The Hills Have Eyes

A Nevada masquerade with retarded robbers. I’m not sure if they’re funnier, or if it's the multitude of interpretations that subsequently emerged. I’m opening the box labeled: “A horror cult film that completely passed me by” and placing it next to Carpenter’s Halloween. (03/29/2023)

If Craven had done one thing better and set the communicativeness solely on the level of the victims, this could have been one of the best horror films of the 1970s. This way, what remains is an experience of a hopelessness and assorted murders, but degraded by the frequent depiction of a ridiculous cannibal family and their demented dialogue. Fortunately, at least Alexander Aja's remake successfully eliminated almost all the shortcomings. (04/06/2018)

Naive townies versus cannibal savages in the California desert. The former search for an inherited silver mine and get stuck there, the latter live there. The film is about the struggle of two different families, one killing to survive and the other to eat and thus actually survive. Later on, it turns out that the urban family is not so different from the savage one when it is cut off from civilization and modern technology. In order for the townspeople to stand up to the savages in the wilderness, they must also become savages. You can see a kind of social commentary in this, or just an insane B-movie killing spree, that's up to you. Wes Craven is great at evoking the atmosphere of an inhospitable wilderness, but the film is more likely to be recommended only to fans of cinematic perversions, Craven and the bald dude Michael Berryman. (07/11/2003)

Wes Craven’s answer to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. But a class weaker. Its desert setting may be equally unsettling and the strange synth music gives it a proper veneer of creepiness, but the family of cannibals are just a bunch of shabby buffoons and don’t embody Chainsaw’s cautionary and relatively believable naturalism. We see them carelessly during the day, at night and in situations when they’re just ridiculous self-parodies. The scenes around their hovel and their mother wearing an Indian headdress are reminiscent of Winnetou. That said, the first third of the film is pretty bad-ass in terms of its atmosphere and cruelty! (10/04/2003)

Aja’s remake is so good, that (given its the average rating) I ignored Craven’s original for a pretty long time. Which was a mistake, it’s a surprisingly good horror flick. If there’s something that elevates it above the remake are the redneck cannibals, here they differ both in appearance and character, so they are proper characters instead just murder machines, as in the modern version. And they look so prehistorical, like Neanderthals, I loved it. For one hour, the film is basically excellent – atmospheric, brutal, terrifying. It’s a pity then that the third act slides into a relatively boring massacre, and in daylight to boot. So the final impression is a bit lower, but overall, almost unexpected satisfaction. (12/03/2014)