The Hills Have Eyes (Film Review)

1977 Vanguard
Written and Directed by: Wes Craven
Starring: Susan Lanier, Robert Houston, Martin Speer, Dee Wallace, Russ Grieve, John Steadman, Michael Berryman, and Virginia Vincent
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 89 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 7/10

The Carter family are living the America Dream, traveling across the country in their RV. While driving through the desert of the American West, the owner of an isolated gas station tells the Carters stay on the main highway, as nearby off-road parts are dangerous. Family patriarch, Big Bob, who wants to visit a local silver mine, thinks this talk is nonsense, and the Carters DO go quite off-road. When they're buzzed by a jet from a nearby Air Force base, swerve off the road, and crash, they bust an axel far out in the middle of nowhere, and the family has to split up to find help. That's when they discover they're not alone in this godforsaken desert...The Hills Have Eyes. Soon, it's a battle between the suburban, civilized Carters and a rabid, primitive family of cannibalistic wilderness-dwellers. Only one family will survive...and not much will be left of them.
The Hills Have Eyes' poster and VHS artwork, featuring a towering, scowling Michael Berryman, scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. While he is by all accounts that I have seen, a gentle giant, Berryman was aces at portraying a horrific menace in the late 70's and the 80's. Just that shadowy photo of him with a bone-studded necklace around his neck and a knife in his hand was enough to terrify me. Watching the film today, when I've got over a decade on Berryman in this film, The Hills Have Eyes plays out more as a brutal suspense/siege film than a horror one.
Second-time writer/director, Wes Craven, doesn't build much suspense in revealing his villains here. His more immediate concern seems to be setting up the violent rivalry between the Carters and "Papa Jupiter"'s family--a saga if you will. James Whitworth's Jupiter is a hulking, disfigured menace, who reminds me of a cinematically stereotypical Ozark mountain man gone rotten and feral in the Nevada desert. The film follows a throughline where the Carters are ambushed, thieved from, murdered, and assaulted, then form ranks and fight back just as violently. The suspenseful, violent thrills here kept me involved and on the edge of my seat, though I'm not so sure about the film's supposed deeper themes.
Craven has mentioned the film as a sort of rage against America's upper middle class, but if that's what he was going for, the familial, congenial Carters should have, at least in some minor way, committed the first offense, and not come off as the by far more virtuous and likable of the two groups. They've even got a pair of lovable dogs, and the first violence in the film is a Jupiter killing one. That's not the way to draw any sympathy toward the Jupiters! Even a reference to say, Big Bob's meager wealth being ill-gotten, would have helped. Instead, the Carters are just normal, amiable folks who get ambushed, assaulted (nearly sexually so), and eaten by the Papa Jupiters. Eat the rich? The Carters are barely above average. A Vietnam allegory doesn't work either, as the plot doesn't unfold like that war did. Even a "the civilized have had to lower themselves to the level of the uncivilized" reading doesn't work, as the climactic moment that is supposed to best highlight this comes off more as a very justified trauma response.
Instead, it's best to take The Hills Have Eyes on its surface (digging through the sand only reveals more sand), and enjoy its harsh thrills and suspense. Craven proves he's got a great handle on that, as the movie zips by, and I was yelling "Get him! Get him! Get him!" at the end. Maybe my own desire for violence is a self-commentary? Hell if I know.