The Hills Have Eyes (2006) or, My Big Fat Mutant Cannibal Family Trip

5/19/2021

The Hills Have Eyes (2006) or, My Big Fat Mutant Cannibal Family Trip

♥♥♥

A blond woman caught in a vice of bloody terror in a grimy design on this effective poster for Alexandre Aja's The Hills Have Eyes

An American family drive through the New Mexican desert in their RV, where they break down in an area that unfortunately has atomic test mutant cannibals roaming in the hills.

The Hills Have Eyes is written by Grégory Levasseur (Maniac (2012)) and co-writer/director Alexandre Aja (Furia (1999)), remaking the same-titled 1977 mega-hit horror by Wes Craven (Scream (1996)).

It's another action-packed post-millennial horror remake. The crazed mutants are hard to identify with (to put it mildly), and the charm of the story is limited. The sound work and countless scenes of characters looking-out-into-the-dark-only-for-a-menacing-shadow-to-pass-by also detract.

But the special effects, especially the mutants, are inventive, and there are some good horror ideas in The Hills Have Eyes, which positions it over other recent horror remakes such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) and The Amityville Horror (2005).

Alexandre Aja: Piranha 3D (2010) - Aja's gory sexploitation remake is a hoot

Watch a short clip from the film here

Cost: 15 mil. $

Box office: 70 mil. $

= Big hit (returned 4.66 times its cost)

[The Hills Have Eyes was released 10 March (North America, UK and Ireland) and runs 106 minutes. Shooting took place from June 2005 - ? in Morocco. The film opened #3, behind fellow new releases Failure to Launch and The Shaggy Dog, to a 15.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent one more weekend in the top 5 (#5) and grossed 41.7 mil. $ (59.6 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 6.2 mil. $ (8.9 %) and Germany with 3.6 mil. $ (5.1 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 1.5/4 star rating, translating to 2 notches under this one. The film's success, though much less pregnant than the original film's, prompted less successful sequel The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007) by a new director. Aja returned with Mirrors (2008). The Hills Have Eyes is rotten at 52 % with a 5.60/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

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Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

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Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

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Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

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5/19/2021

The Hills Have Eyes (2006) or, My Big Fat Mutant Cannibal Family Trip

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