THE HILLS HAVE EYES
US, 1977, 89 minutes, Colour.
Robert Houston, Susan Lanier, Martin Speer, Dee Wallace.
Directed by Wes Craven.
This smallbudget film became something of a small budget horror classic in the United States. There were many of such films in the late seventies like Halloween and Eraserhead. The small budget meant very direct presentation of the horrors and a reliance on atmosphere and effects, despite some times wooden acting and fairly basic filming.
This story is particularly ugly and serves as a kind of fable about an ordinary American family menaced by ugly people from the hills who prey upon them, wreak violence and slaughter. It is not entertaining. However, films like this show the shadow side of society and its experiences and hence have a value. The film was written and directed by Wes Craven who began to establish a reputation as a director of such small budget horrors with this film and his previous film Last House on the Left.
1. Audience response to horror, violence? The appeal of the horror film, scares, shocks, ugliness? Within the framework of threatened society? The appeal of this kind of film?
2. The significance of the title? the location, the sinister family in the hills?
3. The world of the film - a microcosm of the United States and of the world? The mountain and desert locations, the isolation, the vagueness of the time - present, future?
4. The introduction to the old man and his explanation of his presence, of his monster son and what he should have done with him? Ituby and her presence and the suggestion of violence and starvation in the hills? His helping the Carter family? The sudden eruption and ugliness of his death?
5. The presentation of the hill people? their appearance, scars and brutality, the primitive look, the suggestion of prehistoric predators? Ituby and her attempts to escape and save the baby? The men and their mythical names? Their hunger, cannibalism? Yet the irony of their up-to-date weapons and communications? Their motives, their preying on people? Violence and cruelty for its own sake? Sadism? Their vengeance and their pursuing the family to death, their own violent deaths? Contemporary horror story ogres? How credible as ogres?
6. The contrast with the Carters as an ordinary family? Their presence in the desert, the encounter with the old man, the breakdown of the car and caravan? The growing sense of danger and menace, the threats, their patterns of family life disintegrating? The father and his age and dignity, his walk, his attempts at help, the ugliness of his crucifixion and death in the night? The mother and the brutality, fear, her lingering through the night, her death and the ugliness of the family having to use her as a decoy? The middle generation and the husband and his becoming aggressive and wreaking vengeance? His wife and the love scene moving to rape, binding, death? The baby and its kidnapping, killing and cannibalistic threat, rescue? The girl and the boy as hero and heroine, the experience of the attack, the build-up to revenge? Their ingenuity in trying to save themselves - their mother as decoy, exploding the caravan? Their control and survival?
7. The significance of the sequences with the dogs - their mythical names, the slaughter of Beauty, the vengeance of Beast and his killing the hill men, saving the humans?
8. The visual portrayal of such ugliness and violence - appropriate for this kind of film or not?
9. The purpose of making the film? An ugly fable of American society? The hellish aspects of human existence?
