Rating: 
Summary: one of my favs - better than Texas Chainsaw
Review: I am a horror movie fan and this is one of my all time favorite horror films. I love Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but it never creeped me out as much as this film did. I has all the elements I look for in a horror flick.you can read the summary above to get what the movie is about so i'll just wrap it up to say that, yes, it does not have some of the best acting i've seen, but it certainly is not the worst...the characters are just right....you feel sympathy for the ones you should and you wanna beat the heck out of the ones who need it, and not because of their acting skills, but because of the characters they portray.... great characters, great story, well executed, and still remains a very convincing and possible reality....even to this day....
5 stars...bravo bravo
Rating: 
Summary: This movie sucks even for its time.
Review: I do regret paying $27 for this video but I get really tired of visiting the local video stores only to find out that all the videos I am looking for are rented out already. Anyway, here is my top five reasons why I thought this movie sucked: 5. The acting was not that good. Especially the young blond man and woman. The screaming young blonde was annoying to the point I wanted to reach inside the tv and whack her one. What really bothered me was that I didn't feel as though the actors really felt their parts and much of it seemed contrived. 4. The script could have been much better. I laughed really hard at some of the serious dialogue. 3. Good concept for a horror flick but poor delivery, I thought. 2. The directing and editing could have been much better. 1. The ending was awful. A man stabs and kills the last mountain goon and "The end" flashes on the screen. Did they run out of money to finish the film? Oh well, I guess I was more than ready for it to be over anyway..and to think they made a sequel!..and I won't be seeing it.
Rating: 
Summary: A Different Type of Scary
Review: I just finished watching "The Hills Have Eyes" and was quite impressed with the film. I was expecting a visibly low-budget film, that would rely more on gore and shock-value than it would terror and suspense. I couldn't have been farther from the truth. The movie immediatly puts the main characters in a deadly situation and never leaves. The begining scene takes place at a gas station and it is very difficult to figure out what is happening. This scene leaves the viewer with many questions, all of which will be answered by the film's end. That scene is critical, becasue it builds all of the suspense and leaves the viewer wanting answers----or at least a "safer" situation. I was a little disappointed by the film's ending, but after some further thought, I realize that the ending is quite good, although our survivors are still in quite a pickle. I recommend this film to any horror movie fan, regardless of the genre they are interested in. I doubt this movie will disappoint.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific!
Review: I remember my friend and I sneeking into this one underaged when it was first released. There was just a poster with two eyes so we didn't have a clue about the plot, which is the best way in, I think. My friend guffawed when Steadman got pulled through the window but I remember being totally traumatised by the picture, my body going into spasms in my seat. Never forget this one, it had me begging for mercy. Pleased to report it has stood up well, with strong performances. Loss of family members is a distressing prospect for anyone, and Craven plays on this to a merciless degree. I'm not sure whether the film is an utterly immoral undertaking or offers something so fundamental it would be foolish to ignore it. Essentialy, it's a sports film, and you get a glimpse as to how the Roman bread and circuses became so popular, until ironically the barbarians abolished it. It's a team game with the baby as ball. Sudden death means exactly that. Has you clapping and cheering, you can't help it. Good psychologist is Craven. Don't know if it's a film one should recommend. All I can say, as a thriller, it is one of a kind. An absolute nerve shredder.
Rating:
Summary: One Of Wes Craven's Best!
Review: I saw THE HILLS HAVE EYES at the HorrorFind 2003 Convention on August 16, where I met two actors from this film, Dee Wallace Stone and Michael Berryman. Now that I own the DVD itself, I must say that this is one of Wes Craven's greatest movies that he ever made in his distinguished career. Like THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, THE HILLS HAVE EYES explores the darker side of the family dynamic; it also explores the concept of civilization and savagery. The two families, the Carters and the mountain cannibals, both have a father figure that ultimately leads them to their respective destructions; ironically, the cannibals seem more functional than the Carters, since whereas the Carters split up whenever possible, the cannibals keep in contact with each other via radio. There are excellent performances all around, especially the aforementioned Stone (as one of the doomed Carters) and Berryman (as Pluto, the most memorable of the cannibals), as well as Susan Lanier as Brenda Carter, Janus Blythe as Ruby (the most sympathetic of the cannibals), and Robert Houston as Bobby Carter. The final moments of this movie left me in a state of shock in its display of sheer brutality and savagery!
At long last, THE HILLS HAVE EYES gets a terrific DVD release. The picture quality of this DVD is even better than it was in theaters, although a little rough around the edges! The documentary "Looking Back On THE HILLS HAVE EYES" is truly informative and really makes you more interested in the film itself. There's also a truly awesome U.S. trailer and a segment of "The Directors" on Craven among the other extras. Makes a great double feature with the original THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE! A definite must-watch!
Rating: 
Summary: Am I missing something here?
Review: I was a little kid when I first saw the promotional poster for Wes Craven's sophomore horror film outing "The Hills Have Eyes", and it scared me sleepless. Years later, as a still-squeamish adolescent, I saw in TV Guide that the movie would be appearing late-night, and got a nasty chill. I think it must have been the title, which is creepy and evocative: "The Hills have Eyes"---and then you have one of the old promotional posters, which featured a drawing of a vulnerable looking trailer-home parked out on a desert playa, surrounded by spooky, lumpish hills. It's night, of course, and the name of the movie was splashed across the poster in a font that seemed to promise horror, decency under siege, sheer terror. And then, until I was 21, I forgot all about the movie. That is, until I saw "Evil Dead", with its cellar poster homage to "Hills", and, by that time having developed into an experienced gorehound with a taste for the sick and deranged, I thought "hey, maybe I should see the movie." But even then, it wasn't until nearly a decade later that I saw "Hills", when it ran on IFC during a particularly stormy New York weekend. Just like the poster advertised, it's about a decent all-American family whose anniversary/vacation goes awry when Dad takes a *really* wrong turn and drives the family station wagon into an Air Force missile range in the Nevada desert. The situation gets particularly grim when the family realizes their plight: out of fuel, broken down, they are surrounded by a family of ruthless cannibals who live in the hills surrounding the test range, and have an affinity for baby-with-lamb-sauce. Unable to run, the family circles the wagons and faces a brutal siege from unseen attackers, and must draw on their inner beasts in order to survive. When the credits rolled, I was non-plussed. The film is reputedly a classic, and supposedly influential, but---well, I figured, it must have been my mood. So I rented "The Hills Have Eyes", and gave the movie another shot. Same reaction: I just don't see why all the raves about a film that simply isn't scary, and tries so hard to be shocking that it's laughable. The cannibals of the movie (with names like Jupiter, Pluto, Mars, and Mercury---get it?) go lumbering around in broad daylight wearing animal skins, and look for all the world like something out of "The Land Time Forgot". While the initial encounter between the fresh young college lad and a skulking cannibal is spooky (because it occurs at night), most of the action happens during the day, minimizing the suspense. And sure, Michael Berryman as Pluto is a freaky looking dude, but even the shock of his appearance wears off after a few minutes. And after that few minutes, what you're left with is a derivative, boring, poorly paced, atrociously ugly, and completely suspenseless rip-off of far superior films like Peckinpah's "Straw Dogs". The truly amazing thing about this and Craven's other early shock-film "Last House on the Left" is that anyone in Hollywood was willing to advance Craven *any* money for *anything* else after these two clunkers. But Craven, thankfully, improved, and we have "Nightmare on Elm Street" as the happy result---and "The Hills Have Eyes" as a kind of sick curiosity left behind on his road to cinematic success.
Rating: 
Summary: Impact in its time but not much today
Review: I was a little late coming to this film -- 27 years late, having never seen it until 2004. For anyone else contemplating that event, it's not a good thing. This movie does not compete well with modern flicks. It was made on the extreme cheap, has no stars and only one recognizable actress, is not all that interesting a story, and ends abruptly in freeze frame during a high energy action sequence.
The story involves a family traveling through the desert that goes off the main road, smashes into some scrub brush and breaks and axle, the men depart to find civilization and run into weirdos in bad makeup that happen to be cannibals and...watch it to see the rest.
According to the lengthy notes inside the two-disk package (one disk of extra talky stuff and trailers) this was one of the "reality" horror films of the 1970s that tried to convince viewers the horror was actually happening to a real family. This is in opposition to the historic role of horror -- to show something that could never actually happen, such as the worm from another planet that inhabits people's bodies in "The Hidden".
It succeeded quite well in that way in 1977 and developed a cult following that led me to watch it nearly three decades after its release.
I thought there were a number of exciting moments in this movie and relatively little gore. The movie broke some rules in animal and child scenes, another element that made it a cult favorite when Disco was king. It's no movie for children in this regard and probably too intense for people that are easily offended.
The notes also say the genre projected by this movie is showing a return in the 2003 film "Wrong Turn", a movie about a bunch of college kids on spring break that turn off the main road, their car breaks down, they run into weirdos with bad makeup that are cannibals and...you get the idea.
I love horror films and have loved them since I was a kid old enough to stay up late on weekends and watch movies on the channels we could get by turning the Ten-A-Rotor antenna. But this movie had hardly any effect on me other than a few points of interest. I'm glad I finally saw it, however, since I've been putting that off all my adult life. Now, at least, I can say I saw it.
Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: I watched this movie for 20 minutes until I turned it off. It was boring and going nowhere. The characters were uninteresting and the movie took too long to set up. I'm glad I didn't waste money to rent this.
Rating:
Summary: Oh please . . . .
Review: I'm not going to even begin to explain why this film is so bad . . . the proof is in the film itself. . . . RUN!
Rating:
Summary: Seen at a Drive-In way back when
Review: I'm sorry, I haven't seen the DVD of this movie.
I just remember seeing two movies, back to back, back in the late '70s in a Drive-In: "The Hills Have Eyes" and "Don't Go Into The Woods".
This became an Indie-joke between my friends and myself to refer to movies that were supposed to be cheap and scary. I seem to remember a subliminal flash of a skull a few times during the "Don't..." movie also. Some of us found the movies scary, some of us were dying to leave. We who were dying to leave suddenly perked up and tried to spot more of the subliminal frames. The other guys never saw them. They weren't subtle either: In the middle of a very dark woods scene suddenly is one frame of full white with just a black skull in the middle, enough to blind you in a dark parking lot. Even more puzzling that only two of us saw it.
Anyway, maybe "The Hills..." has some subliminals in it also so if you buy this movie try to keep your eyes peeled open watching for them. There were only three or so in the other movie.
It would be a chuckle if they made it into this.
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