The Hills Have Eyes

Wes Craven, USA, 1977, 35mm, 1.37, colour, 89′

SAT September 20 / 21.00 / Slovenian cinematheque

An epitome of American suburbia, The Carter family, are on their way to California, when they skid off the road and crash. But while stranded in the isolated Nevada desert, they are not alone. These hills have eyes, and a clan of deformed hillbilly savages lurks from their caves.

A timeless classic of ‘survival horror’ (spawning sequels and remakes) by the controversial Wes Craven, then an uncompromising iconoclast and a fearless independent, continues to draw the battle lines for the class war its director has set forth in his brutal debut The Last House on the Left (1972), replacing a generational clash with a family duel – to the death, and other, more gruesome fortunes.

“Craven followed Last House with The Hills Have Eyes, a slicker, pacier piece influenced by the head-long rush and heh-heh-heh humour of Tobe Hooper. Its covered wagon is a mobile home and its Apaches are a family of desert-dwelling mutants, but The Hills Have Eyes is a Western. It is to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre what Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo is to High Noon. Hawks felt that Marshal Gary Cooper should not run around town pleading for help, and had John Wayne refuse offers of amateur aid and get on with the job he was paid to do. Craven feels the same way about Chain Saw‘s helpless, panicking victims and has his normal family greet the monsters’ attacks with an equally savage defence. Killing doesn’t come as easily to the city folks, but once they get into it their education and inventiveness help them outclass the psychos.”
– Kim Newman, Nightmare Movies