Bloody Eyes Hill (1977)

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Movie
German title Hill of bloody eyes
Original title The Hills Have Eyes
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1977
length approx. 86 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Wes Craven
script Wes Craven
production Peter Locke
music Don Peake
camera Eric Saarinen
cut Wes Craven
occupation

Hills of the Bloody Eyes (Original title: The Hills Have Eyes ) is an American horror film by director Wes Craven from 1977. Its plot is based in part on the legend of Alexander "Sawney" Bean .

action

The Carter family - retired cop Big Bob, his wife Ethel, daughters Lynne and Brenda, youngest son Bobby, Lynne's husband Doug and their baby, and two German shepherds - are on their way to California for a summer vacation. In the middle of a deserted desert area, the car breaks down due to a broken axle. The area, used by the Air Force as a nuclear test site, seems deserted because they cannot call attention to themselves over the radio. However, from a distance, from the hills, the family is watched all the time. Big Bob Carter tries to reach the gas station 15 miles away where they had a short rest at the beginning of the film. His son-in-law Doug suspects that the radio waves are interfered with by the ore deposits in the surrounding hills and sets out to cross them in order to establish a radio link from there. When night falls, shepherdess Beauty breaks free and runs into the hills. Bobby follows her, but only finds the cruelly carcass of the dog. He returns worried, but initially keeps silent about the incident. German shepherd Beast can also tear himself away and disappears into the darkness.

At the gas station, Big Bob frees the old owner Fred, who is about to hang himself. He tells him how years ago he became the father of a deformed, vicious son who was responsible for the death of his mother, his sister, the cattle on the farm and the burning of the house. At that time, Fred tried to kill the child - possibly degenerated by the nuclear tests in the area - and leave it in the wild. Severely disfigured, however, it survived and over the years founded its own degenerate family under the name Papa Jupiter, with other, partially disabled children, the sons Mars, Mercury and Pluto and the daughter Ruby, who live in a cave in the hills . During this conversation, Fred is attacked and killed by a figure. Bob escapes and tries to walk to the car as fast as he can, but collapses from exhaustion and from his heart condition. He is eventually captured by Jupiter and his kin.

They crucify him and set him on fire near the motor home to lure away the men who rush to the father's aid but can only find out that he is dead. At the same time, Mars and Pluto invade the trailer, steal weapons and supplies, and rape the youngest daughter, Brenda. When the rest of the family return to the mobile home, a fight ensues in the course of which Lynne is killed, her mother Ethel is seriously (and ultimately fatally) injured by a shot in the stomach, and the baby is kidnapped.

The runaway beast crashes Mercury down a hill in the middle of the night and fetches his radio to the trailer. So the Carters can eavesdrop on the savages' communications and learn that they want to avenge Mercury's death at dawn. The next morning, Doug hides in the hills and sets the German Shepherd on the bald-headed Pluto, who is killed. Jupiter, the second attacker, is lured into a trap by Brenda and Bobby at the trailer and killed. Doug, meanwhile, observes the family's den and notices that Ruby is trying to get the baby to safety from Mars. He comes to her aid and after a long fight they both manage to join forces (Ruby catches a rattlesnake that bites Mars in the neck) to kill Mars.

Sequels and remakes

In 1985 Wes Craven made a first sequel with In Death Valley of the Wolves . Ten years later he was the producer of the movie Mindripper , also known as The Hills Have Eyes 3 .

In 2006 a remake was staged with The Hills Have Eyes . Craven was involved in this project as a producer, the French director Alexandre Aja took over the direction . A year later, the German Martin Weisz shot The Hills Have Eyes 2, a sequel in which Craven worked as a screenwriter and again as a producer.

useful information

  • In the German synchronization, the atomically contaminated mutants became extraterrestrials with a grudge against humanity.
  • The budget for the film was about $ 230,000.

Reviews

"An absurd horror film that mainly relies on bloody effects."

- Lexicon of international film

"Director Wes Craven, best known five years earlier for the disturbingly realistic" The Last House on the Left ", already incorporated fantastic elements, which he would later concentrate on in" Nightmare ". [...] The remake from 2006 is far more brutal, but also better written and photographed. "

- Cinema

“It's impressive and extremely interesting how Wes Craven plays with nuances in the subtext of his film. Superficially, his work is of course hard horror food, with Craven skillfully incorporating elements from other genres. Correctly set shock moments from the first second consistently create tension. [...] "Hill of Bloody Eyes" has its strengths elsewhere. With little means, Wes Craven succeeded in staging an atmospherically dense and hard shocker that still knows how to convince even today in times of the successful remake of Alexandre Aja. "

- movie starts

Awards

The film won a prize at the 1978 International Fantasy Film Festival in Sitges, Spain . Bald-headed Pluto actor Michael Berryman , who also graces the movie poster, was nominated for a Saturn Award in 1978 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Budget on imdb.com
  2. ↑ Hill of Bloody Eyes. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. ↑ Hill of bloody eyes on cinema.de
  4. ↑ Hill of Bloody Eyes on filmstarts.de