The Hills Have Eyes

Plot synopsis:
The film begins with three men testing for radioactivity in the New Mexico desert. Suddenly a bloody man jumps into one of the men view, begging for help. Pluto, a mutant disfigured by nuclear testing stabs one of the men and violently bangs him on the ground. The other two men are then quickly slaughtered and chained to the back of a car, which is driven away.Ethel Carter (Kathleen Quinlan) and her husband, "Big" Bob Carter (Ted Levine), a retired police detective, are traveling from Cleveland, Ohio to San Diego, California on their silver wedding anniversary. Also present is their daughter Brenda (Emilie de Ravin), son Bobby (Dan Byrd), eldest daughter Lynn (Vinessa Shaw), her husband Doug Bukowski (Aaron Stanford), their baby daughter Catherine (Maisie Camilleri Preziosi), and the German Shepherds, Beauty and Beast. While Big Bob talks to the gas station manager, we see a mutant grab Bobby's red sweatshirt out of the car and run off. Bobby and Brenda head away from the building and Bobby goes into a nearby outhouse. He is urinating when he sees someone watching him through the window. It was the mutant who stole his red sweatshirt from the car. After believing one of the family has seen the contents of the holdall, the attendant tells Bob of a shortcut through the hills which is actually the secret trap.After driving a few miles along the shortcut, the tires are punctured by a hidden spike belt and the truck's wheels burst, causing the truck to crash into a nearby ditch. Bob walks back to the gas station for a tow truck, and Doug walks the opposite way to get help. Meanwhile, the remaining members of the family are being watched by someone through a pair of binoculars. Beauty runs off into the hills and Bobby chases after her, eventually finding her gutted corpse. Frightened and distraught, Bobby runs off, but slips and falls, knocking himself unconscious. A young female mutant named Ruby, who had stolen his sweatshirt, (Laura Ortiz) comes across him and is intrigued by him, while her brother Goggle (Ezra Buzzington) chews over the dead dog.Later, Bob finally makes it to the station and finds the hysterical gas station attendant, who commits suicide by shooting himself in the head. In fear, Bob tries to flee from the scene in a car. But he gets attacked by the mutant leader, Papa Jupiter (Billy Drago), and gets carried off into the mining caves nearby by Jupiter, along with Jupiter's eldest son, Lizard (Robert Joy), and Pluto.When Bobby awakes, he returns to the trailer and does not tell his family of Beauty's demise. Lynn tells him that they tried the CB and heard heavy breathing. Beast breaks free of his chain and runs into the hills where he finds what's left of Beauty. Doug returns from the road he traveled, a dead end which ended in a bomb crater filled with cars, with a fishing pole, a baseball bat, and a teddy bear. Bobby is worried about his father who has not yet returned; Doug promises Bobby they will search for Bob if he does not return by midnight. As they try to sleep, Pluto sneaks into the trailer, finds Brenda, and attempts to rape her. Outside the trailer, Bobby wakes up Lynn and Doug, telling them about the people in the hills, and of Beauty's death. Inside Pluto holds Brenda down and prevents her from screaming. The others are about to discover Pluto when suddenly, an explosion in the distance draws their attention. Discovering that Bob has been tied to a tree and set on fire, Doug runs into the trailer to fetch a fire extinguisher as Lizard slips inside unnoticed. As everyone unknowingly leaves the helpless Brenda alone with the two violent men, Lizard notices Pluto's unsuccessful efforts to rape Brenda. Furious, he throws Pluto off and does it himself. Pluto then sees Catherine in her crib and observes her as Lizard continues to rape Brenda.Doug manages to put out the fire, and unties Bob, already dead, while Lynn returns to the trailer to see why Brenda is screaming and is greeted by Lizard, holding baby Catherine and Big Bob's gun while Pluto is holding Brenda. After Lynn hits him with a frying pan, Lizard disarms her and threatens Catherine with the gun. He forces open Lynn's blouse and sucks the milk from her breasts. Ethel enters with a large flat rock, attempting to pulverize Lizard, but Pluto calls out to warn him. Lizard, spotting her, shoots her in the stomach. Lynn then uses a screwdriver and stabs Lizard, who then shoots her in the head. Pluto and Lizard flee the trailer, holding Brenda and Catherine hostage. When Lizard hears Doug and Bobby approaching, he tries to shoot Brenda, but the gun is out of bullets. He promises Brenda that he will be back for her before fleeing with Pluto, who still has the baby.Doug and Bobby return to the trailer, discover the bodies, and realize that Catherine has been taken. Goggle, the mutant who killed Beauty, watches the trailer through binoculars, but he is attacked and killed by Beast. The next morning, Doug goes off in pursuit of their attackers; Beast leads Doug through a tunnel that contains the graves of miners. Once out of the tunnel, Doug finds an abandoned nuclear testing village and enters the house where Catherine is kept, but is knocked unconscious by Big Mama (Ivana Turchetto), who he thought was busy watching television. He then awakes in an icebox where the mutants keep the bodies of their victims. He panics and bangs on the plastic cover, eventually knocking it loose. He returns to his task of finding Catherine, only to encounter Big Brain (Desmond Askew), who tells him the story of the mutants, who were mutated by the fallout from the nuclear tests, and then getting attacked by Pluto who breaks through a door. After a fierce struggle, during which Doug loses the ring finger and pinkie on his left hand, he is able to trick him by pretending to cry. Pluto laughs and gets momentarily distracted, giving Doug time to slam a screwdriver through his foot and the floor, pinning him down. He then takes a small American flag and shoves it through the back of Pluto's throat, and finally finishes him by slamming the blade of his own axe into his head.Doug then surprises the mutant Cyst (Gregory Nicotero) outside the house and uses Pluto's axe to kill him, chopping his knee open and knocking him over the hood of a car, where he is axed in the back and is finally killed when Doug swings the pick end into his eye. Doug takes his shotgun and heads off. Big Brain tells Lizard to kill Catherine, but is killed by Beast. Lizard takes a cleaver and prepares to kill Catherine, but finds that instead of Catherine, it is a pig. Ruby has taken Catherine and run into the hills. Lizard knows this and begins to chase her, enraged by her deceit. Doug sees Ruby on the hill and chases her as well.At the trailer, Ethel's body is stolen and dragged into the hills, and Bobby finds Papa Jupiter eating Ethel's heart. Jupiter pursues Bobby to the trailer, where Brenda releases gas from the propane tanks as Bobby runs inside, attaching a strip of matches to the sliding door behind him. Bobby binds Papa Jupiter's hand to the window. After he and Brenda escape, Jupiter breaks free of the bungee cord, and opens the sliding door, which strikes the matches and ignites the gas inside the trailer, causing it to explode.In the hills, Ruby is about to return Catherine to Doug when Lizard attacks. Doug beats and then shoots Lizard in the chest, neck, and finally the shoulder. Ruby gives Catherine back to Doug, who does not notice Lizard stand up, having survived. Ruby throws herself at Lizard, plunging them over a cliff, stopping Lizard from shooting Doug and Catherine and sacrificing herself in the process. Bobby and Brenda walk through the ruins of their trailer and find Papa Jupiter still alive, though impaled. Brenda kills Papa Jupiter with a pickax to the head. Brenda then spots Doug with Catherine and Beast, and the four are reunited. As they celebrate their apparent victory, a pair of anonymous binoculars watches from the hills.(Source: Wikipedia)

Tags: murder, violence, horror, tragedy, revenge, entertaining, sadist

Review:
Alexandre Aja, you have a new fan.Before this movie was released in theaters, I made sure to watch Wes Craven's original endeavor.
Let me just start out by saying that compared to today's standards and conventions, Craven's classic "The Hills Have Eyes" seems almost mild when compared to Alexandre Aja's remake.
Furthermore, like any other quality remake, there are twists, there are surprises, and for people who think they're getting the same film with updated technology, think again.The film starts out with the nuclear bomb test-radiation disclaimer, and from there, to those who've screened the original, the familiar New Mexico desert setting is presented for all to take in.
Aja never misses a beat, and he makes sure to take advantage of any opportunity he can when it comes to scaring the living crap out of the audience.After a very vivid and graphic opening, the film gets rolling, mixing elements of freshness with both nostalgia and familiarity.
There are 3 reasons I feel Aja's remake tops Craven's original: 1) the emphasis Aja places on the Carters, 2) the make-up effects, 3) the excessive gore.Whereas Craven gave the deformed family clan plenty of screen time in 1977, Aja opts to shroud them in mystery for much of the film's duration.
This film is not for the squeamish, and it is my opinion that it will suppress the doubts of any skeptics who, upon seeing this film, may have badmouthed horror movie remakes in the past.Only thing that caused me to dock it a point were the questionable courses of action some of the characters took.
What made early Wes Craven movies so special were these eary and daunting atmospheres he was so good in creating ; And this is what Hills Have Eyes 2006 totally lacked.
I did like the nuclear mutant idea , but then seeing them reminded me on how the original HHE villains had way more presence on the screen and they had no make up !!Now I did like the actors , they played their respective roles well The effects were good + I did like how they twisted the original script and added some new ideas instead a complete knock off of the original So my final word not a bad movie , but lacked atmosphere/suspense , which is so important in horror/slasher movies , shame !.
The Hills Have Eyes, although a remake of the original, was everything a horror movie should be.
I'll make this as blunt as possible: this is a movie that contains severed body parts, brutal shootings, axes to the head, a person biting off a bird's head and drinking its blood, and disturbing violence to helpless women.If that description turns you off then you know to save your money.
I dislike the nowadays and boisterous remakes of classic horror movies as much as the next person but, ever since the news came that an update of "The Hills Have Eyes" was in talks, I had great expectations towards it.
Unlike "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" or "The Fog", to name just two examples, Wes Craven's original 1977 screenplay was open for improvement AND Alexandre Aja would be just the right man for the job, as his own project "Haute Tension" is definitely one of the best horror films since the year 2000.
The new screenplay follows Craven's original fairly strict, except that the eyes in the hills aren't of members of an inbred family anymore but of an entire community of horribly mutated ghouls.
The Carter family is next on the menu, and the mutants really don't care whether the victims are females, elderly folks or even newborn babies...Alexandre Aja delivers the exact right amount of disturbing tension and really a lot more gore than you could possibly dream of.
I would like to say first and foremost, that I was pleased with Aja's  first film "High Tension", the man has talent, and he put it to good  use here: A gory, insane, slasher type horror thriller that was the  opposite of cheesy.
The question most people ask when it comes to modern day remakes is "why remake a classic?", but the question I ask of this one is "why call it The Hills Have Eyes?" Many films have been made before and after Wes Craven's original shocker with similar ideas, so why not take the basic plot idea and give it a new title; thus making it a new film.
Judged on its own merits, Alexandre Aja's exploitation horror flick is actually a good film, but it loses credibility unnecessarily just because it's a part of the remake crowd.
After fuelling their car, the helpful petrol station attendant tells them of a shortcut in the desert; but after they have a crash, it soon becomes apparent that they aren't the only ones amidst the nuclear hills.Towards the start of the film, Aja packs the film with references to nuclear testing which leads us to believe that he wants to go deeper with the plot.
Aja also does well with the scare factor, as he continually creates a foreboding atmosphere by way of lots of scare tactics, including the backwater desert atmosphere, glimpses of the killers early on and my personal favourite - the voices that come over the walkie talkies.The main reason that this film works is not because of the violence, however, it's the way that Aja almost makes the audience a part of the central family.
Aja does go over the top with this towards the end, but in general the characters are very well defined, and I certainly cared a lot more about the family in this remake than I did in Wes Craven's original.
The director certainly has talent, maybe even the potential to become one of the modern masters of horror; but I'm disappointed that this was his second film, as I really think that if he'd created something original, it could have been something really special.
On its own merits, however, The Hills Have Eyes 2006 is a good film, and Aja can certainly be proud of himself for doing Craven's original justice..
Plot: A family taking a road trip to celebrate the mother and father's silver anniversary run afoul of another type of nuclear family, one that is cannibalistic and mutated.Alexandre (High Tension) Aja wrote and directed this remake of the 1977 Wes Craven (who is attached as a producer) semi-classic.
The Hills Have Eyes is a shock a minute thriller directed by Alexandre Aja. His modern adaptation of Wes Craven's original has had audiences around the world horror struck and terrorized.The Hills Have Eyes follows a family traveling cross country from Cleveland to California.
I'm not a huge fan of Wes Craven, yet I do enjoy his movies from time to time.The Hills Have Eyes takes the Carter family thru a terrifying experience.
The movie begins with a prologue saying: Between 1945 and 1962 the United States conducted 33 atmospheric nuclear tests.Today the government still denies the genetic effects caused by the radioactive fallout.This gore-feast deals about a family in holidays traveling in a caravan.The family is formed by father(Ted Levine),mother(Kathleen Quinlan), daughter(Vanessa Shaw) with her husband(Aaron Stamford)and their baby, and two teens(Dan Byrd,Emilie De Davin).
A gas Station attendant(Tom Bower) lead them for driving along a wrong turn throughout the New Mexico desert.But their journey becomes a nightmare for the familiar group pushed by eerie maniacs.Then a cruel band of inbred mutants cannibals attack them.They are taken in the nightmare clutches of homicidal inhabitants desert.A mysterious unseen creatures drag them away and torture,kill and they transform into flesh eating.These brutal people with rare names,Lizard(Robert Joy),Papa Jupiter(Billy Drago) and Big Brain(Desmond Askew)murder and dismember passing travelers.The maniacal assassins slaughter victims and annihilate the family members.The film packs,tension,suspense,chills,terror,sadism and lot of blood and gore -including impalement,attempted rage,shot in the face,sliced,stabbing- courtesy of Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger.They create a creepy make-up of horrible mutants cannibals.The murders are gruesomely executed and equally as graphic as the original movie.The film is constituted by a well done terror set pieces with creepy and spooky atmosphere.The mutants appearance delivers the goods with hair raising chills and full scares.The story is borrowing from the classic¨Texas chainsaw massacre¨until recent movies like ¨Wrong turn¨and ¨House of 1000 corpses¨and of course¨Wes Craven's The hills have eyes¨.
And lest you think I'm just a cranky prude, let me say that I love horror movies, and I'm always on the outlook for good ones ("The Descent" happened to be fantastic) but I've nearly given up hope that today's batch of filmmakers know the first thing about what scares people.
I've not seen the original Wes Craven version, but the film that this most reminded me of, 1974's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," gave me close to the same feeling, except that Tobe Hooper's film is unbelievably scary in addition to being nauseating, and it uses true film-making skills to scare the pants off of you, not simply digitally enhanced makeup and sound effects.It depresses me that there's a market for movies like "The Hills Have Eyes." I must be getting older, because I'm starting to worry about the state of our country's youth.
Money talks and people keep watching these things so they keep being made.The favorable reviews for this remake seem to mostly drool over the gross, bloody, rapey shock value of it like that is what a good horror film should be about.
I saw it today on DVD and I must say that this is one of the most disturbing and terrifying movies I've ever seen.It's seem to be the best of the year.The deaths were brutally gruesome but there are some unexpected deaths that I never tought it would happen.The movie was excellently directed; the photography is the best I've ever seen in a while in a horror movie.I hope the new sequel keeps the line of this remake.There's some familiar faces like Kathleen Quinlan, Vinessa Shaw and Emilie De Ravin from Lost.
I do like horror and gore has never been a problem (Carpenter's "The Thing" is among my favorite films) but I also come into a theater expecting to be entertained.
Its scared the crap out of me, having seen my share of horror movies since then I look at the original as lame.
I still enjoy the 1977 version more, but my faith in Aja as an up and coming player in horror was not misplaced.The film is very faithful to the plot Craven used in 1977 - a family traveling cross country finds themselves stranded in the desert and under attack from a mutant family living in the nearby hills.
I won't go so far as to call it over-produced, but the look of the movie doesn't add as much atmosphere as the lower budget look.In the end, while I did have problems with certain aspects of the film, overall The Hills Have Eyes is a solid horror film.
I also liked the way Alexandre Aja tells the story of each person of the family, he don't tell you much but its enough to know about them and i definitely liked the way he kept the mutants mysterious until the scene where they attack the caravan, that was awesome and nice and gory just the way i like it.If its blood, gore and suspense you want in a film then you have to buy or rent this film, close the curtains, turn the lights off and just have fun.I personally found this film bloody brilliant and give Alexandre's remake of the hills have eyes a 10/10.
"The Hills have Eyes" is, without a doubt, the best horror movie I've ever seen.
You don't come to leave with a headache, arguing with your friends about how they movie simply WENT TOO FAR.Sitting in the theater I literally felt like someone was taking my deep love and attachment to my own family and using it to horrify me.
the beginning was pretty good on how it was set up but then like most if not all horror movies now a days get very bad.
Maybe I shouldn't be looking to making overt comparisons to the Wes Craven 1977 cult film The Hills Have Eyes, of which this Alejandre Aja filmed remake has done over Hollywood style, and just look at it on terms of just being a horror film in and of itself.
Co-writer/director Aja has a film here that does work for its target audience- the young teen horror fan crowd looking for a quick fix of gore and cheap scares done in a somewhat shaky-hand held camera style.
This is not to say he doesn't use the big-studio backup for some good; the makeup by Greg Nicotero on the deformed mutant villains is very cool and creative; the gore factor (not that I was necessarily relying on it for scares, which it didn't really) was very high and well laid out; the performances by the family, for the first half of the film, are believable enough with the dialog.
"The Hills Have Eyes,Which is an overtly Gory remake of the 1977 Original, directed by Wes Craven, For those that find women being terrorized and raped by Mutants, Baby infants that are contemplated in being eaten alive!
There are horror films out there that actually have some kind of good thing about them but this whole movie was just ridiculous..
I like horror with in reason, but I thought that this movie was gross and took things way to far.
I know people enjoy the blood gore, I do too, a lot, but not the way this film did it.
I wasn't really expecting much..I didn't really like the Wes Craven version that he did in 1977.I knew that Alexandre Aja was very capable of writing and directing a good horror film..
I think it would have been better if this was revealed at the time it was in the movie not at the start cause then it would have had a better twist.I have not watched the sequel to the film but I will do because that's the sort of person I am and I will watch it in the hope it is a new story and will obviously be better than the God awful sequel by Wes Craven.I must also add I thought the 2009 remake of The Last House on The Left was pointless, it too lacked the charm and character of the original, but I enjoyed it slightly more than this.Finally, I do also think if I watched this film at the cinema in 2005/2006 before seeing the original I probably would have liked it more but it reminded me of Leatherface, plenty of gore but doesn't captivate.I now want to watch the original again and I may review it in due course..
The Hills Have Eyes is a scary and effective horror film that actually takes the time to develop everything instead of just rushing into the violence.
Another great thing was the cynical tone it had with the family members which made it all the more realistic.To conclude , very rarely a remake can over take an original and especially one like The Hills have Eyes which has a devoted cult following but again , it shows that if you go away and do homework then you can inject something new fresh and make it worth while checking out.
A family on their way to California come across a rundown gas station in the middle of the New Mexico desert.They then think they're taking a shortcut through the hills,thanks to the kindly suggestion of the gas attendant,but find themselves stranded in the middle of no where.And to make things worse,the whole thing was a trap so a group of deformed mutants can butcher and eat them."The Hills Have Eyes" remake was made by Alexandre Aja,the guy behind "Haute Tension".It offers plenty of nasty violence and gore,several scenes with nail-biting tension and a few solid scares.One of the most radical departures from Wes Craven's original is to give the cannibals back-stories.In the 2006 movie,they are miners who were deformed by the radiation fallout from 1940s and 1950s nuclear testing.The trailer attack sequence is wonderfully audacious and the violence is brutal and bloody.Aja manages to unsettle the viewer few times,such as when he intercuts the burning alive of the family matriarch Bob with the suggested rape of younger daughter Brenda.The mutant and gore effects by Howard Berger and Gregory Nicotero are excellent and the photography of the desert landscape is great.A must-see for fans of intense survival horror!.
In the first place, I consider it a blasphemy to remake a Wes Craven movie, even one as disgusting as "The Hills Have Eyes".
The Hills Have Eyes is now my number one favorite horror movie due to its suspense and action scenes.
A remake of Wes Craven's 1977 version, 'The Hills Have Eyes' left me feeling utterly unimpressed and, while I have not seen the original, if it is anything like this then I wonder why they even bothered .
The bottom line is, if you like quality slasher and horror movies then I do not recommend seeing The Hills Have Eyes..
I thought this was going to be another gore fest which was going to suck though I was really wrong about that.I saw the Hills Have Eyes (1977) & (2006) both on the same day and I'd have to say the Original is better, though the Remake catches on very well because I find the Remake more of a disturbing film.This remake keeps with the same plot as there is an American family riding in the desert and their car breaks down and then after that, blood-thirsty Mutants come and stalk them and then end up killing most of them.This remake did an excellent job at leaving you scared shitless, I know I was after watching it.
Any horror fan will love this film, and any movie fan who can stand for the gore and blood will enjoy too.