Every so often, I’ll be scrolling through Tubi’s massive catalog of weird stuff and find a gem. Sure, the free service has a number of recognizable movies, but most of their catalog are these weird, often low budget things with little to no name recognition outside of truly devoted cult film types. But then I might find something that turns out pretty good like the original version of The Hills Have Eyes, a movie I mostly knew by its reputation as an early effort from writer/director Wes Craven and featuring genre actor Michael Berryman’s very distinctive face. Two families face off in the desert. Only one may survive.
And hopefully it wouldn’t be the family of cannibals.
The Carter family are on a road trip vacation to California for the 25th wedding anniversary of Big Bob and Ethel Carter. Along for the ride are their teenage children Brenda and Bobby, adult daughter Lynne and her husband Doug, Lynne and Doug’s infant daughter Katy, and the family’s two German Shepherds Beauty and Beast. They stop for gas in the middle of the Nevada desert while looking for a silver mine, but they also completely ignore the advice of Fred, the old man who owns the station, and go off on a road to find the mine Fred says no longer exists. They really should have listened to Fred. It isn’t long before the car breaks an axle, stranding the family in the middle of nowhere. And this is 1977 in the days before cell phones and the like.
Of course, the busted car isn’t the real problem. No, the real problem is Fred’s son Jupiter. Fred had abandoned his son in the middle of nowhere after the then-boy killed his sister and some livestock, but somehow Jupiter not only survived, but he started a family of his own, a family that lives off what they can scavenge from travelers foolish enough to take the road Fred advised the Carters to skip. See, Jupiter and his clan are cannibals. And right now, there are a lot of Carters on the menu. But that doesn’t mean the Carters will go down without a fight.
This is early Craven, so whatever skill he will display in his later work isn’t quite there yet, but the potential is certainly on display. The movie has a grimy look, probably due to the film stock, but that sort of look actually helps a movie like this. The thing is, once the Carters more or less know what’s going on, they can somewhat prepare themselves. Jupiter and his sons know how to harass and terrify their victims, but Big Bob is a retired cop, so he wasn’t exactly going into the desert unarmed. Likewise, once the cannibals have picked off a few members of the family in horrific fashion, the others more or less put their heads together to fight back.
Plus, Beast may be one of the smartest dogs I’ve ever seen in a horror movie.
In the end, though, the movie asks us who the real monsters might be. The final shot is a ugly one, not a triumphant one for the last on-screen survivor. It’s hard to argue that Jupiter and his family don’t have it coming for what they’ve done, but it does suggest there might not be that much of a difference between the Carters and the cannibals in the right circumstances. True, the Carters were the aggrieved party, but that doesn’t change the fact that the last shot shows that similarity between the two men in the film’s final showdown. The Hills Have Eyes ends as a good, but not quite great, bit of survivalist horror, and a major stepping stone in Craven’s career.
Grade: B-
0 Comments