Eyes see You!

Rating: 6/10 (27 June 2006)

***SPOILERS*** Incredibly grossed-out sequel to the 1977 original "The Hills Have Eyes" follows the 1977 version almost scene for scene until some half hour into the movie. It's then, with the advancement of special effects over the last thirty years, the movie becomes an almost unwatchable horror show.
Traveling to California Big Bob, Ted Levin, and his family stop off at this out of the way gas station, in the middle of the New Mexican desert. After filling up their given directions to a short cut through the hill by the somewhat creepy gas station attendant Tom Bower. It turns out that old Tom is working with a number of psychos who have it in for the human race because of the condition that they find themselves in; due the the years of nuclear testing in that part of the country.
Disabling Big Bob's van, and the trailer attached to it, the unseen killers wait for darkness to fall and then make their move on the helpless, and unsuspecting, stranded travelers. With Big Bob going back to the gas station for help he's shocked to see old Tom laying drunk in the outhouse talking to himself. Before Big Bob can figure out what's wrong with Tom he takes out a shotgun and blows his brains out. Running to Old Toms car Big Bob is then attacked, by one of the many weirdos in the movie who ties him to a tree and sets it on fire.
The next ten or so minutes in the movie with the out of hiding mutants attacking Big Bob's family are so disturbing and shocking, even to grown ups, that I'm surprised that the movie "The Hills Have Eyes" didn't get an X-rating just for it's graphic violence alone. Breaking into the trailer the psychos fall upon Big Bob's younger daughter Brenda ,Emilie De Ravin, and manhandle, and possibly rape, her so badly that it's almost a miracle that she didn't end up losing her mind much less her life. Both Big Bob's wife Ethel and his older daughter Lynn, Kathleen Quinlan & Vinessa Shaw, are then viciously murdered. Lynn and her husbands Doug, Aaron Stanford, infant daughter Catherine is then kidnapped by the killers who take off into the hills.
Big Bob's teenage son Bobby, Dan Byrd, had earlier gone out in the hills to find one of his pet German Shepherds Beauty and, after finding Beauty torn to pieces, fell off a cliff almost breaking his head. Helped by one of the psychos children Ruby(Laura Ortiz), who was about the most normal of the bunch, Bobby had some idea of what was in the hills but was just too traumatized and afraid to tell any of his family members. Now, with both his patents and sister-in-law murdered, Bobby becomes almost insane with anger only wanting to get even with those who did him family in.
Lynn's husband Doug a life long pacifist and anti-gun activist also changes his opinion of guns and knives and every other weapon of death. Now becoming almost as ferocious and kill crazy as those who did Lynn in, and took his infant daughter Catherine away with them. This sets up the audience, who still have the nerve and stomach to stay around to watch the movie, for what has to be some of the most unwatchable and horrific scenes in motion picture history.
Defintly not for the meek and weak at heart "The Hills Have Eyes" is not the kind of movie that you'd take a girl, whom you want to impress, out to see. The violence in the film almost turns cartoon-like with both the killers and Doug and to a lesser extent Bobby and Brenda having it out in a battle of life and death in the empty desert as well as in a deserted town that was the test site and target of atomic explosions. Doug together with his pet dog Beast take on almost the entire band of mutant/psychos in his attempt to rescue his daughter. Dough ends up so badly beaten and mauled by these crazies that it's hard to believe that he's still alive by the time the movies over. Bobby and his sister Brenda have a somewhat easier time of it only having to deal with what seems like the head man or psycho of the bunch with him ending up blown straight to kingdom come, together with the family trailer, at the end of the movie.