The Hills Have Eyes (!977)

In 1977, I was in college and it wasn’t until summertime that I spent a huge amount of time at a theater. “Star Wars” and “Rocky Horror” took up most of my attention, and I barely remember this film being released. The memory that I did have of it was from the newspaper ads and posters which featured actor Michael Berryman, looking particularly creepy.

I was totally freaked out by that face and thought I did not need to have anything to do with that film. Cut to 47 years later and I wonder how a kid like me wasn’t in the theater seeing this. Wes Craven was on the cusp of becoming a go-to horror film maker and this was one of the breakthrough films of his early career. The movie was not a runaway success but it did make a substantial amount for the time and was quite profitable. It was the kind of success that could keep a struggling filmmaker in the game.

The fact that the film had a copy in the New York Museum of Modern Art was used in the ad campaigns, although the copy was not part of the permanent collection of the museum.

The story involves a family, traveling though the desert, who have a car breakdown in their station wagon pulling a trailer, but it happens in a remote area that is the home of a twisted family of cannibals. So in essence it is a home invasion film, but the home is on wheels and instead of being invaded, the victims are the trespassers.

The family that is struck in their trailer is dominated by an old school tough guy, his wife an son and two daughters and a son-in law, as well as a new baby. They also have with them, two German Shepard’s named “Beauty and Beast”. Animal lovers be warned that one of the dogs does not make it past the opening act and it’s demise is fairly disturbing. The other dog does however help get revenge later in the story.

The fact that their car strongly resembles the car my family traveled across the country in multiple times, ought to give me some good nightmares. The film of course does have a nightmarish quality, especially after the sun sets and the crazy family begins it’s assault on the normies.

There is an unpleasantly filmed sexual assault and a couple of the traveling family members are injured or killed by the cannibals. The siege mentality sets in and the family members who remain get serious about trying to fight back.

There is a good deal of violence but no real nudity in the picture. The only actors you will recognize are John Steadman, a veteran character actor who plays the grizzled gas station owner at the start of the film and who occasionally trades with the demented family, and Dee Wallace who plays the married daughter and would go on to be E.T.s adopted Mom. Michael Berryman will be familiar from roles in other horror films, B-Movies and TV shows, he also appeared in “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.

This is a well made shocker, done on the cheap but with a great deal of impact. If you have not seen it yet, do so because if you are visiting this site, it is right up your alley.