bought for a friend.
Added 2/6/2010
I bought this for a friend's dad for Christmas. The shipping was great and everything works perfect. I was told by my friend that it works perfectly fine and the movie is great.
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Fairly witless and lame (details)
Added 11/12/2009
First, let's clear up some confusion:
1. The original The Hills Have Eyes, produced in 1977, is a terrific old slasher film. It was written and directed by Wes Craven, (in his heyday), and starred Susan Lanier.
2. A sequel film is entitled The Hills Have Eyes, Part 2, and was produced and written by Wes Craven in 1985. It starred Tamara Stafford.
3. The third, The Hills Have Eyes (Unrated Edition), was produced in 2006 by Wes Craven, directed by Alexandre Aja, and starred Aaron Stanford.
4. The fourth film, (the one I'm reviewing here), The Hills Have Eyes 2 (Unrated Edition), was produced in 2007, directed by Martin Weisz, and written by Wes Craven and Jonathan Craven. It stars Michael McMillian.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD! (that is, if this movie can BE spoiled.)
THE STORY: On a former A-bomb testing ground in the desert, a U.S. military research team gets wiped out by mutated genetic retards. A team of rookie soldiers is dispatched to investigate the disappearance of the research team and of course, they lose their communications, their transportation, and they begin to fall prey to the very same pseudo-monsters. The idea (from the retards' viewpoint) is to kill all the males and to maintain the female captives for breeding.
The universal caveat with these nuclear films which always gives me a chuckle is that the radiation inevitably seems to produce very shrewd (but not very intelligent) violent creatures with great athletic ability, and these atomic hybrids always come in mega-size. But I do not despise the writers for this because these movies would be pretty boring if the victims had to face an army of moaning weaklings who were lying on their death-beds -- it's just an observation.
Whether a film is produced either on a shoestring or a mega-budget, it still holds the prospect of being well-made -- this one is not well-made. There are scads of continuity problems with the film, but two glitches that wiped me out were really stupid ones:
1. All the soldiers have the American flag shoulder patches sewn on backwards... the blue field is in the upper right-hand corner.
2. Reference is repeatedly made to the rookie soldiers being in the "U.S. National Guard." There is no such thing as this -- National Guard elements come from the various states (e.g., "Texas National Guard") and so this sounded really dumb. The writers should have simply used regular U.S. soldiers in the script.
Those sound like small issues but when they pile up at the rate which they did in this film, it takes away from whatever positive components that the movie might otherwise feature.
And there were the anticipated hackneyed scenes as well: the arm-chopped-off squirting blood scene; the ammo-running-low dilemma; tons of violent rape; the body-parts storage room (Tobe Hooper generated the best of these in his 1974 cult classic: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2-Disc Ultimate Edition)), and; the monster that you think is dead but he really isn't. In other words, there was little original thinking behind this film.
The script is unusually bad. The level of profanity, which can be used to punctuate a film, simply became tiresome here. A typical example of bad writing occurs when a macerated victim crawls out of the tank of an active porta-john and a soldier refers to him as "S***-man the Barbarian." It wasn't all that humorous a moment. In fact there are redundant references to feces in this film which added little or nothing to either its scariness or its watchability.
This film amounts to a sort of depraved version of Southern Comfort which is a little different genre and a far superior film. I gave the various freaks my own characterizations so I could keep them all straight:
-- Billy Carter (as he presently looks)
-- A really dirty Al Franken
-- Lizard-tongue cauliflower man
-- Leather-face reject
-- Michael Chertoff look-alike
-- Pseudo-Elephant Man (who was actually friendly in this film)
-- A Young Senator Robert Byrd who was in urgent need of dental and barber work
-- Mr. Cheeto-head
There were a couple more but they played minor roles and didn't last long during the conflict. The thing was, since they constituted a commune, one would have expected these freaks to work together a little more -- they were mostly very selfish loners, (especially with captured beautiful and shapely young gals.)
This film is unrated, shot in color, has an aspect ration of 2.35:1, and runs for 89 minutes.
In summary, the producers and director made a slasher film which exuded the same tired gimmicks. I realize that these low-budget slasher films are supposed to be tongue-in-cheek but that doesn't mean that they have to be crummy. I gave it two stars instead of one because the camera work and scenery were both very good and, of course, there are films which are much worse and I must reserve the one-star rating for those.
Not recommended.
1 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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Better then the first
Added 10/12/2009
First let me say i really enjoyed the 1st hills have movie(remake)so i was eagerly waiting this one and it didnt let me down.This movie took everything i loved about the first and improved on it,which is rare for a sequal.The very begining of the movie gives you a taste of what to expect and i for one couldnt wait.The action was good and almost non stop,it had a few funny one-liners that i enjoyed the "mutants" were more relentless this time around,blood/gore by the bucket loads.This movie was good from start to finish.Horror fans MUST see this movie hands down one the best in the modern remakes.People who gave this movie a bad reveiw must not be horror/gore fans but if you are then you are in for a real treat.I hope they make a third movie.And this one was written by wes craven.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Mutated life-forms in the desert
Added 9/12/2009
There are not that many gritty horror movies made. This one was fun to watch, I could feel the intensity and was able to relate to the depicted situation.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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umm.. not my cup of tea
Added 9/8/2009
scary and kind of disgusting, bought it for my hubby hope he likes it cause I am never watching it again.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Better than the original
Added 1/26/2010
Fairly simple premise executed impeccably. Edge of seat excitement/suspense. I actually liked this version better than the original. Forget about THHE 2 and stick with this classic.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Well, it depends on your taste..
Added 1/24/2010
If you enjoy slasher flicks, this remake is a five-star horror movie, in my opinion. The death scenes are brutal, the pacing is relentless, the sense of doom and carnage is overwhelming, the gore is palpable.
If you enjoy a movie that tells a compelling story, however, this is a 0 stars movie.
Since my rating of three stars.
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from California Dreamin' . . . to New Mexico nightmare!
Added 12/6/2009
The remake of Wes Craven's classic, The Hills Have Eyes (2006), follows a familiar formula, where a family is attacked by a group of cannibalistic genetic freaks, while travelling through the rocky, arid, landscapes of New Mexico. Heading the production is the team responsible for High Tension (2003), and Mirrors (2008), French director/writer Alexandre Aja (Mirrors), and writer Gregory Levasseur. Wes Craven, serves as a co-producer for the project.
In an SUV towing a mobile home, the Carter family is California bound, when they stop to refuel at a rundown gas station. Taking a tip from the station owner, the group takes a short cut, and end up crashing their vehicle in the middle of nowhere. Head of the family Big Bob (Ted Levine), an ex-cop (and bad driver), heads off to the service station for help, while prissy son-in-law Doug (Aaron Staford), heads up the road to look for help. Doug finds a crater, with abandoned cars scattered around, but no way out. As darkness falls, bad things begin to happen.
The Carter family's reactions seem pretty normal, and they are extremely inept throughout. Panic can prevent the mind from thinking clearly, and that seems to be the case here, as almost everything they do is a disaster. Big Bob, the experienced cop, shoots wildly at nothing, and ends up attending a barbecue. Big Bob leaves teenage son Bobby (Dan Byrd), with a gun, but the situation is too much for him to deal with, he can't shoot straight, and just makes blunder after blunder. Unfortunately the women (Kathleen Quinlan, Vinessa Shaw, and Emilie de Ravin) do not fare well at all, at the hands of the freaks. Doug is resolved to take action, when his baby daughter Catherine is kidnapped. The family dogs, Beauty and Beast, are always breaking loose, but fortunately Beast is the first one in the Carter clan prepared to kill, to defend the family.
The genetic mutants, products of exposure to radioactivity, are quite grotesque, and unique looking monsters (Big Brain, Lizard, Papa Jupiter and Goggle). Fortunately, they are not very bright. The buildup takes a while, but Hills delivers some powerful shocks and gore, with some memorable axe wielding violence, bird blood sipping, human torch action, and threatening of an infant at gunpoint.
The DVD has some nice extras including 'Surviving the Hills', a 50 minute making of documentary, production diaries, and two commentary tracks. One by Aja, Levasseur, and producer Marianne Maddalena, mainly focuses on the production of the film, while the second commentary by producers Wes Craven and Peter Locke, is humorously all over the place, between the original 1977 film, and the remake.
Filmed in various locations including Morocco, the finished version of film fits together pretty well, and features some cool cinematography. The complete ineptness of the Carter family makes it makes it hard to get on their side at first, but things do turn around, as Doug and Beast take the fight to the mutants. The hard hitting remake of The Hills Have Eyes, is recommended to fans of the original, as well as to gorehounds in general.
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