the
hills have eyes
(1977) |
director/screenwriter/editor
Wes Craven
producer
Peter Locke
cinematographer
Eric Saarinen
music
Don Peake
cast
Susan Lanier (Brenda Carter)
Robert Houston (Bobby Carter)
Martin Speer (Doug Wood)
Dee Wallace (Lynne Wood)
Russ Grieve (Big Bob Carter)
John Steadman (Fred)
James Whitworth (Jupiter)
Virginia Vincent (Ethel Carter)
Lance Gordon (Mars)
Michael Berryman (Pluto)
Janus Blythe (Ruby)
Cordy Clark (Mama)
Peter Locke (Mercury)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 89m
u.s.
release: 7/22/77
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other wes
craven films
reviewed on this website:
- cursed
- last
house on the left
- red eye
- scream
- scream
2
- scream
3
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In the summer of 1977, George
Lucas gave us a galaxy of weird faces in the cantina scene in
Star Wars. But none of them
quite matched the formidable mug of Michael Berryman as Pluto,
a member of the savage cannibal family in Wes Craven's The
Hills Have Eyes. Born with an illness called hydrochotic-extodermaldysplasia,
Berryman has parlayed his distinctive features into a long and
profitable cult-movie career. You could take a photo of him without
make-up, put it on a movie poster, and scare the hell out of
everyone, and that's exactly what Vanguard did in the marketing
for The Hills Have Eyes. Unlike his debut Last
House on the Left, Craven's second film needed no lurid
tag line ("It's only a movie"); it just needed Berryman.
Aside from that, Hills
does play a lot like Last House, with a side order of
Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Here,
a nuclear family meets a literal nuclear family -- that
of a deformed child abandoned out in the desert, who grew up
and begat a clan of vicious scavengers. The "normal"
family is headed by a retired cop (and racist) and his enabling
wife, taking a road trip to California with their three grown
kids, a son-in-law, a baby, and two dogs named Beauty and the
Beast. Their car wipes out, as cars so often do in such movies,
and they're left stranded amid the godforsaken rocks and snakes.
Which would be enough of a predicament without the hungry family,
led by Jupiter (James Whitworth), who zero in on that fat little
baby.
On some level, this is a rehash
of Craven's earlier effort, with urban/rural tensions replacing
generational tensions. But Craven obviously had some demons to
let loose, some need to subject the family unit to disintegration
and terror. His goal in these early films is to show how easily
civilization can lurch into brutality, how fragile the social
compact is in the crunch. While Lucas was faffing about in a
galaxy far, far away, Craven was probing the difference between
human and monster, and not finding much difference.
As in Last House, the
pack of raving scum has someone with a conscience: Ruby (Janus
Blythe), who tries to escape the clan early on. In neither family
are women really taken seriously except as childbearers (Dee
Wallace, a mere five years before E.T.,
is the perky young mother whose baby becomes the film's MacGuffin)
or servants. Craven sets up a contest between the two clans,
which the "civilized" family can only hope to win by
becoming as savage as their attackers. At what price comes triumph?
Order may be restored, but by the terms of chaos.
For all that, I'd have to consider
The Hills Have Eyes a minor chapter in the Craven portfolio:
There's a difference between reiterating a theme and repeating
what worked before, and you feel the line drawn here. Last
House on the Left provoked controversy, banning, and an excellent
book about its making; Hills hasn't inspired nearly as
much loathing or devotion. It's simply a well-executed revenge
horror movie, and though I take no particular offense at the
baby being imperilled -- anything's fair game in horror -- Craven
almost seems to be reaching to shell-shock the audience,
to top his previous assault on good taste. More disturbing is
the idea of an Air Force-ravaged desert where people are left
to fend for themselves among the scorpions. If the movie had
taken the point of view of the desert family -- who do what they
have to do to survive and don't take kindly to whitebread families
tootling through their turf en route to California -- Hills
may yet have been as shocking as it wants to be. As it
is, it's a film best looked back on fondly, for its moments of
intensity and suspense under Craven's merciless hand, and for
Michael Berryman's imposing and incomparable presence.
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