A family of seven are taking a road trip to California, but their car breaks down in the middle of a desert where there’s a family a cannibals.
Blaine: Growing up, Wes Craven would go to a Baptist church after his parents got divorced. His mom would take him there a lot and smoking, drinking and movies were forbidden. Wes wasn’t allowed to see any movies until he was a senior in college. He became addicted to movies the more he saw them. Wes bought a camera and played around with it. He also quit his job so he could go into the movie business. A lot of people didn’t believe in Wes. They thought he was crazy for quitting his job just so he could make movies. They thought it was impossible for Wes to make movies because he never went to film school. Wes did have a talent for writing though and he could put that to good use by writing screenplays. Wes moved to New York with his family and became an assistant manager to a post-production house. Wes later met Sean S. Cunningham, who later became the creator of “Friday the 13th”. Sean was asked to make a horror film and he knew Wes was a talented writer so he asked him to write a script for a horror film. Wes never had scary movies on his mind when he decided to go into the film business. He didn’t know what to write at first, but finally he came up with something called “The Last House on the Left”. Wes was offered to direct “Last House on the Left” after the studio read the script. Sean S. Cunningham would produce the film. “Last House” became a success after it’s release, but a lot of people thought it was made by a psychopath. Wes Craven and Sean S. Cunningham had been trying to make other films ever since.
A few years later, Wes met a producer named Peter Locke. Peter thought that Wes was a talented and smart screenwriter after seeing his movie “Last House on the Left”. He thought Wes should do another horror movie. Wes didn’t want to make another horror movie because people were already looking at him like he was insane after they saw “Last House”. But he had no choice because he was broke and he needed work. Peter was driving to Las Vegas with his wife and they crossed a desert on the way. He thought that Wes should write a script that takes place in the desert. Peter called Wes and told him to write something that takes place in the desert. Wes read about this 17th century family that were cannibals and he thought about adding cannibals into the story. Wes wrote different drafts for the script and had Peter decide which one was best. After that, Wes and Peter went to California to find a desert. They were warned that it was 125 degrees there, so Wes made sure they packed plenty of water. The heat was unbelievable as Wes and Peter were exploring the whole desert. After they found the location, the next thing to do was cast actors.
Susan Lanier’s agent told her not to do the project because it was a horror film, but he didn’t know how big of a horror fan she was. She also was a fan of “Last House on the Left”. Susan is short and she wore these really high shoes so she could look taller. Dee Wallace felt that a movie like this could give her a big break if she wanted to pursue a career in acting. Wes and Peter had another actor in mind for the character, Bobby, but he turned it down so they gave the part to Robert Huston. They also wanted people who looked unusual. Wes had Janus Blythe in mind for Lynne before Dee Wallace, but she wanted to play Ruby, the youngest of the cannibals, instead because she was interested in playing a character that was completely different from her. Wes tested the actresses who auditioned for Ruby by having a foot race in the parking lot because he wrote Ruby as someone who is fast on her feet. Janus was really fast on her feet and that’s how she got the part. Wes thought that Janus Blythe looked too cute, so the makeup department added stuff to her face to make her look dirty. Michael Berryman was born with hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia which is a rare condition leaving him with no sweat glands, hair or fingernails. Wes liked that Michael obeyed him without complaining. He understood that Wes was in charge because he is the director and an actor’s job is help bring his vision to life.
The cast and crew stayed at this small hotel and then they would drive 20 miles to get to the desert. Wes hired a cinematographer who had a lot experience in making movies and he brought in the crew he had worked with on a few films to help make “The Hills Have Eyes” because they had a lot of experience too. Everyone had to be careful where they walked on this hill. If you tripped your head would hit a rock and break your skull. Everyone would work twelve hours a day and they got tired after one hour because of the heat. As soon as the sun went down the air got cold. The weather didn’t stop anyone from going to work and do their best to make this movie look good. Everyone committed themselves to this project. The actors were newcomers at the time and they would do anything to be in the film business.
Wes Craven was shy, quiet and didn’t have enough experience in filmmaking. Robert Houston believed that Wes was never going to make it as a director if he wasn’t going to speak up and tell people what to do. Peter Locke did most of the talking and it felt like he was in charge. But everyone else knew that Wes was a talented guy. He knew what he wanted to see because he had a vision and he did whatever he could do to bring his movies to life.
Wes wrote a scene where the father is being tied to a tree by the cannibals and then they set him on fire. Peter Locke pointed out that there are no trees out in the desert. They found something that was like a tree called the joshua. The joshua tree is an endangered species so the crew had to make sure that no one passed by and saw them setting it on fire during the night because they would be in big trouble if anyone saw them doing it.
Susan Lanier really got into her role and she screamed as loud as she could during the scene when two of the cannibals sneak into the trailer and one of them rapes her character. Wes was nervous how Susan would feel to shoot a rape scene, but she was strong and she was ok with it. Dee Wallace was a committed actress too. She was building up her energy for when her character returns to the trailer and one of the cannibals has her baby and then she fights him. Dee was ready to shoot that scene. She screamed to the top of her lungs. Michael Berryman was really impressed with how the women were trying to fight the cannibals in a very tight space. Dee Wallace gets shot to death in that scene and her husband, Doug, looses it after he returns to the trailer, finds his wife dead, his mother brutally shot and his baby missing. The family has two dogs. One of them gets gutted by the cannibals and the other manages to kill one by pushing him over a hill and takes his walkie talkie. So there’s a solution to Bobby, Doug and Brenda’s problems now that they have one of the cannibals’ walkie talkies and can hear what they are plotting.
Wes wasn’t sure if the baby should die or not. Some of the crew thought it should die, but others thought it would be terrible to show something like that. They said they would leave if the baby was murdered, so Wes decided to have the baby stay alive. He wrote a new scene where Ruby gives her brother a pig wrapped around in a blanket as a distraction while she runs off trying to save the baby. Bobby and Brenda set up a trap while Doug goes after the baby. Two of the cannibals go down to kill whoever’s left. The dog attacks Michael Berryman’s character, bites him and rips off his skin. The dog would be very close to Michael’s face because Wes wanted it to look real.
What I love about “The Hills Have Eyes” is that you think the cannibals are going to kill the family except for one who is the survivor at the end. But the characters Bobby, Doug and Brenda are the only ones left and they don’t give up. They want revenge and they’ll do whatever they can to take down the cannibals. And Ruby is on the good side even though she’s a cannibal, but she can tell the difference between right and wrong.
Most people think it is creepy that Bobby and Brenda would use their mother’s corpse as bait for the cannibals, but it makes sense and Wes had really thought that scene out. They blow up the trailer by setting matches on the door and setting off the gas. They only had one trailer because the budget for this movie was small and they couldn’t afford another one. So they shot the trailer being blown up in one take. Susan Lanier loved that scene because Bobby goes to check and make sure that the cannibal they lured in is dead. Then the cannibal shows up out of nowhere and attacks Bobby. Brenda panics and instead of running away she grabs an axe, runs to them and attacks the cannibal with it. She’s really bad ass in that scene. Then Bobby grabs the cannibal’s gun and shoots him dead.
The last scene they shot was the last fight at the end involving a rattlesnake. They had a snake handler. The rattlesnake had to be frozen in order to slow it down so it wouldn’t attack, but the snake would warm up in the box as they were bringing it up the hill. As soon as they opened the box, the snake popped out and went under a rock. Everyone tried to run away because they were scared, but they were in a tight space. Janus Blythe didn’t want to touch the snake because she was terrified of it. But she had to because her character uses it on her brother in order to save Doug. The handler showed Janus that it was easy by showing her an example. He would pick it up himself and that calmed her down a bit, but she was still afraid. As soon as the cameras started rolling, Janus picked up that snake, quickly run to the actor who was playing her brother, pretend to use it on him and throw it on the ground so she wouldn’t have to hold it anymore. Her character shows a scared reaction as Doug is killing her brother. The reaction was real, but it was for touching the snake. As Doug is killing the cannibal, he stops for a moment and realizes that he has become a savage like him. The studio felt the ending was too much for the movie and they felt that the movie should be rated X. Wes didn’t like that because it was meant to be an R rated movie.
There was no title for this movie until the movie was in post-production. Wes originally wanted to call it “Blood Relations”, but Peter Locke didn’t like it. Wes had tried out a hundred titles, but none of them were good enough. Finally Peter thought of the title, “The Hills Have Eyes”, and Wes thought it was a terrible title. Peter asked the crew their opinion on the title and they all thought it was a title that was suitable for a movie like this. Six months had passed and the movie was ready to be released. People were terrified when they saw “The Hills Have Eyes”. A woman in the audience was saying “this movie is sick and twisted” and Michael Berryman was sitting behind her saying “your damn right”. When she saw the person who was sitting behind her was the same guy who was in the film she freaked. “The Hills Have Eyes” did well in theaters until it’s competition, “Smokey and the Bandit”, was released the week after and people went to see it more. But “The Hills Have Eyes" did good and Wes Craven was getting a lot of attention after that.
My rating on “The Hills Have Eyes” is five out of five stars
