Review: Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes Gets Limited Edition Arrow Blu-ray

Wes Craven’s down and dirty shocker gets a gratifying UHD upgrade and a full roster of edifying supplements.

The Hills Have EyesWes Craven’s infamous The Last House on the Left was an exercise in pop culture-crashing perversity. It was a grindhouse blockbuster and, five years later, Craven returned with a film that went on to eclipse its reputation: The Hills Have Eyes, the grueling tale of a WASPy family that finds itself stranded in the American Southwest desert, and, most unfortunately, near a lair of mentally impaired cannibals.

The film was very much Craven’s attempt to capture the rural horror of Tobe Hooper’s earlier masterpiece The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Suffice it to say that while frequently effective, The Hills Have Eyes is no Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Because Craven goes to such great lengths to humanize the cannibal family by mirroring their actions with those of the straight-laced clan, he ends up diluting the terror of being confronted with the proverbial Other.

The film ends with a grand statement about our inherent need to kill, but such impulses are usually more devastating when they aren’t necessarily in response to a life-or-death situation. Also, Craven indulges in his least terror-inducing motif: the MacGyver solution. Just as Nightmare on Elm Street’s climax boiled down to an elaborate parade of Acme Inc. booby traps, The Hills Have Eyes stretches credibility in the end with a series of outlandish attacks.

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In any case, Craven’s latent sick streak gets a major workout here, and the rudest shocks seem to center around the “good” family’s parental figures. The patriarch, Bob (Russ Grieve), exits the picture in a blaze, tied to a burning tree. And the mother, Ethel (Virginia Vincent), who suffers a long, slow demise after being shot in the stomach, ends up being used by two of her children, Brenda (Susan Lanier) and Bobby (Robert Houston), as bait for the cannibals.

Like Brenda and Bobby, Craven was raised by fundamentalist parents, so it seems fairly reasonable that he was working through some major issues while writing the film’s screenplay. The Hills Have Eyes isn’t subtle, then, but it’s better acted than probably any other film from Craven’s early period. Because of his emotionally bare nature, Houston’s achingly implosive terror is more complex than your average male lead in a horror film.

Image/Sound

Arrow’s 2160p UHD presentation of The Hills Have Eyes improves on its earlier home video releases, especially when it comes to resolving sometimes extremely thick grain levels (inherent to the production’s use of 16mm film stock). Colors are bright and black levels are sufficiently uncrushed. Fine details manage to stand out even in the lowest lit sequences. The disc containing the film comes with three audio options: Master Audio mono, stereo, and 7.1 surround. And each successive option opens us The Hills Have Eyes a little bit more, with the surround giving some immersivity to ambient effects and Don Peake’s truly menacing score.

Extras

Arrow provides three commentary tracks: one with writer-director Wes Craven and producer Peter Locke, one with various cast members, and one with film professor Mikel J. Koven. The first two are unsurprisingly laden with production anecdotes ranging from the amusing to the fairly harrowing. For his part, Craven goes into some detail on the inspirations for The Hills Have Eyes. (Much of this is at least touched upon in the 2003 making-of documentary also included on the disc.) Koven’s academic yet conversational commentary goes deep into an analysis of the legend of Sawney Bean that inspired both this film as well as aspects of Tobe Hooper’s earlier Texas Chainsaw Massacre (including a reading of the earliest published version of the legend in full). It also examines the sequel, remake, and sequel to the remake, and places these films in the context of the “rural horror” genre.

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Elsewhere, we get on-camera interviews with Peake, who goes into detail about the unusual instruments and arranging techniques he used for his score, and actor Martin Speer. An alternate ending basically rearranges the last two scenes to send us off with something resembling a happy family reunion, thus undercutting the original ending’s “we’re all savages” viewpoint. Also packaged with the disc are six postcard art prints, and inside the slipcase there’s a foldout poster, as well as a 40-page illustrated booklet with an essay on the film by critic Brad Stevens and a consideration of the film franchise by Arrow producer Ewan Cant.

Overall

Wes Craven’s down and dirty shocker The Hills Have Eyes gets a gratifying UHD upgrade and a full roster of edifying supplements from Arrow Video.

Score: 
 Cast: Susan Lanier, Robert Houston, Martin Speer, Dee Wallace, Russ Grieve, John Steadman, Janus Blythe, Michael Berryman, Virginia Vincent, James Whitworth  Director: Wes Craven  Screenwriter: Wes Craven  Distributor: Arrow Video  Running Time: 89 min  Rating: R  Year: 1977  Release Date: November 23, 2021  Buy: Video

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