Surviving the Hills: Making of 'The Hills Have Eyes' (2006) (V)

Release Date:

20 June 2006 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary | Short

Cast

Aaron Stanford	...	Himself
Emilie de Ravin	...	Herself
Ted Levine	...	Himself
Kathleen Quinlan	...	Herself
Dan Byrd	...	Himself
Vinessa Shaw	...	Herself
Peter Locke	...	Himself
Marianne Maddalena	...	Herself
Alexandre Aja	...	Himself
Grégory Levasseur	...	Himself
Wes Craven	...	Himself
Cedric Proust	...	Himself
Franco Ragusa	...	Himself
Joseph C. Nemec III	...	Himself (as Joseph C. Nemec)
Franklin A. Vallette	...	Himself (as Franklin Vallette)

Runtime:

Finland:51 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Company:

Co-X Entertainment

Excellent documentary about an excellent film.

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Surviving the Hills: Making of 'The Hills Have Eyes' is a 50 odd minutes long look at the making of the 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes & is a fascinating & informative watch, I don't usually watch these 'making of' type documentary's on special edition DVD's but after enjoying the main feature so much this afternoon & discovering it's longer than usual length I decided to give this one a try & I'm glad I did. It chronicles specific parts of the production one at a time so there's no long dull self-congratulatory back patting promotion, well there's a bit but it's cut to a minimum let's say.

Being a huge horror fan I was enthralled with the special effects side of things, there is much behind-the-scenes footage that I found fascinating, from the original 3D computer designs for the mutants to watching the make-up being applied, there are many instances where the gore scenes are played from different angles & for longer or people just filming them on set with a camcorder or where the special effects haven't been finished like when Doug has his fingers cut off on set they just covered the fingers that went with green tape so they could be easily be removed via CGI & the original shot as it was filmed is present & where the whole 'take' is shown in one go from the word 'action' to 'cut'.

There's stuff on the car crash, the explosion, working with children & animals as there are plenty of unused shots of the scorpion scuttling across the rock at the start of the film the wrong way & the revelation that they just had to keep shooting until the scorpion went where they wanted it! The actor's talk as well as plenty of the production crew including the director, the producer, the special effects guys, the cinematographer & more. There's a deleted scene of Pluto stealing gas from the Carter's car, there's loads of production stills & lots of scenes of people with camcorders filming people filming the film (if you know what I mean!).

It's a great watch full of interesting & relevant information that focuses on the good stuff & it doesn't get bogged down with needless repeating of clips from the film itself to pad the time out & everyone seems enthusiastic about the film. Oh, there is also a piece about Billy Drago eating Ethel's heart complete with many close-up on set shots of the special effects & it being shown from different angles along with the revelation that Drago actually enjoyed eating it & that it made the cinematographer feel sick...