As you may remember, I fucking DESPISED the Texas Chain Saw remake, but I thought the Dawn of the Dead one was fun. I can definitely be a purist at times but not always. I just calls it like I sees it. For me THE HILLS HAVE EYES is a remake with alot of potential because the original is a movie that I like alot, but I know it’s flawed. It’s got these great archetypal type themes, a perfect setup, lots of great horrible gruesome fun, but it’s pretty sloppy and cheap looking, and not always in a good way.
The remake, by the same frenchmen who made HIGH TENSION, had a couple things here and there that bothered me, but I think it goes in the pantheon of the good remakes. It stays very true to most of what I like about the original, and in some areas it even improves. TEXAS CHAINSAW I felt like was made by people who had no fuckin clue what was great about the original; DAWN OF THE DEAD was a good action movie but had none of the substance of the original; also please note I used two semi-colons in this sentence, which I think is pretty god damned professional in my opinion. To me, THE HILLS HAVE EYES feels like a new production of the old classic, because it stays very close to the original story for the first half, and when it veers off in a different direction it still stays true to the themes of the original. Shit, I’ll say it: THE HILLS HAVE EYES = Shakespeare. Hopefully we’ll have many different versions of THE HILLS HAVE EYES – we’ll have it modernized, we’ll have it set during WWII, or in space, we’ll have it done entirely by puppets or animals or children.
But that’s later, for now let’s deal with the first remake. The basic story is almost the same as in the original. The whitebread Carter family are on a trailer trip to California, taking a stupid route through New Mexico. They stop at a gas station called Fred’s Oasis, take a dirt road shortcut and then crash and break their axle. Then a pack of weird mutant/inbred bastards terrorize them, kill some of them and steal their baby. And the survivors turn savage to get the baby back and exact revenge on behalf of civilized man. the end.
Wes Craven was a college professor once so it’s not surprising he put alot of pretentious subtext into his early movies. I’m not trying to say it’s deep, but the way he set up this story has some kind of mythic quality or something that elevates it as far as I’m concerned. You got this family (named after the president at the time) that represents Middle Class America (in the new one they even have flags on their truck and on the mom’s shirt, and Big Bob makes fun of his son in law for being a democrat). Then you got this other family that represents pure savagery. But they’re two sides of the same coin, assuming the head side is all melted and fucked up. That’s why the Carters have two dogs named Beauty and Beast. If they only had one it would be named The Duality of Man. Notice that Beauty gets mutilated early on, Beast starts chewing on people and knocking them off cliffs.
That’s right, man is both beauty and beast so when the families face off it quickly becomes clear they’re not that different. The non-mutants turn completely vicious when the chips are down (just like in LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT). And in both versions the mutant pack also has the younger sister Ruby who wants to be normal. In the original version, she actually ran off and lived a normal life (if you believe the horrible HILLS HAVE EYES PART 2). In this one she steals a hoodie from the Carters and wears it for the rest of the movie, which to me represents that she wants to be part of their family instead of Jupiter’s.
Like I said, if you MUST remake a ’70s horror classic, this is a good one to do. Because the original HILLS HAVE EYES is not perfect. Alot of the acting and dialogue is pretty bad. The production values are low. Craven and his boys made an entertaining movie but they didn’t make a low budget sing the way, say, Tobe Hooper did in CHAIN SAW or George Romero did on NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. It always bugged me how they just shine a bright light on the side of the trailer at night and you’re supposed to believe it’s moonlight or something. But on the other hand they got the great themes I mentioned, they got scary looking Michael Berryman as Pluto, they got some bits of weird production design by Robert Burns (the same dude who did TEXAS CHAIN SAW and TOURIST TRAP), they got a couple hilarious moments between the mutants and some savagery that still feels fresh today. Because I don’t know another movie where the heroes are pushed to the point of using their mom’s dead body as bait.
It’s safe because it’s not a note perfect masterpiece like TEXAS CHAIN SAW, it’s a great idea with the execution only halfway there. Sure enough, the two frenchmen have made a real entertaining movie that I will go so far as to say is in some ways better than the original. I wasn’t ready to say that right after I walked out of the theater but the next day I watched the original again. And usually that would be a bad idea that would make you notice more flaws in the remake. But actually it had the opposite effect, really making me notice that the Carter family is more sympathetic and believable in the new version (and more silly than I remembered them being in the old version), and it made me really appreciate the spooky desert atmosphere of the remake. Of course, there’s a charm (yes, violent horror movies have charm) to the primitive/raw/sloppy feel of the original that can never be recreated, but these guys do a great job of reinterpreting it.
Now, don’t get me wrong. There are a couple of fuckups here and there. They changed up the backstory, which is fine. Instead of tying the family to the gas station attendant, there’s a story about miners who refused to evacuate their homes for the government’s nuclear testing and apparently gave birth to some mutants. But they don’t trust the audience to figure that shit out on basic clues (or DAWN OF THE DEAD remake style opening credits montage), so in the scene where Big Bob Carter (played by Ted Levine this time) finds a stash of stolen credit cards and jewelry in the gas station and figures out this guy is preying on tourists, he also has to see a series of pristine newspaper clippings detailing the entire history of the miners, nuclear testing and disappearances. This was even worse than the scene I wish they had cut out of WOLF CREEK. We already figured out what’s going on here, fellas. You don’t need to draw us a picture.
But the very worst scene is close to the end, when an Elephant Man looking dude in a wheelchair makes a speech about “your people” and what they did to us, somehow blaming the Carters for nuclear testing and unwisely turning the hills pack into whiny victims. This speech was so bad I was afraid the movie was gonna pull a HIGH TENSION and end on a note so stupid it would erase my enjoyment of everything that came before it. Fortunately the scene is over quick and you can pretend it never happened. Like that time you (insert joke about jerking off while thinking about your friend’s girlfriend/mom/whatever).
Also, the climax of the movie takes place in a nuclear testing site with houses full of mannequins. I thought that was a little too cute. But I understand how the idealized mannequin family fits in with the themes and why they’d want to have a new setting to set it apart from the original.
My only other major complaint is that in the opening scene and a couple scenes at the end they use a skipped frames/handcrank type deal to make the footage look all modern and hyperreal. It makes it hard to look at and doesn’t fit with the more timeless feel of the rest of the photography. That’s the problem with the young directors and Tony Scott, they rely on these type of dumb stylistic gimmicks that they think will make the audience more excited but they just date the movie like those cheesy video effects you used to see in the early ’80s.
Those are small complaints though. The story has the same dread and primal thrills as before but with protagonists that feel more like real people. The mom especially. Big Bob is still a macho gun toting republican but he’s not a racist or a complete asshole, he’s pretty likable, and less of a coward. And there’s a little detail where brother-in-law Doug checks out young Brenda in her swimsuit, which I think is supposed to imply that somewhere in his id or whatever the fuck that thing is called, he has something in common with the mutants who try to molest her later. And he does, because by the end of the movie he has fucked up more than a couple genetically deformed individuals, using a gun, a pick ax and even an American flag. As he stumbles out victorious and covered in blood, triumphant spaghetti western guitars sarcastically tell the audience that he’s our hero. I mean obviously you can’t blame the guy for going to extreme lengths to get his baby back, but the circumstances are so horrible that maybe a more civilized audience would be sad about the whole ordeal instead of cheering him for coming out on top. But not us.
I actually think it’s scarier than the original. It helps that the Carter family is more believable, better actors. And they spend a while setting up the mutants as an unseen presence, making you really dread them before you actually see them.
To me, both versions of THE HILLS HAVE EYES play out like a very straight faced, very dark comedy making a pretty obvious but always enjoyable satirical point about american culture. Through the medium of cannibalistic mutant attacks. It could be called THE DELICIOUS TASTE OF THE BOURGEOISIE, but that would be stupid because THE HILLS HAVE EYES is one of the best movie titles I ever heard. So please hollywood, don’t change the title to this new not as good one I just made up. assholes.
The big question I had when I first heard they were doing a remake is, how are they doing the mutants? Is Michael Berryman gonna be in it? No, but this time Pluto’s not the only one who looks strange. They’re all wearing birth defect makeup, some of them very extensive. I was skeptical about this idea but I think they did a real good job, making it look very disturbing and realistic. And best of all is Ruby, who in the original looked like Helena Bonham Carter dressed as a lost boy in Peter Pan, now has a digital effect to make her eyes look too far apart and uneven, an effect so convincing that everyone I’ve talked to about it thought the actress actually looked like that. (Stanley Kubrick talked about doing a digital effect like that in A.I., but it took several years, one former college professor and two weird french dudes to make his dream a reality.) Ruby is definitely the most improved aspect in the remake. She looks younger and weirder, and she’s much quieter, speaking through actions instead of words.
The mutants are almost the same as before personality-wise, but you don’t hear them talking quite as much, they stay in the shadows a little more and some of them are unintelligible. I missed some of the funny conversations from the original (like the one after the dog knocks Mercury off the cliff) but I liked the mysterious approach to the family. You’re even less sure who’s who than in the original, and most of these guys are huge and menacing. One guy likes to bust through walls and throw people long distances. I also really liked the smaller, wiry guy Lizard, played by Robert Joy who we all know from LAND OF THE DEAD and that one episode of BRUCE WILLIS’S MOONLIGHTING where he’s the concert pianist who keeps getting beat up.
I do have to warn fans that in the remake they do not use their mom’s dead body as bait. But this is by no means a watered down remake like WALKING TALL or something. In most other respects it’s more brutal than the original. In fact it has one thing that happens, involving mutants and a baby in a trailer, that has upset some people when they heard about it, even though they would never dirty their asses by sitting in a theater that plays a low life movie like that. To be honest it didn’t occur to me as all that shocking at the time, I was too distracted by what they were doing to the parakeet to think much of the baby. Also, in my opinion, this is a fictional movie and not something that actually happened. (Just my two cents.) But still, the mutants’ irresponsible behavior has called forth Regurgitated Argument #5,067, in which today’s horror movies are cast asperison upon and judged too shocking and repulsive for civilized human beings to watch or coexist with. You may recognize this argument from such movies as NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT, WOLF CREEK, and ten thousand horror movies in between. Do we really have to go through this shit again? The bottom line is, this is a well made horror movie. If you don’t like horror movies or don’t like this type of horror movie, I have good news for you: there’s other movies you can watch. Personally I have no interest or understanding of the appeal of shit like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, GUINEA PIG, CHICAGO, or RENT. But some people like those movies, for some reason, and somehow life goes on. I happen to like a HILLS HAVE EYES type of movie and I don’t think it’s gonna destroy civilization, especially since the subtext of the movie itself is saying the exact thing you are about the degradation of our culture and civilization!
Plus, you’ve had almost 30 god damn years to find out what THE HILLS HAVE EYES is all about. I can’t feel that sorry for you if you’re surprised when the mutant cannibals invade the tourists’ trailer and then – in a shocking twist – behave in ways not befitting of gentlemen. Are you asking for a movie about mutant cannibals who steal a baby and then raise it in a safe and loving environment? Because I don’t think I would like that movie as much. (I’d watch it, though.)
Look at it this way. For the past, what, 7 or 8 years, horror fans have been whining about watered down, PG-13 studio horror movies replacing the serious horror that they love. Now that we finally got a handful of more gruesome adult oriented horror movies, do we really have to hear people whining about horror movies being too R-rated? For god’s sake man go rent DARKNESS FALLS or something and leave us alone.
APPENDIX: OBSESSIVE REMAKE VS. ORIGINAL COMPARISON
WARNING: NOT FOR AMATEURS
BACKSTORY. The original spells out the cannibals’ family tree, and only implies their connection to nuclear testing. The remake spells out their connection to nuclear testing and just tells you they were miners. For this I prefer the original’s approach. The gas station attendant is the father of Jupiter, the leader of the cannibals. He tells the story of how he had a son born 20 pounds and “hairy as a monkey,” who was his size by the age of 10 and was a total hellion. Eventually he split the “devil child”‘s face open and left him to die in the desert, but the kid “stole” a prostitute and spawned a pack of freaks out in the caves. The way he tells this backstory in monologue is corny but I think it works alot better than the way it’s done in the remake. In this version, the gas station attendant is not related as far as you know, he’s just an accomplice because he tells people to go down the dirt road and in exchange they leave him some of their booty. There’s a new story about how the miners were told they had to leave their town for nuclear testing but refused to leave, and this is what led to the family of mutants. I think that’s fine for background but I hate the way they reveal it through newspaper clippings and really hate the speech about it later on. If we want to read a “revenge for our mutation” kind of motive into the killings that’s fine but as soon as you point it out explicitly in the movie it just sounds stupid.
CARTER FAMILY, THE. Both versions have the retired police detective dad Big Bob, his wife Ethel, his daughters Lynne and Brenda, his son Bobby, his infant granddaughter Kathryn, his nerdy son-in-law Doug and his german shepards Beauty and Beast. And a trailer.
Not that they do a terrible job in the original, but I like the Carters better in the remake. Big Bob as played by Ted Levine is macho and unfriendly to his son-in-law, but not a complete asshole or racist like in the original, so he’s a more nuanced character. In both versions he looks pretty intimidating but in the original he’s kind of a coward. There is more development of a relationship between him and his son-in-law in the remake, which adds a little more depth. In both versions the fact that he’s a retired cop doesn’t amount to much, but maybe it’s supposed to be one of them red herrings.
The new Bobby is definitely more likable in the remake than the Mark Hammil looking dipshit in the original. Sorry, original Bobby, just being honest. That’s what they don’t pay me for.
CRASH. In the original they just get confused and crash into a rock. In the remake Lizard actually pops their tires with a strip of tire spikes that he wears over his shoulder like a bandolier. I thought that was a good touch because if these guys are gonna have very many victims they’re gonna have to take a more proactive approach like this.
“DADDY! DADDY!” Both versions have a scene where Big Bob is spooked by disembodied voices in the shadows calling him “Daddy.” I think it works better in the original because it sounds like they’re really nearby. In the new one the voices are clearly dubbed on and phoney.
DESERT, THE. The original was filmed in New Mexico, the new one in Morocco. But if I didn’t know that I might’ve thought they went back to the same spot. It’s definitely a spooky place where you wouldn’t want to get stranded, and the higher budget allows for better lighting that creates more atmosphere in the night scenes.
DIGITAL SHIT. Alot of people hate digital effects in horror movies because number one, they’re stuck in the past, but number two, they correctly believe that old school latex makeup effects look better alot of the time. I mean when it’s made out of rubber at least it looks like it’s really in the room with the actors, because it is. Well aside from an unneccessary digital fish in the very first shot there isn’t much noticeable CGI in this picture. The most prominent digital effect is Ruby’s face, which I think most people don’t even realize is digital.
DUMP. In the original, Doug comes back from his walk with a few things he says he found in a dump, and he reports that the road just ends. In the remake we actually see this dump, which is a huge crater where the hill folk dump the cars and unusable belongings of their victims. (Weird thing about this scene: there is footage featuring a real buzzard and other footage with obviously fake crows. How hard is it to get real or real looking crows?)
JUPITER. I never liked how Jupiter, when you see him, doesn’t live up to the way he’s described in the story. He’s not all that big or hairy. In the remake all of the mutants except Lizard are pretty big and menacing. One guy (Pluto?) has a great scene where he tosses people through walls.
MAMA JUPE. In the original Jupiter lives with a large lady who you can assume is the prostitute he fathered the rest of the tribe with. This gal sports a tribal, almost Native American style and lives in a lightly decorated cave. In the remake there’s a similar female character but she’s bald and instead of a cave she lives among mannequins in the model town used for weapons tests. The whole mannequins-as-unrealistic-ideals thing is old hat, and it’s hard to believe the pack have left a bunch of mannequins standing all these years, considering how they scavenge everything else. But on the other hand, when we see this woman she’s watching Divorce Court, and that pretty much redeemed the whole thing for me.
MUTATION. I’ve seen some reviews imply that the idea of them being mutants created by nuclear testing is new to the remake. This, my friends, is incorrect. It’s just that the original was more subtle about it. At the beginning, the Carters look on the map and decide that they are not in the nuclear testing range. And later we hear the story about the gas station attendant’s freak son. I always figured these two things were connected, I don’t think it’s that hard to put two and two together. But I guess in that one you could read it either way, this one they’re definitely mutants. And it’s not just Pluto that looks weird this time. They all got heavy makeup jobs. I didn’t think it was a good idea when I heard about it, but I liked it in the movie. They look like some real fucked up birth defects (or “genetic effects” as the opening text says – I guess that’s what happens when you translate a movie into french and then back into English).
PACK, THE. In the remake, Jupiter’s tribe is a little more mysterious than in the original. The mutants do talk among themselves, but not as much as in the old one, so you don’t really catch as much about their relationships and names. (Not that I could ever keep them straight in the old one.) In this one, it’s more left up to your imagination who the fuck these people are, which I think is a legitimate approach. I love how they do it in the original, but in this version I don’t mind that when Jupiter shows up at the end you don’t know who the fuck he is. It puts you more in the shoes of the Carter family.
RUBY. Both movies have Ruby, the younger sister of the mutant pack who is more sympathetic towards the outsiders and more sympathetic to the audience. I actually like Ruby alot better in the remake. The new Ruby is younger and more freaky (she has deformed hands and her eyes are digitally altered) and you understand her through her actions instead of dialogue. In the original she comes right out and says that she wants to leave and learn to be normal (and in the sequel she does). In the remake we just get this impression because she wears a sweatshirt that she stole from the Carters and goes out of her way to help them. The new portrayal of Ruby is much more believable than the corny feral child act in the original.
July 11th, 2019 at 7:39 pm
CRAWL was friggin’ great! That is all…