The Hills Have Eyes

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Movie
German title The Hills Have Eyes
Original title The Hills Have Eyes
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2006
length 107 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Alexandre Aja
script Wes Craven
Grégory Levasseur
Alexandre Aja
production Peter Locke
Wes Craven
music tomandandy
camera Maxime Alexandre
cut Baxter
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
The Hills Have Eyes 2

The Hills Have Eyes - The Hills Have Eyes is a horror film from director Alexandre Aja . The film is a remake of the 1977 film of the same name by Wes Craven. It was released on March 10, 2006 in the USA . The film was shown in Germany and Austria from March 23, 2006.

On March 29, 2007, The Hills Have Eyes 2 was released as a sequel to the first film in German cinemas. The direction was taken over by the German video director Martin Weisz , who made his debut as a film director with Rohtenburg in 2006.

action

The Carter family travels through the United States with their trailer. On the day Ethel and Bob celebrate their wedding day, they drive with their children Lynn, Brenda and Bobby through the desert of New Mexico with the aim of San Diego , California . On the trip are Lynn's husband Doug, the couple's daughter and the two German shepherds Beauty and Beast. When they fill up at a gas station far away from civilization, the gas station attendant recommends a shortcut to save time. While refueling, Bobby's red hoodie is stolen and Bob decides to take the shortcut.

In the desert area now to be traversed and abandoned, however, there are miners whose bodies have been disfigured by the nuclear tests carried out by the US government in this area in the 1950s. The miners then hid in the mines. Angry about the devastated country, they made a pact with the gas station owner, who shows unsuspecting victims the alleged acronym. The mutants attack their victims and eat them, and in return the gas station attendant receives the victims' possessions.

The tires of the Carter's caravan team are torn by the mutated family with nail tape, preventing them from continuing their journey. While Father is handing out handguns to Bob, the family agrees that Bob and Doug leave the trailer for help. Bob walks back to the gas station while Doug walks in the opposite direction and discovers a former nuclear crater, which he does not recognize as such; There are several wrecked cars in the crater.

Meanwhile, Beauty, one of the two shepherd dogs, follows a trail into the desert, where she is found slashed by Bobby shortly afterwards. Bobby feels followed and wants to run back to the trailer, but stumbles and loses consciousness. Nothing happens to him when he is watched by a younger mutant named Ruby who is wearing his red hoodie. He is later found by his sister Brenda and taken back to the trailer. Doug also returns to the trailer with things he found in the wrecked cars. Bob, who has meanwhile reached the petrol station, witnesses the suicide of the petrol station owner. He is then knocked unconscious in a car by a member of the mutants, kidnapped and set on fire on a tree near the Carter's trailer as a diversionary maneuver. Meanwhile, Beast, the Carter's second German Shepherd, is able to run away due to a carelessness of the mutants. He flees into the darkness of the night and tears up Goggle, the mutant who watches the trailer with binoculars. Doug, Ethel, Lynn and Bobby rush to the tree with a fire extinguisher. Brenda, who is in the caravan, does not hear anything of the events because at this point she is already being attacked and raped by "Lizard" and "Pluto", two other mutants. Ethel and Lynn, who run back to the trailer and find the mutants with Brenda, are shot by them.

The young mutant Ruby now saves Doug and Lynn's baby from murder and flees from "Lizard". When he reaches her and wants to kill the baby, Doug comes, beats the mutant and shoots him with the shotgun. Convinced that he had killed Lizard, Doug receives the child back from Ruby. Lizard, however, gets up in the back of Doug and wants to shoot him with the shotgun that Doug had left with the supposedly dead mutant. Ruby then immediately runs up to him and plunges himself and him into a gorge to death. In the meantime, Brenda and Bobby, who stayed behind at the trailer, turned the trailer into a deadly gas trap. They manage to lure the mutant "Jupiter" into the caravan, where he triggers the trap. However, the explosion of the gas-filled caravan cannot kill him immediately - Brenda does this with a pickaxe. Then Doug comes back to the trailer with the baby and dog and is now reunited with the rest of the Carter family. However, this is observed with binoculars from the hills.

Political interpretation

The new Aja interpretation of the Wes Craven original from 1977 contains numerous political connotations , from the criticism of US nuclear policy to the American socio-political system in general, which the director consciously incorporated into his interpretation.

The film opens with a reference to 331 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests with nuclear fallout , the effects of which on the human organism and its genetic structure are still denied by the US government. Alexandre Aja then shows researchers in white protective suits and with Geiger counters in the lonely desert of New Mexico. The quiet cracking of the devices is interrupted when the scientists are brutally slaughtered by the mutants with pimples and dragged through the desert on chains.

The Carters are introduced shortly after their involuntary stop in the New Mexico desert as a Republican- oriented family with traditional family roles. Father Bob distributes handguns immediately after the accident and suppresses his wife's protest. What is striking is that both Bob and his son Bobby shoot aimlessly into the darkness in view of the threat posed by the mutants. Doug Bukowski, on the other hand, rejects guns due to a conflict of conscience, but later kills several mutants himself in search of his baby.

Sequels and remakes

When the first part of The Hills Have Eyes came out in 1977 , the second part followed in 1984, for which Wes Craven also wrote the script, and the third part in 1995. These films became a horror cult over the decades. Almost 30 years later (2006) the remake was announced. Almost exactly a year later, the sequel The Hills Have Eyes 2 by Martin Weisz came out.

background

  • The Hills Have Eyes is the first US directorial work by Frenchman Alexandre Aja, who made a highly acclaimed international debut with High Tension .
  • The film was shown in the R-rated version (107 minutes) in cinemas worldwide , but was released uncut on June 20, 2006 as an unrated RC 1 DVD with a running time of 108 minutes by 20th Century Fox . The unrated version of the film was also released in Germany.
  • The Hills Have Eyes is a co-production of Craven-Maddalena Films, Dune Entertainment and Major Studio Partners and had a budget of 15 million US dollars . He made $ 42 million in the United States alone. The worldwide box office, including the USA, was 69 million US dollars.
  • The plot of the film takes place in the US state of New Mexico and suggests that a large number of above-ground nuclear weapons tests took place there. In reality, the United States government conducted only one nuclear weapon detonation in New Mexico, the Trinity Test . Most of the above-ground nuclear weapons tests took place on the Nevada Test Site in the state of the same name.

Differences to the original

  • The remake begins with an introductory scene in which four radiation researchers are brutally murdered by the mutants. This is missing in the original.
  • In the remake, the gas station attendant is responsible for the breakdown, as he is in cahoots with the mutants and deliberately lures travelers into a trap. In the original film, he even instructs the family not to leave the street, which has an accident shortly afterwards.
  • In the remake, the gas station attendant shoots himself shortly after Big Bob arrives. In the original, Big Bob initially prevents him from hanging himself. Then the gas station attendant tells us that the aggressive Jupiter is his son and has started a family in the desert (in the German dubbed version the mutants became aliens who are not in a family relationship with the gas station attendant). Shortly afterwards, the gas station attendant is murdered by Pluto.
  • The mutant family is a lot bigger in the remake. In addition to Pluto, Jupiter, Lizard (originally "Mars"), Goggle ("Mercury") Mama and Ruby, there are also Cyst and Big Brain; Furthermore, two underage mutants (Mercury and Venus) can be seen briefly. In addition, the ending suggests that there are other undiscovered mutants.
  • Doug is clearly in the focus in the last third of the film and is much more defensive than in the original. While searching for his daughter, he is attacked and captured several times; in doing so, he is hard hit (he loses several fingers, among other things). Originally he only kills Mars / Lizard at the end of the film, while in the remake he kills Pluto and Cyst. Mars / Lizard is killed in the remake by Ruby, who throws herself into a ravine with him and dies, unlike in the original. In addition to Goggle, German Shepherd Beast also kills Big Brain, while in the original he kills Pluto.
  • In the remake, the mutants live in a ghost town built for nuclear testing purposes, while in the original film they live in a cave.

Reviews

Reviews in the US

"It is not faulty logic that derails The Hills have eyes, however, but faulty drama. The movie is a one-trick pony. "

- Roger Ebert , Chicago Sun-Times

"This remake of the alleged 1977 Wes Craven classic has one very disturbing quality: It's too damned good."

- Stephen Hunter , Washington Post

"Snobs may balk, purists will be appalled, but this new and exceedingly nasty version of Wes Craven's 1977 cult shocker is awfully good at what it does."

- Nathan Lee, New York Times

German-language reviews

"Drastic remake of the horror film of the same name from 1977, which has been relocated to the present, whereby the story is peppered with repulsive brutalities."

- Lexicon of international film

“If the original was only reasonably exciting due to its dramaturgical weaknesses and - measured by today's standards - quite tame in the depictions of violence, Alexandre Aja really tightens the screws in these areas - as it should be for a representative of the new terror cinema. The Frenchman staged the swan song for the American family idyll much more consistently and tougher than in the original, with a grainy 70s look - a disturbing horror piece of malicious stringency, which, however, owing to too much loyalty to the original, the panic atmosphere of Aja's debut "High Tension." "only achieved in phases. Nevertheless, he succeeds in delivering more than just a contemporary remake: Aja's film is the one that Wes Craven would have loved to have made back then. "

- Cinema

“Alexandre Aja has underlined his reputation as one of the most hopeful young horror filmmakers with“ The Hills Have Eyes ”. His uncompromising brutal terror shocker does not need to shy away from the comparison to the original, takes over the strengths and sets some interesting new accents. Aja also shows how Wrong Turn or Texas Chainsaw Massacre can be implemented correctly - with courage and consistency. “The Hills Have Eyes” is anything but fun, despite some ironic insertions, which are mostly conveyed through the background music - which would have robbed the film of any effect. [...] Genre fans will be enthusiastic about "The Hills Have Eyes". "

- movie starts

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for The Hills Have Eyes - Hills of the Bloody Eyes . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2006 (PDF; test number: 105 488 K).
  2. ↑ Publication on imdb.com
  3. ↑ eatmybrains.com - Interview with Alexandre Aja, February 24, 2006 (Eng.)
  4. ↑ box office results on boxofficemojo.com
  5. ↑ Filming locations on imdb.com
  6. ^ Review by Roger Ebert
  7. ↑ Review by Stephen Hunter
  8. ↑ Critique by Nathan Lee
  9. ↑ The Hills Have Eyes. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  10. ↑ The Hills Have Eyes - Hills of the Bloody Eyes on cinema.de
  11. ↑ The Hills Have Eyes - Hills of the Bloody Eyes on filmstarts.de