The Hills Have Eyes

While traveling in a trailer through the desert to California, the retired detective Big Bob Carter (Russ Grieve) stops in an isolated gas station with his family for fueling and rest. Bob is traveling with his wife Ethel (Virginia Vincent), his son Bobby (Robert Houston), his daughters Brenda (Susan Lanier) and Lynn (Dee Wallace) and his son-in-law and Lynn's husband Doug (Martin Speer) and their daughter baby Katy (Brenda Marinoff). When they leave the gas station, the owner advises Bob to stay in the main road. However, the stubborn driver takes a shortcut through a nuclear testing site and wrecks his station wagon. With the family stranded in the middle of nowhere, Bob and Doug walk on the road trying to find some help. Bob is captured by an insane and sadistic member of a deranged evil family that lives nearby the spot. Doug returns to the trailer, and along the night the Carter family is attacked by a group of psychotic cannibal criminals. Absolutely trapped by the murderers, they have to fight to survive.

The 1977 "The Hills Have Eyes" is still an impressive movie thirty years after the release date. I have never had the chance to see this low-budget movie, which has not been released on DVD in Brazil, and the VHS is rare. The violent, crude and claustrophobic story has not been dated; on the contrary, I believe it is more credible in the present days, when we can see violence everyday on the news, than in 1977. This movie is certainly one of the best in the filmography of Wes Craven. The cast is pure emotion and fear on the side of the Carter family, and evilness and sadism on the side of Jupiter's family. Ruby, performed by Janus Blythe, is probably the most interesting and ambiguous character, living with a dysfunctional family but still acting like a human being. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Quadrilha de Sádicos" ("Sadistic Gang")

Note: On 30 December 2014, I saw this movie again.

Note: On 09 July 2020, I saw this film again on DVD.

Wes Craven is a director who did a lot to revive interest in the horror genre, but he also did a lot to ensure that we were unlikely to get our horror the way we used to. While I personally have nothing against his mega-successful "Scream" franchise and have enjoyed both films immensely, I feel sad knowing that Craven will never be able to recapture the awesome low-budget effectiveness of his earlier works. He has developed his directorial skills a LOT since then, but any horror fan will tell you that slicker does not necessarily mean scarier. Now that Craven has successfully broken free from the genre that has provided him with a living for over a quarter century (and has moved on to directing inspirational films with Meryl Steep!), we will never see another film like his "The Hills Have Eyes", which is raw, intense horror at its best. The film doesn't quite have the same impact as Craven's earlier "Last House on the Left", but it is a more skilful piece of work, and is still one of the most frightening genre flicks ever made.

Like all great horror films, the plot requires very little description. The upper-class, white-bread Carter family are on a road trip to California and decide to take a detour through the desert to check out a silver mine that the parents received as a silver wedding anniversary gift. They ignore the warnings of a crazy old man they encounter at a gas station who warns them to stay on the main road, and end up wishing they'd listened to him after their trailer becomes trapped in the middle of nowhere with a broken axle on the car. It soon becomes apparent that they've stumbled into an area that is populated by a family whom the Carters would never have to worry about encountering back home in Cleveland. The members of this family are named after planets in the solar system (Jupiter, Mars, Pluto etc.) and are able to survive life in the desert by praying on unsuspecting travellers like the Carters. After a night of unbearable hell, the Carter family has lost some of their members and most of their supplies and decide to take revenge once daylight hits. They end up acting more violent and psychotic than the villains.

Not even David Lean has used the desert to better effect. Craven's direction here is top-notch, and does a terrific job at conveying the isolation of his location and the helplessness of the whole situation. He takes his sweet time building up the mutant family's attack on the Carters, so that the tension almost becomes unbearable. By the last act, the film is less concerned about the heroes finding their way out of the desert, but about whether or not they are going to end up stooping to the level of their enemies. Of course, these themes of vengeance and family were covered by Craven before in "Last House on the Left", but this time around, he ensures that they will reach a wider audience by presenting them within the confines of a more straightforward genre film. The main factor that prevents this film from being superior to "Last House" are the villains, who are somewhat cartoonish and not quite as memorable as Krug & Company. However, they still do provide plenty of menace, and like the "Last House" gang, exude a certain likability when they're not acting vicious, especially Michael Berryman, who steals every scene he's in as the dim-witted Pluto. All in all, "The Hills Have Eyes" is an unforgettable experience and one of the best films of its kind. Even though videotape copies of "Hills" have been in the darkest depths of moratorium hell for years, every horror fan should go out of their way to check it out. Especially since we just don't get them like this any more...

A Wes Craven classic, he truly nailed the suspense and the awkward atmosphere of the beginning. Almost nothing is revealed to the viewer until the later half of the film, which greatly increases the horror of the movie as a whole.

Despite the crappy cheesy costumes and really bad wigs this still manages to hold up pretty well because its all go from beginning to the end and it should have you one the edge of your seat. Basically a cast of unknowns, with Michael Berryman's performance the stand out.

Along with the Elm street series it's arguably the greatest contribution from Wes Craven.

This style of movie has been copied over and over since, but this one stands out from the rest for genuine horror fans.

"The Hills Have Eyes" is personally one of my favorite horror films of the '70s era, I'd say this one is just below Tobe Hooper's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". I love the whole atmosphere the film gives off, and how brutal the film is. "The Hills Have Eyes" follows a normal American family on a camping trip who accidentally crash their station wagon and trailer in the middle of the California desert. The gang consists of Bob and Ethel, and their teenage children Bobby and Brenda, and their adult daughter Lynne and her husband and infant. Their father goes out for help, while the rest of them wait at the trailer, but they are unknowingly being watched by a family of cannibalistic mountain people that are hungry for flesh. As night falls, the clan of mountain-dwelling cannibals close in on the family, attacking their little safe-haven Airstream trailer, and begin to brutally slaughter each of them as they fight to save their lives.

One of the more memorable exploitation films from the 1970s, this gruesome little chiller is a nice addition to the list. Wes Craven, writer and director of this movie, does a great job at setting a mood, atmosphere, and having plenty of scary moments throughout. The desert in the film is eerie itself, it's such an empty and genuinely creepy landscape for a horror film to be set in. Along with this is the brutality factor - this is a harrowing little movie. The violence is shocking and strangely realistic, and it makes it more unsettling than it could have been. I can see why Mr. Craven has gone on to direct so many other successful horror films, such as "Scream" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street", because he's good at what he does.

The acting here isn't bad, we have Dee Wallace Stone ("E.T.", "Cujo"), but most of the other actors are unknowns, who give decent performances. Some of the acting was admittedly over the top and a little laughable at times, but what could you expect from a low-budget '70s horror flick? This film comes to a close in a rather odd way, fading out into a red screen. The ending was surely abrupt and I'm sure there were other, better ways to conclude the story. But, again, the rough abruptness is another addition to the movie's raw atmosphere and visceral quality. This isn't a pleasant movie, and I think anyone who has seen it can agree on that.

Bottom line - "The Hills Have Eyes" is one of the best horror/exploitation films to come from the '70s era. Not the best, but it is definitely close to it. It's brutal, raw, unsettling, and it made me uncomfortable. Any movie that has the power to do that must really have something going for it. Definitely worth a watch, it's a classic midnight-movie. One of my many personal favorites. If you like this, I'd also recommend Craven's debut picture, "Last House On The Left", which is also a visceral exploitation B-movie classic. 9/10.

On a road-trip through the New Mexico desert, a family stranded in the area finds that a group of inbred, cannibalistic hillbillies have targeted the group and are set on killing them for food, forcing the family into a desperate race to stop them and get away alive.

This here was quite the fun if slightly flawed effort. When this one works, it's mainly due to the fact that there's quite an effective atmosphere here of being out alone in the wilderness. The film does an incredible job in the first half of depicting the desert of this one as creepy and chilling which really makes it so that being trapped on an open road in the middle of nowhere is a pretty terrifying ordeal and forces the ultimate traveling nightmare. The darkness that surrounds the family is terrifying, as anyone or anything can hide in there, and this film provides that fear in spades as tons of times we see or hear all these sights and sounds that would terrify any sane person. That gets exemplified best in the one scene of the characters run down the highway in the dark as these crazy laughs were heard echoing alongside him, a pretty terrifying ordeal, and it only gets better from there. That comes from the rather impressive event that kick-starts the film into overdrive which is the main assault on the van as the family gets into attacking the trapped members during an insanely fun ploy here, as the mounting tension plays into the initial first trap before the charge into the van and all the battles to confront them attempting to escape as well as one of the most horrendous acts ever committed to screen, and the audacity to pull it off and make it as striking as it is a huge testament to do something like that. By subjecting us to this scene, it works to keep the audience on the edge because now we don't know what else will be thrown at us and become anxious as the waiting game begins. The best part is the events that follow as the film is all action featuring plenty of solid action as the brutal encounters offer a lot of great moments. Also great is the family has a creepy air around them that makes us all become scared of them, and along with their great behavior patterns are the best parts. It doesn't have too many flaws here as the main issue is the illogical manner of getting them on the shortcut which really makes no sense and features plenty of stupid character decisions to move them along. There's also the manner of the rather sloppier effects for the gore and kills which does take away a bit of their effectiveness. Otherwise, this is quite an enjoyable effort.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, attempted rape, violence-against-animals and children-in-jeopardy.