Friday, September 16, 2016

The Hills Have Eyes Part II (1984)

Director: Wes Craven

Writer: Wes Craven

Composer: Harry Manfredini

Starring: Robert Houston, David Nichols, Tamara Stafford, Kevin Spirtas, John Laughlin, Willard E. Pugh, Peter Frechette, Colleen Riley, Penny Johnson Jerald, Janus Blythe, Edith Fellows, Arden Roger Meyer, Michael Berryman, John Bloom, Nicholas Worth

More info: IMDb

Tagline: So you think you're lucky to be alive...

Plot: A group of bikers, heading to a race, become stranded in the desert and find themselves fighting off a family of inbred cannibals who live off the land.



My rating: 5.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Nope.

This had to be a paycheck film for Craven.  You expect more from this guy, ya know?  The flick is made by pros.  The acting's OK and it looks good.  The music works, there's a little bit of nudity and some gore but it's just plain borderline boring and uninspiring.  Cass, the blind girl, took having blind super powers (hearing, smelling) to a whole new level that got utterly ridiculous by the finale.  This is just another average teen horror/slasher movie from the 80s.  And it came right at a time that the height of the slasher genre had been gone for a couple of years and at a time that it was seeing a rebirth of sorts with another Craven creation, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984).  Craven must've written this one in record time. The '77 film was fun.  I can only fault the guy so far.  I'm sure the studio backed the Brinks truck up to his house and shoveled money onto his front lawn to do this.  He probably didn't want to and this is the result.  As this was written and directed by Craven, the expectations were a lot higher than if it were made by a no name.  I can see why this picture gets a bad rep but it's not a horrible movie, just a piece of mediocre horror that just about anyone could've done back then...and did.


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