The Hills Have Eyes (1977 film)


The Hills Have Eyes is a 1977 American horror film written, directed, and edited by Wes Craven and starring Susan Lanier, Michael Berryman, and Dee Wallace. The film follows the Carters, a suburban family targeted by a family of cannibal savages after becoming stranded in the Nevada desert.
Following Craven's directorial debut, The Last House on the Left, producer Peter Locke was interested in financing a similar project. Craven based the film's script on the legend of Scottish cannibal Sawney Bean, which Craven viewed as illustrating how supposedly civilized people could become savage. Other influences on the film include John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath and Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The Hills Have Eyes was shot in the Mojave Desert. The film's crew was initially unenthusiastic about the project, but became more passionate due to Craven's enthusiasm and came to believe that they were making a special movie.
The Hills Have Eyes earned $25 million at the box office and spawned a franchise. All subsequent films in the series were made with Craven's involvement. The Hills Have Eyes was released on VHS in 1988 and has subsequently been released on DVD and Blu-ray, while Don Peake's score for the film has been released on CD and vinyl. Reviews for the film were mostly positive, with critics praising its tense narrative and humor. Some critics have interpreted the film as containing commentary on morality and American politics, and the film has since become a cult classic.

Plot

The Carter family is traveling on vacation towing a trailer en route to San Diego. Parents Bob and Ethel are driving, accompanied by their children Bobby, Brenda, eldest daughter Lynne, Lynne's husband Doug, Lynne and Doug's baby daughter Catherine, and the family's dogs, Beauty and Beast.
In Nevada, they stop at Fred's Oasis for fuel, where Fred reminds them to stay on the main road as they leave. One of the dogs runs off and gets into the shop, leading Lynne into Fred’s home, where she notices stolen goods. At the last minute, Fred recommends going through the hills by taking a left a few miles up for a more scenic route.
The Carters decide to take the scenic route, but due to hidden spikes on the road, their tires pop, causing them to skid off the road and crash. The dogs are on alert, becoming anxious and barking at the hills. Beauty then runs off. Chasing after her, Bobby finds her mutilated body. Frightened, he runs, falls, and knocks himself unconscious.
Bob walks back to Fred's Oasis to get help. As night falls, he finds Fred, who tells him about his son Jupiter. As a child, Jupiter killed the family's livestock and later murdered his sister. Fred attacked Jupiter with a tire iron and left him in the hills to die. However, Jupiter survived and had children with a depraved, alcoholic prostitute known as Mama. Together, they had three sons – Mars, Pluto, and Mercury – and an abused daughter, Ruby. The family led by "Papa Jupiter" survives by cannibalizing travelers and stealing supplies. Papa Jupiter suddenly crashes through a window, kills Fred with a tire iron, takes Bob prisoner, and crucifies him.
Brenda finds Bobby, still shaken up about Beauty, and the two return to the trailer. Bobby does not mention Beauty's death to avoid frightening the rest of the family. Pluto sneaks into the trailer and signals Papa Jupiter to set Bob on fire as a distraction. Brenda stays in the trailer with Katy, while Ethel, Lynne, Doug, and Bobby rush out to save Bob. The Carters eventually extinguish the fire, but Bob dies shortly afterward.
As the Carters extinguish the fire, Pluto and Mars ransack the camper and Pluto rapes Brenda. When Ethel and Lynne return, Mars shoots them both. Pluto abducts Katy and flees with Mars, intending for the family to eat her. Hearing their screams, Doug and Bobby rush back, only to find Lynne dead, Ethel mortally wounded, and Brenda traumatized.
Mars and Pluto return to their home, a cave. Beast pushes Mercury off a hilltop to his death. Mama chains Ruby outside the cave, torments her, and forces her to eat Beauty as punishment for sympathizing with the Carters. The next morning, shortly after Ethel dies, Doug sets out to find Katy, while Papa Jupiter and Pluto set out to kill the remaining family members. Brenda and Bobby ultimately overpower Papa Jupiter with a series of booby traps and fatally shoot him while Pluto is mauled by Beast. With the help of a remorseful Ruby, Doug is able to save Katy and fatally stabs Mars.

Cast

Development

Wes Craven desired to make a nonhorror film, following his directorial debut, The Last House on the Left, because he saw the horror genre as constraining. He could not find producers, though, interested in financing a project that did not feature bloody violence. Craven's friend, producer Peter Locke, was interested in financing a horror exploitation film, and Craven decided to write the project due to his monetary issues. Craven considered collaborating with Sean S. Cunningham on a horror children's film based on "Hansel and Gretel", but Locke wanted the film to be more in the vein of The Last House on the Left. According to Steve Palopoli of Metro Silicon Valley, the finished film still features elements of "Hansel and Gretel", specifically its portrayal of people getting lost in the wilderness and setting a trap for their tormentors. Palopoli also noted the witch from "Hansel and Gretel" and the villains from Hills both try to cannibalize children. In writing the project for Locke, Craven decided he "wanted something more sophisticated than Last House on the Left." He added that he "didn't want to feel uncomfortable again about making a statement about human depravity."
Searching for a story to film, Craven began looking up "terrible things" at the New York Public Library. While going through the library's forensics department, Craven learned of the legend of Sawney Bean, the alleged head of a 48-person Scottish clan responsible for the murder and cannibalization of more than 1000 people. What interested Craven in the legend, after Bean's clan was arrested, was how they were tortured, quartered, burned, and hanged. Craven saw this treatment of the Bean clan by supposedly civilized people as paralleling the clan's own savagery. Craven decided to base the film on the legend. Another major inspiration for the project was Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, one of Craven's favorite films. Bloody Disgusting's Zachary Paul says that both films center on a group of vacationers, who are "stranded in the wide-open nowhere and must protect themselves against a tightly knit family of cannibals" and feature an archetypal "gas station of doom". Like The Last House on the Left before it, the film drew influence from the work of European directors such as François Truffaut and Luis Buñuel.
Other inspirations for The Hills Have Eyes were Craven's neighbors and family, on whom the Carters were modeled, the director's nightmares, and John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath. The original script was titled Blood Relations: The Sun Wars and was set in New Jersey during 1984, several years in the future. As Locke's girlfriend, Liz Torres, often performed in Las Vegas during this period, Locke saw a lot of desert landscapes as the film was being written, and suggested that Craven set the film in the desert. Due to budgetary constraints, the film was written to have few roles and be set in few locations. Originally, the film was to end with the surviving members of the family reuniting at the trailer site, signifying that they could move on with their lives. Craven ultimately opted for an ending where Doug stabs Mars as a disgusted Ruby watches, as he liked the role reversal that this ending created. Craven also wanted the two families in the story to be the "mirror images of each other," believing that this would allow him to "explore different sides of the human personality."

Casting

Michael Berryman, who has 26 different birth defects, won the role of Pluto. He was elated to be cast in a horror film due to his love of The Mummy's Curse and other black-and-white Universal Classic Monsters films. The character of Ruby needed to be played by an actress who was a fast runner, so all of the actresses who auditioned for the part were required to race each other. Janus Blythe won the part partially because she outran all of the other auditioning actresses. Locke wanted to make a cameo appearance in the film, and was given the role of Mercury, who appears briefly in the film. Locke was credited for the role under the name Arthur King. Gunnar Hansen, who played Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, was offered a part in the film and rejected it, so he could move to Maine and focus on his literary career. He later came to regret not appearing in the film.

Filming

Principal photography for The Hills Have Eyes began in October 1976. The film was shot in Victorville, California, in the Mojave Desert using 16 mm film on cameras that were borrowed from a Californian pornographic filmmaker. The film cost between $350,000 and $700,000, around thrice the budget of The Last House on the Left. The film's actors were paid minimum wage, and the film's crew was not unionized. Locke was on the film's set every day of its shoot, making sure that Craven was being productive.
The shoot was unpleasant for the actors, due to daytime temperatures over 120°F, which dropped to around 30°F at night, and that they played physically taxing roles 12 to 14 hours a day, six days a week. As Berryman lacks sweat glands, the heat was particularly hazardous to his health, and he had to be attended to after the filming of the film's action scenes. Many cast members did their own makeup due to budgetary constraints. Wallace later joked that the dogs that appeared in the film were treated better than its human cast members. Most of the film's crew were veterans of Roger Corman films, and were initially unenthusiastic about The Hills Have Eyes. This changed weeks into production due to Craven's zeal for the project, and because the crew came to believe that the film was "something special".
Robert Burns, the production designer of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, also served as the production designer for the film. He reused many of the props from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to decorate the cannibal clan's lair, including animal hides and bones. The sequence where Dee Wallace's character confronts a tarantula was not part of the film's script; it was added to the film after the filmmakers discovered the spider on a road. The tarantula was not harmed during the filming of the sequence. During the sequence where the cannibals eat Big Bob, a leg of lamb stood in for human flesh. This was a relief for the hungry actors. At one point, Craven considered having the character Papa Jupiter eat baby Katy, an idea that most of the cast disliked. Berryman refused to do the scene, and Craven allowed Katy to survive. The carcass of the Carter's family dog, Beauty, was an actual dog carcass that the filmmakers purchased; Craven has refused to explain how exactly the filmmakers obtained it.