The Hills Have Eyes – Tripping Through Gateways

In the early part of the aughts, studios started to remake Wes Craven’s films. To a certain extent, this was, I believe, an attempt to give Craven more financial benefit from his work. He was tangentially involved in these films as a producer, they were all written and directed by different people.

The Hills Have Eyes was probably a good place to start. It is a film known mainly to fans of Wes Craven and horror. However, a lot of people in the mainstream are likely to have simply heard the name.

Bringing in Alexandre Aja to write and direct. He had made a real impression with 2003’s High Tension, and honestly, was probably a strong choice. High Tension was part of the French Extreme trend in horror where stories could be messy and plot twists do not make sense. Here, the extreme violence of his work really is at home.

The core story is there. A family is on vacation in their RV. They go on a detour to shorten their drive time and the car appears to break down. They discover there are other people hiding in the hills and those people attack them and kidnap their baby. And then the family must fight back.

The original film is about a family from civilization versus the feral family. The film plays up the family divisions, with Big Bob’s tough Republican versus Doug’s “weak Democrat” played up big time. In fact a lot of the film is devoted to Doug becoming a violent badass. This is not an exaggeration. Doug goes from a guy barely able to think of using a gun to hand to hand violent killer. The film is pretty good at manipulating the viewer, because Doug is trying to save his baby.

The remake’s biggest alteration is that the feral family are ravaged by radiation. They are basically mutant monsters. Visually, this is really effective, though it loses something to make the Jupiter family outright inhuman monsters.

This is a decent remake and I think gorehounds will find it enjoyable.

Just on the verge of the success of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Craven got talked into a sequel to the Hills Have Eyes. and so they put together a script revolving around Bobby Carter and Ruby. Ruby apparently stayed with the surviving members of the Carter family after helping them escape her evil family.

Now Bobby and Ruby are part of a motor cross…uh…gang and they are going on a road trip. The film makes it clear that people are aware of the legend of Ruby’s family, and when the bus breaks down, they find themselves in the same vicinity. because…well, they have to so the story will work.

The truth is, this film was a labor of a paycheck. Craven had no real interest in making a sequel. And at one point they stopped filming because the studio ran out of funding for the film. When they later decided to have Craven finish the film, it did not get easier. They ended up relying heavily on archival footage from the first film to pad things out. And if you think I might be exaggerating…well…they have a scene where the dog has a flashback. The dog.

But honestly, the story is a convoluted mess and even with a bigger budget, there was little meat here. Characters decide to run off even after they know they are in trouble, rather than everyone banding together. At least in the first film, when the family split up, they mostly had no idea the danger they were in.

There is a blind girl with magical Daredevil level senses. Characters who spy on their naked friend while she showers and when discovered, he just stands in front of her talking to her like a creep.

You can tell Craven had little interest in making this tale and it really is embarrassingly bad.

After some uh, detours, Craven returned to the horror scene. His return was a violent fight as a family finds their RV Camper breaking down in the middle of the desert. But the family does not realize that they are not alone. Somewhere in the seemingly barren hills around them there are a threat greater than the sun or scorpions.

Inspired by the Scottish legend of Sawney Beane and his family of robber cannibals. Adding to this was Craven’s appreciation for Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And the results? Unlike Last House on the Left, I find the Hills Have Eyes to be a film far easier to rivisit.

A focus on class warfare, or more civilized versus feral, the story follows the Carters. The family is on a road trip. They decide to take a shortcut, in spite of warnings against it from a local gas station owner. When their RV seems to blow a tire, the Carter assume nothing to be wrong. But as the hours pass, they start to become aware that they may not be alone. As things escalate, the Carters find themselves in a place of fear.

Not understanding what or who they are dealing with, the struggle becomes one for survival…which family walks away? Are the Carters bound to be a statistic of people who disappeared in the desert?

The central conflict of the Jupiter clan and the Carter family is an intense one. The Carters have clearly never had to fight tooth and claw, and so they have a steep learning curve.

This is a stronger narrative and Craven keeps a strong and oppressive tone through out the film. This is, in my opinion, the real start to showing what Craven was capable of and worth a watch.

Tag: The Hills Have Eyes

Revisiting the Hills Pt 1 (The Hills Have Eyes, 2006)

The Eyes Have It (The Hills Have Eyes Part 2, 1984)

The Hills Are Alive With Blood (the Hills Have Eyes, 1977)