Wes Craven takes
helplessness to a new level of horror in The Hills Have Eyes
In the process, the 70s horror movie The
Hills Have Eyes creates a classic addition to the horror
movie genre that plays on a range of fears. Horror movie review and
pictures follow.
Starring:
Susan Lanier as Brenda Carter Robert
Houston as Bobby Carter Martin Speer
as Doug Wood Dee Wallace-Stone as Lynne Wood Russ
Grieve as Big Bob Carter
When I was a child my
parents had a Winnebago motor home. The Winnebago
“Indian” in fact, and we would take this mini-house
on wheels to visit Grandma Maxine and Grandpa
Jack in Arizona several times a year. Sometimes we would
drive straight through from Southern California and others we would
stop along the way to “camp”. Why am I telling you
all this? Well, The Hills Have Eyes plays on some
of the same fears that crossed my young mind back in those days.
The story is about
a family that decides
to celebrate Mom and Dad’s Silver Anniversary by driving
cross country and camping in a trailer along the way. Well, actually
it’s Dad that decides that this a good idea and everyone else
must go along with it.
As they trek along a
“shortcut” through New Mexico they have serious
car trouble, and are stranded in the middle of nowhere. This
situation is made much worse by the fact that there are people living
in the isolated desert hills…bad people.
The family, now, must try to survive in their tiny little dot of
civilization stuck right in the middle of an unforgiving, big, bad
primitive world.
The themes
in The Hills Have Eyes can be interpreted as very
deep, or merely as a scenario that leaves a family vulnerable to attack
and terror. I have watched the film both ways, as good gritty
nail-biting horror and as cutting commentary
on the false worlds that society has created to give the comfortable
illusion of being civilized. I guess I prefer the first
approach…because the last thing I want to do during a horror
movie is think too much.
Still, the treatment of how a
small patch of civilization is just a dot in this large,
dangerous wild world is a good one in The Hills
Have Eyes, and is one of the reasons why this movie is so
scary.
Everyone has their
concept of a safe place
– usually their home. We try not to go to the dangerous
neighborhoods or be caught unprepared for threatening circumstances.
But what if the precautions fail you?
What if you suddenly find
yourself smack dab in the middle of a VERY scary place
with evil creatures after you…and there is nowhere to
hide…no one to help you. That’s
helplessness…and that’s horror.
Aside from
the overall element of isolation with no means of assistance, what
strikes me is the simple fact that while inside that trailer there is
just a thin wall between you and whatever is lurking outside. I
remember as a child hearing noises outside and
wondering if it was a bear…or a mountain hillbilly playing dueling
banjos. Usually, of course, the sound was nothing but a
pinecone falling or something like that…but The
Hills Have Eyes shows us what that noise could be if it is
actually not a pinecone, but instead a horror worse
than your most frightening imagining.
Think about that the next time you set up the ole’ pup-tent.
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The themes
in The Hills Have Eyes can be interpreted as very
deep, or merely as a scenario that leaves a family vulnerable to attack
and terror. I have watched the film both ways, as good gritty
nail-biting horror and as cutting commentary
on the false worlds that society has created to give the comfortable
illusion of being civilized. I guess I prefer the first
approach…because the last thing I want to do during a horror
movie is think too much.
Aside from
the overall element of isolation with no means of assistance, what
strikes me is the simple fact that while inside that trailer there is
just a thin wall between you and whatever is lurking outside. I
remember as a child hearing noises outside and
wondering if it was a bear…or a mountain hillbilly playing dueling
banjos. Usually, of course, the sound was nothing but a
pinecone falling or something like that…but The
Hills Have Eyes shows us what that noise could be if it is
actually not a pinecone, but instead a horror worse
than your most frightening imagining.
