The Hills Have Eyes: Part II

The Hills Have Eyes Too (1985)

Dir. and written by Wes Craven

Starring Michael Berryman, Janus Blythe, Kevin Spirtas, John Bloom, Tamara Stafford

How did it come to this?

Obviously, there’s only one reason to watch the widely-hated 1985 sequel to the Wes Craven’s seminal 1977 original THE HILLS HAVE EYES. With his death a little more than a year ago in August of 2015, I felt compelled to pay tribute to the passing of one of the horror genre’s true modern luminaries by watching one of his movies. But it turns out I’ve seen pretty much everything but the very bottom of the barrel. Faced with a choice of VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN, CHILLER (TV movie) and HILLS HAVE EYES II, I elected to at least go for the infamous one. It has a reputation for legendary awfulness, and was disowned by its maker as a cheap cash grab to pay the bills. Gotta at least respect that honesty. Guy’s gotta eat.

But surprisingly, it turns out not to be that bad. I mean, it is bad, obviously; it’s just not that bad. It’s plenty incompetent, but not entirely unejoyable, which is more than I was expecting given its rap. Its incompetence is generally of the goofy, amusing variety instead of the plodding, soul-crushing variety that you should probably brace yourself for in something this low-rent. Which is good, because it’s also an incompetence which is fairly ubiquitous, and manifests itself in a wide variety of ways, from the many, many flashbacks to the previous movie (including, famously, a flashback from a dog’s perspective) that pad the opening here with what is reportedly 20 full minutes of old footage (it feels like less to me, especially since the flashbacks are spaced out a bit, but I’m not going back to do my own math), to the presumably-improvised awkward chit-chatting in the downtime, to the weird way this sequel fixates obsessively on the original and reintroduces its main characters, only to subsequently ignore and drop them.

Bobby, the brother from PART 1 (still Robert Houston, now known less as an actor and more for re-editing the first two LONE WOLF AND CUB movies into SHOGUN ASSASSIN, as well as directing two Academy-award-winning documentary shorts in 2004 and 2005), opens the film and immediately seems like the main character. He’s some kind of motorbike racing team captain now, (and is said to have invented some kind of super fuel?) but as fate would have it, his latest race involves driving through the same desert where his family was massacred eight years prior. Seems like the perfect setup for some revenge, but then he just decides he’s not stupid enough to go back to the desert and stays behind, never to be seen again. Good move on his part, as it turns out, but a very strange decision from a narrative filmmaking perspective. He does not seem to have mentioned to anyone that there are killer mutants out there, and his crew doesn’t seem aware this is a possibility. This seems like kind of a dick move on his part because while he wisely sits at home watching the first season of Growing Pains, the rest of his crew heads out into the selfsame desert blissfully unaware that they’re in a movie called THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART DUEX. It also makes you wonder how he broke the news to the authorities that his family was gone after the events of PART 1 and that he suddenly had a new family member who was a little short on recognized government identification documents. Did he just tactfully talk his way around the mutants using a series of artful euphemisms?

Speaking of which, the mutant sister from the first movie (still Janus Blythe, EATEN ALIVE) is doing well for herself now. Previously called Ruby and now going by “Rachael” for what I’m certain could be described as reasons, she’s Bobby’s motorcycling manager, and seems surprisingly emotionally stable considering everything. Inexplicably, she also doesn’t seem to be too worried about her old family, nor does she mention anything about the distinct possibility of cannibal mutant attacks to any of the road crew she’ll be shepherding into danger. Once Bobby bows out, it seems like SHE’S the main character, but then even though she doesn’t die or anything, she simply doesn’t seem to be present for the big finale and is never mentioned or seen again. So we spent a good 30 minutes of a 90 minute movie --at least-- laboriously reintroducing two characters who play absolutely no role in the final act. Huh.

isn't it romantic?

So OK, admittedly, there’s some iffy decisions here by one of modern cinema’s great luminaries of horror. But it’s not that bad, at least when you compare it to something like BEYOND THE DARKNESS or SHAKMA. If you find that a standard so low that it makes it impossible to tell the difference between the comical and the tragic, well, you probably didn’t spend the last year writing about ultra-obscure horror movies from the 1980’s.

PART II is suspiciously tame and genial considering how nasty and brutal and mean the original is, which is especially difficult to ignore since PART 1 is referenced so often. And it’s smaller-scale in almost every way; there are less mutants, less violence, less runtime, less of everything except flashbacks, and, presumably, cocaine. I mean, there’s definitely no getting around that it would be a terrific disappointment to any fans of the original, or of Wes Craven, or of watchable cinema in general, if you didn’t go in with drastically lowered expectations. Fortunately while that might not have been possible in 1985, the movie’s reputation as a stinker is pretty inescapable today, so you’ve got no excuse for going into it with anything like hope. I mean, the story is that the studio actually stopped production on the film with only 2/3 having been shot, and only came back and let Craven finish it after NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET came out and was a big hit, and even then only if he didn't shoot any new footage. And, seen in that context, it’s semi-tolerable, mostly.

At least they get a little motorbike chase in there. I’ve seen plenty of movies this year which were both willing and able to pull off some horeshit like introducing a motorbike racing team and a bunch of mutants but then never have anyone chase mutants driving motorbikes. Craven at least knows to deliver on the essential elements of his premise. But it’s true, there’s not a lot of blood. Or a lot of mutants. I guess Michael Berryman survived that dog attack from PART 1 a little better off than he looked at the time (he doesn’t even have any neck scars!) which is especially weird because they actually show his death scene from PART 1 and even the dog seems confused as to why he’s back. But come on, you’re gonna complain that Michael Berryman is back? You most certainly are not. You might fairly complain about all the recycled footage of Michael Berryman when they actually got him back and could have just shot new footage, however. And indeed, almost nothing but flashbacks and driving happens during the first 30 minutes. I’ve seen slower-starting horror movies, but yeah, it’s a slog. The haters are not wrong.

Fortunately, once the kids settle in at an abandoned mine, the movie turns into a fairly acceptable moronic slasher. It’s got all your standard slasher stuff, where people sneak off to have sex during the crisis and get killed and capriciously wander around in the dark even when they’re explicitly told to stay together in the light. It’s dumb and not very imaginative, but once Craven settles into slasher mode, things stay semi-competent for this kind of movie, easily in the upper 50% of no budget 80s slashers, which is not saying a lot but still puts it ahead of dozens if not hundreds of similar movies. The death scenes don’t have a ton of elbow grease in ‘em, but they’re effectively staged at the bare minimum of effort. And hell, it’s positively elegantly constructed compared to MY SOUL TO TAKE.

Speaking of MY SOUL TO TAKE, remember how that one has a random blind character for no reason, and not only does the fact that he’s blind never pay off at all, but it actually makes later plot developments completely nonsensical for no reason? Well, HILLS HAVE EYES 2 seems to have been an early staging ground for this odd auteurial compulsion. There’s a blind character here, too (Tamara Stafford, AGAINST ALL ODDS), but instead of making a big deal about it and then doing nothing with it, in this case the film is perhaps overly tactful to the point of confusion. I was watching pretty closely, and still completely failed to realize that the character who is asked early on if “you’re feeling psychic today?” was blind until probably 75% of the way through the runtime when someone mentions it. After that little fact gets tossed out, she suddenly starts stumbling around and feeling for things, which I would swear she was not doing previously. Anyway, at least the blindness explains her catastrophically ugly alphabet sweater, which is far more horrifying than any mutant could be.

Behold: The ugliest garment ever devised by man.

Sure, it’s an old stereotype that cross country motorbike racing crews always employ at least one waifish blind young woman who sometimes “feels psychic,” that’s a given. But she ends up being the most important character in the movie by virtue of having the only genuinely inspired scene in the whole thing. As the movie meanders to its climax, it concocts a reason for her to venture down into the mutants’ lair, where she’s forced to feel around for the bodies of her dead friends. The lair is actually a creepily lit, artfully decorated set full of excellent horrible detail, and the solitary reminder that Craven is more than the bored hack that most of the movie suggests.

Still, even Craven at his most shameless coasting (and this is about as shameless as coasting gets) manages to make something which is breezy and enjoyable and generally at least LOOKS like a real movie, like he took the time to pick a good angle to shoot things and light them most of the time. This is a bad movie, but the guy’s just simply too naturally talented to make something completely irredeemable, even when all evidence suggests he’s barely making an effort at all. Even his total garbage is miles ahead of plenty of horror movies I’ve endured this year.

One last note: the final climax is so similar to the original that even the mutant comments on it, but that doesn’t stop him from being defeated by the plucky motorbike enthusiasts’ bizarre plan to:

1. Put a fuel bomb in their bus and lure the mutant inside with them
2. Create a larger ring of fire around the bus, trapping them and the mutant inside (?)
3. Have the blind girl quickly run out of the ring of fire before it spreads, while boyfriend stays inside with mutant
4. Then have blind girl feel her way over to a nearby mineshaft and push in a cart, which acts as a counterweight and pulls a string attached to boyfriend’s hands, yanking him off his feet and dragging him face first through the burning ring of “jet fuel” as it’s described (can’t melt steel beams OR burn human faces, it turns out), an eccentric means of removing him from danger under any circumstances, but particularly so given that a blind girl just walked through the same stuff with no issues at all only moments earlier.
5. Then for some reason the mutant gets on the bus even though he just specifically said he knows they plan to blow it up, and a huge fireball ensues.
6. Despite having just had his entire body dragged through burning jet-fuel face first, hero is not even singed, and he and lady walk off into the sunset, completely forgetting there's another character who is not dead and whose fate is never resolved.

Now, is that the climax of a good movie? Oh fuck no. But it is, I believe, the climax of a movie with at least a vestigial instinct to entertain. Given the kind of surprises the world has been serving up recently, that’s demonstrably enough to qualify PART 2 as a welcome one.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2015 CHECKLIST!

Play it Again, Samhain

TAGLINE	So You Think You’re Lucky To Be Alive
LITERARY ADAPTATION	None
SEQUEL	Yes, to the 1977 original.
REMAKE	Yes, there’s a completely unrelated 2007 sequel to the 2006 Alejandre Aja remake of THE HILLS HAVE EYES which is called THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2, but it has exactly zero in common with this one except that it’s also not very good.
DEADLY IMPORT FROM:	USA
FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK	No
SLUMMING A-LISTER	Best I can do for you is Robert Houston, who would be nominated for the Academy Award for best short-subject documentary film in 2003 for his MIGHTY TIMES: THE LEGACY OF ROSA PARKS and win it the following year for MIGHTY TIMES: THE CHILDREN’S MARCH .
BELOVED HORROR ICON	Michael Fuckin’ Berryman, that is all.
NUDITY?	I don’t remember any, but IMDB’s keywords include “female nudity” and they’re usually pretty unnervingly thorough about that.
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	Nah.
GORE?	Not much to speak of, though some beheading may enter the picture.
HAUNTED HOUSE?	No
MONSTER?	Yeah, I think mutant cannibals count.
UNDEAD?	No
POSSESSION?	No
CREEPY DOLLS?	No
EVIL CULT?	No
SLASHER/GIALLO?	Since by the end there’s really just one mutant stalking them, it really slouches into a pretty typical stalker structure, which is out of line with the original but hardly unusual for a cannibal killer movie.
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	none
VOYEURISM?	The Hills have eyes don’t they?

OBSCURITY LEVEL	Medium-low. Sequel to a well-known classic, but obscured by its terrible reputation.
MORAL OF THE STORY	Dude who decided “you know what, I think I’m actually just not going to go back out into the Mutant Murder Desert to risk being murdered again simply because there’s a motobike race out there, thanks a lot,” we need more like you.
TITLE ACCURACY	Accurate, but the “PART II” makes it sound a little pretentious. This ain’t the fuckin’ GODFATHER, Wes.
ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE?	N/A

This is at the very, very bottom of a 3-DTV rating, but I couldn't in good conscience go lower. C--

The People Under the Stairs

The People Under the Stairs (1991)

Dir. and written by Wes Craven

starring Brandon Adams, Everett McGill, Wendy Robie, A. J. , Langer, Sean Whalen, Bill Cobbs, Ving Rhames

By my count, I’ve been writing this blog for more than 3 years and I have written well over 200 reviews. In that time, I’ve without doubt seen at least three times that many movies that I didn’t write about, for whatever reason, either I didn’t have time or I didn’t have anything I thought was worth adding to the discussion. Why do I mention this? Well, because there’s an amazing keyboard shortcut which is going to change your life. Anytime you’re looking at a computer screen, hit ctrl (“control”, not “key-tar-al.” And get yourself a tab.) + “F’”. This searches that screen for whatever word or phrase you type into the box. Helpful, no? OK, now do me a favor. Check every review I wrote before 10/12/2013 for the phrase “profoundly brilliant.” Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Not there, right? Well, THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS is a profoundly brilliant movie. That’s not the same as saying it’s a good movie. On it’s surface, it’s just a nicely-made kid’s horror/comedy, not too distantly related to something like THE GATE (though way more fucked up). A fun, imaginative and depraved one, but by itself it wouldn’t be anything special enough to have me gush over it like this. I’m not claiming this is THE SHINING.

What it is, though, is a profoundly brilliant movie. Not in it’s technical accomplishments, not even in it’s artistic achievements. Purely through the fact that this is a film which desperately, desperately needed to be made, and it turns out only Wes Craven had the balls to do it. Because this is not actually a horror movie about the literal people under the stairs (although there are some). Instead, it’s a movie about the metaphorical people under the stairs. Which, as Craven has it, is all of us.

Allow me to explain. See, this is a movie about a young black kid named “Fool” (Brandon Adams -- his name has to do with the tarot card but I don’t quite understand exactly what that means) who gets unwillingly dragged along on a burglary by his uncle Ving Rhames. Fool is a sharp kid (despite the name) and doesn’t want to get involved in this foolishness, but his back is against the wall because his mother has cancer and can’t work, and he’s about to be evicted by the rich white assholes who as a bonus are the exact people that they’re about to rob. This makes it one of the only great horror movies --besides, obviously, CANDYMAN-- to overtly take on race and class issues that were reaching a boiling point in LA in the early 90’s (perhaps you remember). Right in the setup there’s a brilliant evocation of the conflict between haves and have-nots. But wait, it gets better.

So, things go awry and Fool and his uncle end up in the house as the suspicious owners come home. But here’s the thing: the Robesons (Everett McGill and Wendy Robie) are some hardcore fucked up psychos who call each other “Mommy” and “Daddy” (is there any creepier phenomenon than old married couples addressing each other that way?) and do not look kindly on trespassers in their house who might discover that they’re keeping their “daughter” Alice (A. J. Langer, My So-Called Life) locked up for what are strongly implied to be severely unpleasant sexual purposes. As if that weren’t enough, they have a bunch of mutilated victims who know too much chained up in their basement (the titular characters) who they have been (it’s implied) feeding human flesh and doing god knows what else to.

Let’s stop and think about the symbolism here. Fool knows that burglary is wrong, and is forced into it only because his family is in such desperate straits that he has no options, and because his uncle is Ving Rhames and you just don’t say no to Ving Rhames. But in most movies, he’d be the villain here, the guy who invaded the sanctity of the home and victimized the poor white people who are just trying to live their lives, they can’t help it that they’re rich and he’s poor (in fact, Wikipedia hilariously lists this as a “home invasion thriller,” which is technically accurate but not quite the same, is it?). Craven, though, wants us to know that these people are the real bad guys, and wants us to know just how sadistic and perverse these assholes are behind closed doors, far away from the prying eyes of the cops who are more interested in busting people like Fool.

But wait, it gets even better, because we have two more groups at play here. This is not a simple black/white dichotomy, we also have the poor traumatized “daughter” Alice (I think the Through the Looking Glass implications of that name are intentional) who must abide by the very strict “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” code imposed upon her by her “parents.” She knows the horrible things they’re doing, but she doesn’t dare speak about them or acknowledge at all, for fear not only of the punishments that will befall her, but also the punishments that will be visited on anyone she tells. She represents the bourgeois whites, analogous to the victimized black families Fool represebts in many ways (and in this case, literally being fucked over by the same people) but desperately dependant on the crumbs they get by tacitly supporting the rich and powerful whites who control their lives. She is a character even more trapped by this horrible power structure, but far less able to rebel against it since even admitting the horrors she is privy to has dire consequences. And then you’ve got the people under the stairs themselves, trapped in a horrific nightmare world where they’re surviving (it’s implied) on the dead bodies of other people thrown down there by “mommy and daddy.” They’re mute not out of choice, but because their tongues have been cut out and their ears cut off (representative of the silent masses who are too poor to even have their voices heard above the booming demands of the Koch Brothers of the world). They’re essentially depicted as without race, mutilated monsters who have suffered so much that they’ve taken up cannibalism to survive, barely clinging onto their sanity and with no hope whatsoever of escape. They’re the bottom rung of the social ladder, people who’ve been turned into beast through humiliation and deprivation, and in their pain have turned on each other instead of the real oppressors.

I mean, it’s all such a perfect analogy for the wealth and power inequalities in modern American society that I can hardly believe anyone could have missed it, but maybe it’s just that the intervening 20 years have cast these classes of American into even starker contrast.* Some reviews admit it has elements of social commentary, but guys, come on, this is a complete metaphor for the stratification of American society and the forces which prevent the aggrieved parties from rising up and demanding better treatment. And it’s all done within the context of this outrageous, depraved, broad, and mordantly hilarious horror freak show. Is that not simply the ballsiest fucking concept you ever heard in your life?

Let me take a moment, too, to talk about how good Everett McGill and Wendy Robie are. Apparently Craven cast them because he liked them as Big Ed and Nadine, another on-screen couple in TWIN PEAKS. But truth be told, they’re both pretty boring characters on that show, Nadine in particular never seems to have anything interesting to say or do. But here, wow, they fuckin’ go for it. Both of ‘em are turned up to 11, and as much as I always enjoy seeing McGill it’s Robie who walks away with this one. She’s funny and absolutely terrifying, but the best thing she captures is the sense of moral outrage she has about the whole thing. How dare someone come into her home and try to plant evil thoughts into her daughter? She commits to this role so brilliantly that you absolutely believe she feels this way at the bottom of her heart, that she’s the victimized party here. Ain’t it the fuckin truth? You try to take a little more of the pie so you and your family can pay the rent and put food on the table, and these rich fuck-o’s act like you ran over their dog.

A lot of people seemed to criticize the broad, comic tone of this one when it came out, but frankly Craven is smart enough to know exactly the right notes to hit here to keep it feeling tense and creepy but not let it turn into grim, depressing misery porn. When the inevitable remake comes along (Craven was talking about remaking this one along with LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT) I'm sure they'll turn it into one of those tiresome modern horror movies with a gray, dull palette, gloomy teenage protagonists, and an emphasis on rubbing your face in the "gritty" stomach-churning depravity of it all. I mean, it wouldn't be hard to do; this may well be the most conceptually fucked up American horror movie since the original TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. But Craven keeps it equal parts nightmare and theme park ride, never letting the premise become so upsetting that it slows the picture's energy. He knows that if you're going to try to give people a genuine social message, it's always going to go over better if they're already smiling. The underlying social issue's he's addressing are depressing enough on their own, piling on the misery even more would quickly risk alienating audiences and having them simply stop listening -- and besides, a cultural critique this puckish needs bombast more than nuance anyway.

Anyway, this is a fun horror movie that features Everett McGill firing a shotgun into the wall while wearing a full gimp suit and a bunch of other disturbing ass shit that only a true master like Craven could dream up. It would be a fun and scary ride even without the social commentary, but the fact that it’s in there --and so perfectly synched up with the plot that it never turns into overt moralizing-- pushes this one into the fuckin’ profoundly brilliant category. Interestingly, there’s a character in this film played by Sean Whalen, he’s one of the people under the stairs who managed to escape the basement, and is now sneaking through the walls and crawlspaces to cause trouble for the homeowners. He can’t speak himself, but if he can’t prevent the bastards from getting away with it, he can at least make sure it isn’t easy. Part of me wonders if Craven identifies with this character on some level. Bu 1991, he’d come from a total nobody to a pretty successful artist, but then again not quite successful enough to be a power player. Maybe he felt that if even if he’s not in a position to personally stop the kind of brutal injustice he’s lampooning here, he’s at least in a position to make it a little uncomfortable for the powers that be by releasing movies like this and reminding people just how fucked up this whole system is. Maybe it won’t really do much good, but at least it feels good to finally watch a horror movie which squarely takes aim at the depraved insular assholes who are getting rich off the rest of us, and show them up as the real villains. For all us people living under the stairs, it’s a welcome sight indeed.

*Although at least someone must have picked up on it, because an LA Hip-hop group appropriated the film’s name for themselves in 1997.

• CHAINSAWNUKAH 2013 CHECKLIST!
• 
  
• LITERARY ADAPTATION: No
• SEQUEL: No
• REMAKE: They've been threatening, but so far nothing has materialized.
• HAMMER STUDIOS: No
• SPAGHETTI NOCTURNE: No
• MORE (PETER) CUSHING FOR THE PUSHING? No
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: Ving Rhames would go on to be a much bigger star, but then again he was in PIRANHA 3DD, so can't quite claim him.
• BOOBIES: No
• DECAPITATIONS OR DE-LIMBING: Hmm. Tongues cut out, I don't specifically remember any limb loss but I could be wrong.
• ENTRAILS? Yeah, "Daddy" cuts a few corpses open
• CULTISTS: No
• ZOMBIES: No
• VAMPIRES: No
• SLASHERS: No
• CURSES: No
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: Low, well-remembered classic.
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: N/A