Review of The Hills Have Eyes (1977) by Matti N — 14 Nov 2007

With the exceptions of Deadly Blessing and Swamp Thing, which I just haven't seen at the video store, and Music of the Heart, which I give exactly zero rats' asses about ever seeing, I've seen almost all of Wes Craven's non-TV movies except for The Hills Have Eyes and its sequel. So when I saw the DVD at the local Ballbuster, I decided to check it out.

The movie is about a whitebread middle class family from Ohio whose car breaks down out in the middle of the desert (near Area 51, incidentally). With nobody around to help them (horror movies were a lot easier before cell phones), the family is easy prey for a feral family of cannibals (including walking freakshow Michael Berrymen) who live nearby. While the sheer 70s-ishness of the movie (especially two of the younger men's super gay short shorts) make the movie a bit hard to take seriously at times, it does have its scary moments, as well as the same kind of raw violence that worked so well in Last House on the Left (like Last House, the original cut of Hills got an X rating from the MPAA).

The DVD itself has a whole disc of extra features, including nearly an hour of interviews with cast and crew and the Wes Craven episode of the series "The Directors." Rounding out the special features are an alternate ending, a demo showing the movie before and after restoration, and trailers and TV spots (which are pretty amusing to watch, again because of the retro vibe).

If you're a Wes Craven fan, this movie is a nice transition from the grim reality of Last House to the overtly supernatural stuff like Nightmare on Elm Street, and "The Directors" episode is definitely something you'll want to see. Non-fanboys, on the other hand, would probably be better off checking out Last House on The Left, which holds up a lot better.