The Hills Have Eyes 2

The Hills Have Eyes II
$2.99
First, let's clear up some confusion:

1. The original The Hills Have Eyes, produced in 1977, is a terrific old slasher film. It was written and directed by Wes Craven, (in his heyday), and starred Susan Lanier.

2. A sequel film is entitled The Hills Have Eyes, Part 2, and was produced and written by Wes Craven in 1985. It starred Tamara Stafford.

3. The third, The Hills Have Eyes (Unrated Edition), was produced in 2006 by Wes Craven, directed by Alexandre Aja, and starred Aaron Stanford.

4. The fourth film, (the one I'm reviewing here), The Hills Have Eyes 2 (Unrated Edition), was produced in 2007, directed by Martin Weisz, and written by Wes Craven and Jonathan Craven. It stars Michael McMillian.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD! (that is, if this movie can BE spoiled.)

THE STORY: On a former A-bomb testing ground in the desert, a U.S. military research team gets wiped out by mutated genetic retards. A team of rookie soldiers is dispatched to investigate the disappearance of the research team and of course, they lose their communications, their transportation, and they begin to fall prey to the very same pseudo-monsters. The idea (from the retards' viewpoint) is to kill all the males and to maintain the female captives for breeding.

The universal caveat with these nuclear films which always gives me a chuckle is that the radiation inevitably seems to produce very shrewd (but not very intelligent) violent creatures with great athletic ability, and these atomic hybrids always come in mega-size. But I do not despise the writers for this because these movies would be pretty boring if the victims had to face an army of moaning weaklings who were lying on their death-beds -- it's just an observation.

Whether a film is produced either on a shoestring or a mega-budget, it still holds the prospect of being well-made -- this one is not well-made. There are scads of continuity problems with the film, but two glitches that wiped me out were really stupid ones:

1. All the soldiers have the American flag shoulder patches sewn on backwards... the blue field is in the upper right-hand corner.

2. Reference is repeatedly made to the rookie soldiers being in the "U.S. National Guard." There is no such thing as this -- National Guard elements come from the various states (e.g., "Texas National Guard") and so this sounded really dumb. The writers should have simply used regular U.S. soldiers in the script.

Those sound like small issues but when they pile up at the rate which they did in this film, it takes away from whatever positive components that the movie might otherwise feature.

And there were the anticipated hackneyed scenes as well: the arm-chopped-off squirting blood scene; the ammo-running-low dilemma; tons of violent rape; the body-parts storage room (Tobe Hooper generated the best of these in his 1974 cult classic: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2-Disc Ultimate Edition)), and; the monster that you think is dead but he really isn't. In other words, there was little original thinking behind this film.

The script is unusually bad. The level of profanity, which can be used to punctuate a film, simply became tiresome here. A typical example of bad writing occurs when a macerated victim crawls out of the tank of an active porta-john and a soldier refers to him as "S***-man the Barbarian." It wasn't all that humorous a moment. In fact there are redundant references to feces in this film which added little or nothing to either its scariness or its watchability.

This film amounts to a sort of depraved version of Southern Comfort which is a little different genre and a far superior film. I gave the various freaks my own characterizations so I could keep them all straight:

-- Billy Carter (as he presently looks)
-- A really dirty Al Franken
-- Lizard-tongue cauliflower man
-- Leather-face reject
-- Michael Chertoff look-alike
-- Pseudo-Elephant Man (who was actually friendly in this film)
-- A Young Senator Robert Byrd who was in urgent need of dental and barber work
-- Mr. Cheeto-head

There were a couple more but they played minor roles and didn't last long during the conflict. The thing was, since they constituted a commune, one would have expected these freaks to work together a little more -- they were mostly very selfish loners, (especially with captured beautiful and shapely young gals.)

This film is unrated, shot in color, has an aspect ration of 2.35:1, and runs for 89 minutes.

In summary, the producers and director made a slasher film which exuded the same tired gimmicks. I realize that these low-budget slasher films are supposed to be tongue-in-cheek but that doesn't mean that they have to be crummy. I gave it two stars instead of one because the camera work and scenery were both very good and, of course, there are films which are much worse and I must reserve the one-star rating for those.

Not recommended.

Blu-ray Horror Bundle (The Hills Have Eyes 2 / 28 Weeks Later / 28 Days Later) - (Amazon.com Exclusive) [Blu-ray]
$59.99
Why? Why? Why won't amazon make a good deal for the 3 movies...why is it cheaper to buy each movie individually?? Why hasn't this been fixed after months and months of being posted and people commenting....?? Ridiculousness!

The Hills Have Eyes 1/Hills Have Eyes 2
$34.98
The Hills Have Eyes remake is brutal and relentless yet at its core its about the lengths a father will go to save his child. THAT is what makes this remake a standout. It might sound funny to say it but it's true: it has heart. Very well directed by Alexander Aja with a slew of great character actors under the make-up as the mutants. It's pretty cool also that the action takes place at the nuclear test site in New Mexico. This gives the movie a theme: We are the creators of our nightmares. The sequel The Hills Have Eyes 2 is not as good, yet it has its fair share of scares and an original plotline concerning a group of National Guard trainees preparing for their tour in Iraq by running maneuvers in the desert. There are some scary parallels in the imagery here that we saw on the news each day during the dark times in the Iraqi War. As a theme it was not well defined what the message is here, but the imagery is nonetheless unsettling. I couldn't recommend you go out and buy Hills 2, but as part of a package horror double feature deal -- this DVD set is a definite BUY BUY for horror fans.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 (Unrated Edition)
$14.98
First, let's clear up some confusion:

1. The original The Hills Have Eyes, produced in 1977, is a terrific old slasher film. It was written and directed by Wes Craven, (in his heyday), and starred Susan Lanier.

2. A sequel film is entitled The Hills Have Eyes, Part 2, and was produced and written by Wes Craven in 1985. It starred Tamara Stafford.

3. The third, The Hills Have Eyes (Unrated Edition), was produced in 2006 by Wes Craven, directed by Alexandre Aja, and starred Aaron Stanford.

4. The fourth film, (the one I'm reviewing here), The Hills Have Eyes 2 (Unrated Edition), was produced in 2007, directed by Martin Weisz, and written by Wes Craven and Jonathan Craven. It stars Michael McMillian.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD! (that is, if this movie can BE spoiled.)

THE STORY: On a former A-bomb testing ground in the desert, a U.S. military research team gets wiped out by mutated genetic retards. A team of rookie soldiers is dispatched to investigate the disappearance of the research team and of course, they lose their communications, their transportation, and they begin to fall prey to the very same pseudo-monsters. The idea (from the retards' viewpoint) is to kill all the males and to maintain the female captives for breeding.

The universal caveat with these nuclear films which always gives me a chuckle is that the radiation inevitably seems to produce very shrewd (but not very intelligent) violent creatures with great athletic ability, and these atomic hybrids always come in mega-size. But I do not despise the writers for this because these movies would be pretty boring if the victims had to face an army of moaning weaklings who were lying on their death-beds -- it's just an observation.

Whether a film is produced either on a shoestring or a mega-budget, it still holds the prospect of being well-made -- this one is not well-made. There are scads of continuity problems with the film, but two glitches that wiped me out were really stupid ones:

1. All the soldiers have the American flag shoulder patches sewn on backwards... the blue field is in the upper right-hand corner.

2. Reference is repeatedly made to the rookie soldiers being in the "U.S. National Guard." There is no such thing as this -- National Guard elements come from the various states (e.g., "Texas National Guard") and so this sounded really dumb. The writers should have simply used regular U.S. soldiers in the script.

Those sound like small issues but when they pile up at the rate which they did in this film, it takes away from whatever positive components that the movie might otherwise feature.

And there were the anticipated hackneyed scenes as well: the arm-chopped-off squirting blood scene; the ammo-running-low dilemma; tons of violent rape; the body-parts storage room (Tobe Hooper generated the best of these in his 1974 cult classic: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2-Disc Ultimate Edition)), and; the monster that you think is dead but he really isn't. In other words, there was little original thinking behind this film.

The script is unusually bad. The level of profanity, which can be used to punctuate a film, simply became tiresome here. A typical example of bad writing occurs when a macerated victim crawls out of the tank of an active porta-john and a soldier refers to him as "S***-man the Barbarian." It wasn't all that humorous a moment. In fact there are redundant references to feces in this film which added little or nothing to either its scariness or its watchability.

This film amounts to a sort of depraved version of Southern Comfort which is a little different genre and a far superior film. I gave the various freaks my own characterizations so I could keep them all straight:

-- Billy Carter (as he presently looks)
-- A really dirty Al Franken
-- Lizard-tongue cauliflower man
-- Leather-face reject
-- Michael Chertoff look-alike
-- Pseudo-Elephant Man (who was actually friendly in this film)
-- A Young Senator Robert Byrd who was in urgent need of dental and barber work
-- Mr. Cheeto-head

There were a couple more but they played minor roles and didn't last long during the conflict. The thing was, since they constituted a commune, one would have expected these freaks to work together a little more -- they were mostly very selfish loners, (especially with captured beautiful and shapely young gals.)

This film is unrated, shot in color, has an aspect ration of 2.35:1, and runs for 89 minutes.

In summary, the producers and director made a slasher film which exuded the same tired gimmicks. I realize that these low-budget slasher films are supposed to be tongue-in-cheek but that doesn't mean that they have to be crummy. I gave it two stars instead of one because the camera work and scenery were both very good and, of course, there are films which are much worse and I must reserve the one-star rating for those.

Not recommended.