The Hills Have Eyes
(1977), dir. Wes Craven, Blood Relations Company
After the Last House on the Left, Wes Craven
went back to classic stories for the inspiration for his next feature. The tale
that inspired his 1977 sophomore flick was the legend of the Sawney Bean clan,
an infamous group of cannibalistic highwaymen in the Scottish highlands.
An old man, Freddy (John Steadman) is tending to the
ramshackle gas station he lives in when a teenage girl, Ruby (Janus Blythe)
appears from the desert. She tries to trade him a sack full of bullets and
scrap to take her with him, as Freddy seems intent on getting the hell out of
town. Freddy insists that idea is terrible, as someone named ‘Papa Jupiter’
will be rather put out with both of them if they left, plus it seems Ruby isn’t
exactly the civilized type.
The argument is put on hold when the Carter family shows up.
Ruby slips away without being seen, leaving Freddy by himself when ‘Big’ Bob
Carter (Russ Grieve), a recently retired policeman, swaggers into the gas
station and starts asking for directions. It seems that Bob inherited a silver
mine somewhere in the area and wishes to inspect while taking his family;
consisting of wife Ethyl (Virginia Vincent), son Bobby (Robert Houston),
daughter Brenda (Susan Lanier), older daughter Lynn (Dee Wallace), and
son-in-law Doug Wood (Martin Speer), as well as Doug and Lynn’s baby and two
German Shepherds named Beauty and Beast, on a cross-country vacation.
Freddy begs them to stay on the main road, but Bob ignores
him once they’re out of sight and heads off into the desert. A shame they did,
as Freddy’s truck suddenly explodes once they’re completely gone. Freddy’s
ideas to skip town have been put on hold.
The Carter’s plans are similarly dashed thanks to a low
flying jet and some sharps rocks. Stranded, Bob decides to hike back to
Freddy’s and call for help while Doug is ordered to go in the opposite
direction. Bobby is given a gun and placed in charge. All the while, someone is
watching the Carters and their intent seems less than helpful.
Beauty snaps her leash and runs off into the desert with
Bobby in hot pursuit. He doesn’t get very far when he finds the dog…or what’s left
of her. Bobby flees back to camp as Beast runs away too. As night falls,
something starts sneaking around the camper making noise similar to one of the
dogs.
Bob, meanwhile, finally reaches the gas station where he
finds Freddy trying to hang himself. The older man climbs down and explains his
plight. Some time ago he and his new wife moved out to the desert to run the
station. Things were good until she gave birth to a boy named Jupiter. Weighing
nearly twenty pounds at birth, the baby killed his mother. Growing up, the boy
killed his older sister and Freddy’s livestock too. Snapping, Freddy beat his
son’s head with a tire iron and dumped the body out in the desert. Pity that he
only succeeded in making his boy stronger; growing into a man (James
Whitworth), Jupiter found a wife of his own and raised a quartet of kids almost
as mean as him. This is proven when Jupiter comes crashing into the station and
returns the favor to his father with tire iron. Bob is knocked out and dragged
off.
He isn’t dragged too far, as Jupiter returns him to his
family…crucified and on fire. While Bob burns, Jupiter’s sons attack. Mars
(Lance Gordon), Pluto (Michael Berrymen), and Mercury (Peter Locke) assault the
Carters in every way. Mercury keeps an eye out while Mars and Pluto murder
Ethyl and Lynn and make off with almost every tool, piece of food, and useable
thing they can find, including Doug and Lynn’s baby.
From there it is a fight to the death as the remaining
Carters try to survive against increasing horrible odds.
This is a powerful film. If Craven could have kept this
level of intensity with all of his projects things might have gone differently.
Gritty, dirty, and violent, this film still manages to emotionally gut punch
the viewer. This is a horror film that took most of the rules that have been
established in other films and snapped them in two. The trend was already
there, but this ushered in a new level of terror.
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