Cheap Hills Have Eyes (Video) (Susan Lanier, Robert Houston) (Wes Craven) Price

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Customer Reviews of Hills Have Eyes

Before SCREAM, before ELM STREET there were THE HILLS...
The editorial review for this film says HILLS HAVE EYES is "highly recommended for Craven completists"- which again causes me to ask: When the heck can NZer's get to legally see LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT?, especially with the much anticipated FREDDY VS JASON coming soon (to NZ) which sees LHOTL's Writer/ Director Wes Craven (ironically, a former Professor of Humanitarian Studies) & Producer Sean Cunningham's famous characters going one on one- isn't that a sure sign for LHOTL to be reclassified R18? OK, enough of my liberal rambling & on to the review.
Wes's next cult hit (which he also wrote) was THE HILLS HAVE EYES, which has to be one of the scariest movies I've seen. Bar none. It's not technically brilliant or anything, but in terms of the scare factor HILLS is up there with the best of 'em.
The premise is pretty basic: The Carter family are heading away on vacation when their car & trailer are run off the road in the desert when swerving to avoid hitting a cute little bunny rabbit. Stranded in the middle of nowhere, little do the Carters know they are being watched by a redneck cannibal with a walkie talkie, who memorably & menacingly purrs into the radio: "They's done gooooood! Easy pickin's now!" No more cornbread an' buttermilk for these yokels no mo'! Yee haw! To celebrate; the Entree on their menu is Beauty, the family dawg.
With their car temorarily out of order, Fred Carter (John Steadman) an ex-cop who served 25 years on the Force; & son Doug set off to on the long trek to get help, leaving the rest of the family behind at the mercy of the cannibals.
When Fred reaches the township, he meets an old man who recounts the tale of his wife giving birth years ago to a baby boy who "was ten pounds & hairy as a monkey". Fred learns that Junior's leisure pursuits extended to killing dogs, biting off chickens heads & burning down the family house. So the old man did what had to be down: he bashed in the mutant's face with a tyre iron & left it in the middle of the desert to die. Junior survived & met a lovely hairy cannibal girl & soon there was a whole family of mutant cannibals roaming the desert, among them mama Ruby (Janus Blythe), Mercury (Arthur King) & of course who could forget Pluto? (played by cult fave Michael Berryman). Must've seemed like a good idea at the time.
Now Pappy's scared that "the devil boy's grown up to be a devil man". Then as soon as he finishes speaking, a cannibal conviently leaps through the window & stabs him to death....
Meanwhile the rest of the family find themselves fighting for their lives & a bad situation gets even worse when the mutants kidnap their baby with the intention of eating it. But I won't elaborate any further because that will just spoil everything.
Craven has made a geniunely frightening movie which is not for all tastes, with subject matter including numerous taboos like cannibalism, incest & infanticide; but in my opinion that's what makes the film all the more terrifying. THE HILLS HAVE EYES is a must-see for horror fans; though people of a nervous disposition are advised to pass on this one. Try and avoid the sequel, best categorized as a lesser remake which is mainly just comprised of flashback footage from #1 and was probably only released in 1985 (after being shelved for two years) to cash in on the success of ELM ST. Proof that you (usually) can't beat the original.

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One of the most underrated and frightening films ever
After scoring a surprise hit with his shocking debut Last House on the Left, Wes Craven wrote and directed this primitive little shocker that just like Last House on the Left managed to be shocking and truly scary. When a suburban family becomes stranded in the desert, they fall prey to a family of cannibals, and as they're numbers quickly dwindle, fight back with equally savage means. The Hills Have Eyes was also another social commentary by Craven as we see the typical human family revert to they're feral instincts in doing anything to survive. A lesser known sequel would be released a few years later which Craven directed, but that film isn't worth tracking down one bit. Anchor Bay has yet again done another fine job on restoring a horror classic to DVD; just like they did with Near Dark and Day of the Dead, The Hills Have Eyes DVD is handsomely packaged and includes two discs worth of features including a commentary by Craven and producer Peter Locke, two hour long featurettes, and a plethora of trailers and TV spots. Highly recommended for horror buffs.

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Boring
I watched this movie for 20 minutes until I turned it off. It was boring and going nowhere. The characters were uninteresting and the movie took too long to set up. I'm glad I didn't waste money to rent this.