overt in its political-divide commentary, e.g., Big Bob and Doug’s Right Wing/Left Wing exchanges are explicit in their political barbs—Ted Levine (THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, 1991) and Kathleen Quinlan, as ex-cop Big Bob and his ex-hippie wife, Ethel, represent Red State thinking; their daughter, Lynn (Vinessa Shaw) and her husband (Doug, played by Aaron Stanford) represent Blue State leanings. Lynn’s siblings, Bobby (Dan Byrd) and Brenda (Emilie de Ravin) aren’t solidly political yet. And of particular interest to the cannibals there’s Lynn and Doug’s baby.

Like Craven’s original film, inspired by Tobe Hooper’s THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974), there’s a steady build-up of small-but-unsettling events that, midway through the film, become more overt, terrifying and deadly.

Veteran actor Tom Bower is great as the “Gas Station Attendant”─ Bower, in this excellent cast, stands out in what might be one of the most rewarding roles in HILLS, as a man struggling with his conscience.

The mutant cast: Michael Bailey Smith (Pluto); Robert Joy (the lecherous Lizard); Laura Ortiz (Ruby); Ezra Buzzington (Goggle); Greg Nicotero, HILLS’s special makeup effects designer, played Cyst; and cold-gazed Billy Drago (THE UNTOUCHABLES, 1987) as the family patriarch, Papa Jupiter.

“Remake” is understandably a bad word in many movie-goers mouths, but this second-time-around take on HILLS is a well-made, timely flick worth watching if you’re not an originals-only purist, and willing to judge the 2006 version on its own merits.

THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART 2 (1984)

 

(a.ka. THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART II; director/ screenwriter: Wes Craven)

 

Review

Seven years after the events of Wes Craven’s 1977 film, two survivors from the previous movie are co-owners of a motocross team: Ruby, now called Rachel, who betrayed her cannibal family to help the Carters in the first film; and Bobby Carter, Rachel’s boyfriend, who’s seeing a psychiatrist to try and shake off his HILLS-related trauma. A racing event is set to take place in the desert area where Rachel’s tunnel-dwelling family attacked the Carters, and Robert, still traumatized, refuses to go. Rachel goes in his place, riding in a bus with the late-adolescent, horny and feckless motorcyclists.

The bus breaks down, stranding the Rachel and her team near the site of the original massacre. Surviving members of Rachel’s family─some of whom weren’t seen in the 1977 flick─assault and slay many of teenage riders, the remainder of whom (along with Rachel) fight to stay alive.

Released in 1985, HILLS PART 2 is a bad, choppy-edit film, more a desert-set-FRIDAY-THE-13^th knock-off than a follow-up to its potent-themed prequel. This is borne out by this sequel’s heavy, shoehorn-recycling of original-film footage and its FRIDAY-esque stalk-and-kill scenes as well as composer Harry Manfredini’s recycling of his iconic FRIDAY (1980) soundtrack here. What makes HILLS PART 2 worse is that none of the young characters, aside from Rachel, are worth rooting for. They’re obnoxious, begging to be taken out.

There are also inconsistencies with the second film.

One of them is the presence of the unscarred Pluto (Michael Berryman, reprising his iconic role)─in HILLS, Pluto appeared to be killed; even if he survived, he would’ve been horribly scarred. A further franchise contradiction is the presence of The Reaper (John Bloom, not Joe Bob Briggs), Jupiter’s brother and current head of Ruby’s inbred kin. In HILLS, it was stated by a reliable source that Jupiter (James Whitworth) only had a sister, who was killed in a house fire started by Jupiter. (It’s also worth noting that The Reaper’s voice was dubbed by Nicholas Worth.)

Shot before Wes Craven’s A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984), Craven, who later disavowed HILLS PART 2, said he was two-thirds through making HILLS PART 2 when the studio halted its production because of its cost. Craven went on to make NIGHTMARE, and when it was a huge hit, the studio (Hills Two Corporation VTC) wanted Craven to finish HILLS PART 2 (which Craven already wasn’t a fan of), crafting it with only its existing footage─the legendary filmmaker was forced to use many of the scenes from HILLS to make it long enough to qualify as a feature-length work.

Michael Berryman was not the only returning HILLS actor. Janus Blythe came back to play Ruby (now Rachel). Robert Houston, seen briefly at the film’s start, reprised his role of Bobby Carter. Also, the canine character Beast (one of the two German Shepherds seen in HILLS) appears in the second film.

Kevin Spirtas (billed as Kevin Blair, FRIDAY THE 13^th PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD, 1988) played Roy. Williard E. Pugh (ROBOCOP 2, 1990) played Foster. Peter Frechette (GREASE 2, 1982) played Harry. Penny Johnson Jerald (billed as Penny Johnson, FREDDY’S NIGHTMARES, TV series, 1990 episode) played Sue.

HILLS PART 2 is far from the worst film I’ve seen. Its behind-the-scenes crew did a good job with its technical aspects, a few of the scenes jump scare-worthy. Otherwise, it feels like a bland, disembodied-from-its-source-film-FRIDAY-THE-13^th-structured work, one you can skip without missing much. Recommended for HILLS completists or super die-hard fans of any of its players.

THE HILLS HAVE EYES (1977)

 

(Director/ screenwriter/editor: Wes Craven)

Review

The bleak, violent HILLS begins with the Carter family road tripping through an American desert. The Carters include: “Big Bob,” a no-nonsense, politically conservative ex-cop; his traditional wife, Ethel; their liberal daughter, Lynne Wood, mother to baby Katy and wife to also-liberal Doug. Lynne’s slightly younger apolitical siblings, Bobby─wearing an Ohio State T-shirt─and Brenda, accompany them on this politically and socially frayed adventure.

The Carters, with Bob at the wheel, stop at a middle-of-nowhere gas station where its old-man attendant (Fred), concerned for their safety, warns them to keep to the main highway. Bob ignores Fred’s advice and takes a desolate “short cut” side road, setting into motion the savage back-and-forth between the Carters and a tunnel-dwelling, cannibal family.

HILLS, which has a gritty, unsettling tone to it from the get-go, takes little time in cutting to a shocking cycle of rape, torture, murder, vengeance, and other territorial violence. Its tone and intensity is appropriate given its themes (racism, class warfare, militarism, and other social problems)─Jupiter’s cannibalistic-by-necessity clan represents the desperate poor, while the Carters are materialistically comfortable middle class.

According to Craven (and IMDb), the film was inspired by three things. The first was the fifteenth-century, Scottish legend of Sawney Beane and his feral family (a wife, fourteen children) who attacked and chowed down on unlucky travelers. Eventually, the Beanes were caught, judged as crazy and executed when they were found. The second was a real-life encounter Craven and his wife had in the state of Nevada, when three locals shot an arrow in his direction; when he protested, they told him they could murder him, leave his corpse in a mine, and get away with it. The third: HILLS is a partial homage to Tobe Hooper’s 1974 movie THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, which HILLS is spiritually akin to (some of Jupiter’s family’s belongings seen in HILLS were props taken from TEXAS).

HILLS has great behind-the-scenes crew and players. Cinematographer Eric Saarinen (DEATH RACE 2000, 1975) imbues HILLS with a harsh, dirty tone, perfectly suiting director/screenwriter Wes Craven’s blunt editing and restless POV shots, giving HILLS further edginess.

The actors who gave form to the Carters/Woods include: Russ Grieve (FOXY BROWN, 1974) as “Big Bob” Carter; Virginia Vincent (THE RETURN OF DRACULA, 1958) as Ethel, his fussy wife; Dee Wallace (THE HOWLING, 1981) as the fiercely protective and maternal Lynne Wood; and Robert Houston (THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART 2, 1984) as the action-oriented Bobby Carter.

John Steadman (SUMMER OF FEAR, 1978) played Fred, the grizzled gas station attendant with a profound sense of sorrow, caution, and fear.

James Whitworth (PLANET OF DINOSAURS, 1977) played Jupiter, barbaric patriarch of his Roman mythology-monikered clan. Horror icon Michael Berryman (ED GEIN: THE BUTCHER OF PLAINFIELD, 2007) played the opportunistic and sometimes terrified Pluto. Janus Blythe (THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART 2) played the not-as-feral-as-her-kin Ruby.

HILLS is a taut, sharp, nasty, and landmark work, one that inspired a Craven-created 1984 cinematic sequel, as well as a 2006 remake and its 2007 sequel. The first HILLS is worth your time if you can appreciate unsettling, sexually and violently graphic exploitation pieces that embody and transcend the primary genre(s) they’re often lumped into─while there’s no explicit nudity in HILLS, its brief assault/sex scenes are disturbing (though not as off-putting as those seen HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, 1986).

CANNIBALS (1980)

 

(a.k.a. MONDO CANNIBALE; a.k.a. WHITE CANNIBAL QUEEN; directors: Jésus“Jess” Franco─who co-wrote the screenplay, billed as A.L. Mariaux and Jeff Manner─and Francesco Prosperi, billed as Franco Prosperi. Co-screenwriter: an uncredited Jean Rollin.)

Storyline

A man whose daughter was taken by cannibals returns ten years later to their village to get her back, only to discover she is their queen.

Review

CANNIBALS is a bad film, said to be one of the worst of the titular genre─Franco, no fan of the cannibal works, acknowledged this in later interviews (he made one other long pig work, DEVIL HUNTER, 1980). He said he only made them because they were popular at the time.

Because CANNIBALS is a Franco flick, it should be noted that the nudity is occasional and non-sexual (for the most part) and mostly limited to constantly reused slow-motion scenes where the flesh-eaters gnaw on what appears to be rubbery steak and skin and a few seconds of animal intestines. At best it’s terrible, fetishistic microbudget food porn, and some of the tribe members look Caucasian beneath their makeup.

What makes CANNIBALS, also released as MONDO CANNIBALE 3 (with Franco credited as Clifford Brown, “supposedly an homage to the real Clifford Brown, a jazz trumpeter,” according to IMDb.com) so bad?

Almost everything, from, to its terrible dialogue to its languid pacing.  The actors, for the most part, are bad in their roles, but it’s hard to blame them.  The lines they had to say─I saw the English-dub version, where even the tribal members speak it─must’ve been terrible in the original Italian as well, judging from the sleep-walking-in-their-roles actors. (Franco later said that Sabrina Siani, who played Lana, Jeremy Taylor’s daughter and tribal queen, was one of the worst actresses he’d worked with; the worst was Romina Power.)

Other actors in the film: Al Cliver, a familiar face in the low-budget horror genre, played Jeremy Taylor; Lina Romay, billed as Candy Coster, played Ana (Romay is another familiar face, as well as Franco’s longtime girlfriend; she acted in over a hundred of Franco’s films)─like Cliver, Romay is one of the best players here, but they’re not given much to work with in CANNIBALS; Shirley Knight, billed as Shirley Night, played Barbara Shelton; Anouchka, billed as Anoushka, played “Lana as a child”; and Franco himself had a cameo as Mr. Martin.

At an hour and thirty minutes, this padded-out-with-recycled-cannibalism-and-extended- jungle-walk shots movie is not the worst film I have seen, but it is boring, with its threadbare budget showing (even for a low-cost film). Viewers who have seen CANNIBAL TERROR (1980, another Franco film) might recognize CANNIBALS‘s sets. Many of them were recycled from TERROR. If you’re interested in seeing a cannibal film, Ruggero Deodato’s CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980) and Umberto Lenzi’s CANNIBAL FEROX (1981) better represents the genre.