The Hills Have Eyes II

[Remo D]

Yeah, I know--it's "2" on the ads, but it's "II" on the film itself.

So... have you seen DEAD SILENCE yet?

Wes Craven made his second consecutive genre impact with THE HILLS HAVE EYES in the mid-1970s. And about ten years later, right after A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, he came up with a generic, incoherent sequel, which he quickly dismissed because he hadn't been allowed to "finish it properly." Of course, we all know that THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART 2 would have been a boundary-breaking masterpiece if only Craven had been allowed to make his REAL dream come true... you could tell that much from the teens-in-the-desert premise and the dog flashback alone! If only we could have known exactly what happened to Ruby, the whole thing would have made sense, right?

In retrospect, I realize that I put Craven in an extremely uncomfortable position when DEADLY FRIEND came out... it was my first horror convention, and in front of everybody, I cited the HILLS 2 debacle and asked Craven straight out if he had been allowed to finish DEADLY FRIEND properly--if it really was the film that he wanted to make. I don't recall his exact words, but he made it sound encouraging (bet he wanted to strangle me).

He didn't get to finish CURSED properly, either. And PULSE was beyond his control... yeah, yeah, yeah. At least we got RED EYE. That was fun.

In the recent remake mania, we got ourselves a new HILLS HAVE EYES, with the cooperation of Craven himself. A REAL remake, not one of those "in name only" jobs. And whaddya know--the original film withstood a remake. The new audience was receptive, the material still worked, and they made it nastier than ever.

So now it's time for the generic, incoherent SEQUEL remake!

Mr. Craven--you receive credit as co-writer. Was your vision realized? Was this film "finished properly?" Or did they just run out of film by the time they hit the ending? Are you seriously claiming credit for the macho, sub-ALIENS National Guard dialogue? Why is there almost no interplay between the mutants? Wasn't the fact that they functioned as a family part of what made the original work (both times)? Why is one of them acting nice? And why did he just wander out of the movie? And if you weren't going to direct it yourself, why couldn't you at least keep Alejandro Aja around--at least he could have had a rein on the material and racked up some legitimate intensity to go with the gore!

Oh, THAT. No worries, there's plenty. If you're in it just for the gore, you're in good hands. But good grief--how many times have you heard me say THAT? There is NO shortage of HARD GORE in movies today. It takes something EXTRA to impress me. And by that, I don't simply mean having my face rubbed in virtually every bodily function known to man... well, except puking. Why doesn't anybody PUKE in this movie? They do everything else!

The new HILLS II seems to run on a parallel with last year's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING (as remakes, sequels and prequels to 70s horror hits almost necessarily must). They try to outdo the "birth of Leatherface" sequence in the very first scene (and then it gets nasty). There's no shortage of human victims in various stages of meal preparation. But while TCM:TB was content to remain in the Vietnam era, drop a catchphrase keyed to put us in mind of current events, and let our imagination do the rest, HILLS II decides to get ham-fistedly political. We get the anti-war sympathizer--he's a screw-up, he looks at the ground and mumbles about how "the president lies too much," and Sarge tells everybody that he has a bumper sticker reading "Conversation: Not Confrontation." (Oh, Sarge also calls him "Gomer Pyle" in an attempt to make up for the fact that R. Lee Ermey is NOT in this movie.) Gee... I wonder which character is going to toughen up and realize the "error of his ways" by the end of the movie? Look--I, myself, have no intention of arguing politics with you. What I'm saying is that whether you're pro or anti-Bush, pro or anti-war, what have you, if you offer me something like that as a serious allegory or a message of justification of U.S. foreign policy, then I'm going to laugh at you.

Okay, okay... the various mutant makeups are excellent, I quite enjoyed the bit where one of them waved bye-bye to one of his victims... with his own severed arm!... and like I said, if it's gore, gore, gore you want, then I won't suggest for a second that you'd want to give this one a miss.

So... have you seen DEAD SILENCE yet?

[Blasphemous_Cacophony]

The commercials for this flick look absolutely ridiculous!!!

[Clark Chaos]

This flick was much better then TCM:TB, by a mile.

And I found the political stuff pretty funny, especially the Sarge's answer answer about the President lies too much, "he's the President and that is what he does."

Enjoyed it but nothing new here, all pretty standard. Worth the earlybird $5 fee.

[Griff [Mola]]

Thanks Remo. Pretty much figured this was gonna be a snoozer but now there's no doubt.

[Latte Thunder]

Why doesn't anybody PUKE in this movie? They do everything else!

Really?

[Remo D]

Really?

Not one but two pissing scenes, and one guy fished out of an outhouse coated with everything imaginable, so there's that. A rape scene supplies all your slobbering needs, and while there's no literal "money" shot, give a guy a break--it's accounted for.

And I mentioned the graphic birth scene at the very beginning.

So, yes. They demonstrate every bodily function I can think of.

Except puking.

[Lode]

That is interesting, because in a lot of horror films, when someone is scared shitless, they always end up puking... which is actually pretty annoying to me personally.