By Chris Hyde

September 30, 2003

Wes Craven is most famous today for the Scream series, his big budget postmodern deconstruction of the horror film. A couple of decades ago, however, he had a lot less money and played things much straighter -- and the results were far more terrifying.

With the release this week of the Anchor Bay two-disc special edition of The Hills Have Eyes, Craven's second directorial effort is now widely available in a form that befits its status as one of the great American scare films of the 1970s. While now widely recognized for the tongue-in-cheek, self-aware style that characterizes the Scream trilogy, Craven's earlier films are much grittier and realistic in tone than these later works. Operating with miniscule budgets and filmed in rough conditions, the director's early work has a creepy and cutting feel that is far more likely to make you squirm in you seat than to laugh out loud. This is not to say that Hills is completely devoid of its own moments of dark humor; but the milieu in which they arise is far more inhospitable and grim than in the director's slicker, more professional late '90s films.

The story of The Hills Have Eyes is simple enough: the Carters, a clean-cut American family, are making a trip across the desert with their ultimate destination the golden land of California. On the way, they decide to check out the site of an abandoned silver mine that one of the family members has inherited, foolishly ignoring the advice of the grizzled old gas station coot who warns them to stay on the main road. After haplessly wandering into an air force range and being buffeted by jet fighters, their car breaks an axle after dad swerves at high speed to avoid a rabbit and they are stranded in the middle of nowhere. In a bad break for this apple pie clan, they've had the misfortune of wrecking their trailer inside the territory of a strange family unit that is like a twisted mirror image of themselves: a feral gang of ugly, vicious brutes whose behavior seems unfettered by the moral code that holds the civilized in check.

The tension builds early on as these mostly unseen enemies stalk the Carters from behind the scrub of the desert hills. Craven brilliantly manipulates the atmosphere by leaving the cannibal clan off camera for quite some time, allowing them to only be glimpsed briefly or heard in voiceover as they plot the demise of their victims. In the meantime, the audience is introduced to the family in a way that allows identification to be formed with them. They appear to be the quintessential American bunch: the gruff, ex-cop head of the household (Russ Grieve), his wife (played by Virginia Vincent, certainly the most accomplished member of the cast), their oldest daughter (a pre ET Dee Wallace), her husband (Martin Speer) and infant daughter, and the two seemingly college-aged Carters (Susan Lanier and Robert Houston). They're also accompanied by their two German shepherds, Beauty and the Beast, who ultimately play key roles as the story unfolds.

This innocent crew thus finds themselves hopelessly stuck in the desert, with the iron-packed hills even cutting off their cool CB radio (hey, it's the middle of the 1970s -- what do you want?). The two eldest male members of the family then strike out in different directions for help while the others hunker down at the trailer, and from this point things begin to go quickly awry. (SPOILER WARNING: Though this writer generally tries to be as ambiguous as possible in discussing story details, this paragraph and the next two will contain many plot points that may ruin the film for those who have not seen it. Skip three paragraphs down from here if you wish to avoid knowing too much). Family head Big Bob heads back to the gas station to see if the old-timer has a phone he can use; son-in-law Doug goes in the opposite direction to see what he can scout out. As the others hang around the trailer lamenting their fate, one of the dogs (Beauty) runs off into the brush barking and upright Bobby follows to try to get her to come back. Unfortunately, Beauty isn't ever coming back; after hearing a horrible shriek off in the distance the youngest male member of the Carters finds the family's beloved pet disemboweled and flees in terror. But his shame at running away leads Bobby to keep what he has seen to himself; though he is the only one at first who knows that something awful is lurking out in the distance he unwisely chooses to keep this information to himself.

Meanwhile, Big Bob gets back to the gas station where the aging proprietor (played in excellent fashion by John Steadman) reveals the full extent of the family's plight. He tells the father the story of the evil son whom he left for dead in the desert years ago, but who seemingly survived to breed his own family in the wild. Out of nowhere, this crazed progeny shockingly dispatches the old timer and the head of the family begins to realize just how far they are up shit's creek. It is here that we first begin to really see the strange family of freaks that will become the Carter family's tormentors (though we have earlier glimpsed Ruby -- Janus Blythe -- the daughter of the clan who ultimately proves the most civilized of any of them), as they are introduced one by one in all their hideous glory. The head of the bunch is the disfigured Papa Jupiter (James Whitworth), a cruel head of household who holds sway over Mama (Cody Clark) and their sons Mercury (played by the film's producer Peter Locke), Mars (Lance Gordon) and Pluto (poster boy Michael Berryman).

Once Papa Jupiter has scotched the old man at the gas station, Dad knows his family is threatened and tries to get back to the trailer as soon as possible. But along the way he's taken down by the clan who then use him as burning bait -- so they can draw the family away from the their safe place and thus steal their defenseless infant for food. What follows next is by far the most terrifying part of the film, as Mars and brother Pluto lay siege to the trailer. This segment of the film is completely and utterly harrowing: a combination of realistic and claustrophobic setting, brilliant editing, enthusiastic acting and convention-shattering death make this scene both hard to watch as well as a tour de force of terror. Here we see the truly evil face of the brutal foes the Carters are up against out there alone in the desert, and it then begins to dawn on the surviving members of the family that to escape their ordeal they'll need to become as savage as their malevolent enemies. The remaining portion of the film chronicles the efforts of this harried family to recapture their baby and take revenge on the ugly bunch that has chosen to try to destroy them -- but can they manage this act of survival without losing most of their own humanity?

It should be obvious from the plot description that The Hills Have Eyes is decidedly not a feel-good movie. Loosely based on a 16th century tale of cannibalistic mayhem, the film updates the tale to '70s America and challenges the viewer to wonder just how fine the line is between the civilized and the savage. Just how far will people go to survive when everything, absolutely everything, is taken away from them? The beast within is the demon that Craven truly is trying to confront with this gritty piece of horror, and it's this sort of philosophical angle that really helps make the film work as well as it does. This isn't simply violence for violence's sake, though the exploitation side of things cannot be completely ignored. But the director is intelligent enough that there's plenty of interesting baggage that goes along with the frightening story, and its smartness in both material and low budget approach make the movie transcend so many of its genre kin. Craven also raises the issue of the audience's identification with the revenge fantasy: while he doesn't pull the rug out from under their expectations in the manner that Michael Haneke does in his more intellectually rarefied Funny Games, the movie does in fact shine a harsh light on the human tendency for retribution -- and asks if it leaves those who succumb to this impulse just as uncivilized as the others who are considered evil.

Given the excellence of the film under discussion here, there's little doubt that the work was deserving of a Special Edition rerelease. But Anchor Bay, with their usual aplomb, has put together a complete package that truly fleshes out this horrific gem. Included is an essential audio commentary done by director Wes Craven and producer Peter Locke that details many anecdotes about the film's production and cast. There's also a great 55 minute documentary called "Looking Back at The Hills Have Eyes," which though it has some crossover material from the commentary is an excellent source of information and contains interviews with many of the primary cast members. Less exciting (though still a nice inclusion) is a made for cable documentary on Craven himself that really has very little to say about The Hills Have Eyes but is at least worth watching once for the biographical information and career overview. Other extras contained on the second disk here are a four-minute featurette on the restoration done for this release, the US and German trailers, two TV spots each from the US and UK, galleries of production photos and other press materials, and original storyboards from the filming. There's also a bizarre alternate ending included that must have been made with television in mind, as it shows the proceedings wrapping up in a completely incongruous sun-drenched fashion. Last but not least, AB has also chosen to use the DVD-ROM portion of this second disk of extras to give us the entire 90 page original written draft for this film, an inclusion that allows the interested viewer to compare the first version with the final product that made it to the screen. There are also a couple of cool screensavers for your computer given on this part of the extras DVD, a final piece of arcana that just adds a cherry to the top of this amazing pile of material.

Since I have always considered The Hills Have Eyes to be Craven's best film as well as one of the greatest pieces of '70s American horror, I would have been happy to see this work come to DVD in just about any form. Fortunately, with Anchor Bay behind the release, the final product is much more than even I could have wished for -- not only is the film restored in excellent fashion, but it's accompanied by scads of extras that add sumptuous value to the special edition. The gritty, low-budget feel of the original production comes across just perfectly here, and both those who have always loved the film and those younger viewers who only know of the filmmaker from his excellent later series of Scream films should find plenty of entertaining moments watching this one. With most of 2003 now behind us, it will very soon be time to assess the year's DVD product and to choose which releases were in fact the year's best; for my part, you can rest assured that this Special Edition will likely find a prominent place in my year end top ten. Simply put, this is a spectacular release that should not be missed.