There is a fundamental rawness and ferocity to Wes Craven's "The Hills Have Eyes" that few other 1970's grungy, 16mm horror flicks don't quite match (the exception being "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre"). It is in-your-face and not much fun, but it is not supposed to be a joyful romp through the desert area where weapons testing occurs. Follow the road directions and don't go astray. Boy, nobody ever listens to the gas station attendant.
"The Hills Have Eyes" has a tight-knit family stranded in the middle of the desert with a broken-down station wagon and a camper. The patriarch of this family is retired policeman, Bob Carter (Russ Grieve), his dutiful wife (Virginia Vincent), and their daughters, one a little wild (Susan Lanier) and the other somewhat quiet (Dee Wallace), with their corresponding husbands. There also two endlessly barking German Shepherds, one named appropriately Beast and the other is named Beauty. The slim plot has Bob wanting to visit a silver mine he inherited but why it is so close to a government-sanctioned site with flyover Air Force jets, I can't say. Before you know it, the hills have a disgusting cannibal family who soon begin to prey on and attack the family.
"The Hills Have Eyes" is unnerving throughout with the unsuspecting family getting picked off, one by one. The assault in the camper approaches the brutality of Wes Craven's earlier "Last House on the Left" and you just can't wait for these demonic savages to get their just deserts (one of them includes the iconic Michael Berryman with a face and brow sure to produce chills on any viewer). Beast becomes something of a heroic dog and the ending with its crimson-colored freeze frame suggests that sometimes the evil is inside all of us when it comes to savage violence.
The 1985 sequel is unintentionally funny and rather toned-down from the viciousness of the original. It opens with a title crawl that reminds one of "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and uses flashbacks of the original film through the eyes of Bobby Carter (one of the surviving members of the original film and played again by Robert Houston). Another flashback is, are you ready, shown from the point-of-view of the dog Beast! Now Bobby had apparently married the helpful, frightened feral girl of the cannibal family, Ruby (Janus Blythe), from the original film and here was the opportunity to have her deal with her family from the hills. The problem is that Michael Berryman returns as her knife-wielding brother, Pluto (whom I thought was dead in the original), and there is a gargantuan-sized new member known as the Reaper, and that's all folks. All family eventually break apart I guess and Ruby never gets even with either cannibal. The victims are some racing drivers and their girlfriends in a red bus, this time, and they stop but the bus never actually breaks down! So everyone decides they need gas and stupidly investigate a compound of ramshackle homes with a mine shaft and a refrigerator that looks like the gateway to Hell.
The original film is often unyieldingly sickening yet it pulsates with raw power. Craven's needless and purposeless sequel should be long forgotten. I sense that even Beast will not have a flashback to this forgettable mess of a sequel.
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