A Cult Classic That Bites Off More Than It Can Chew
When people talk about Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes, they usually do so in hushed, reverent tones. “Groundbreaking.” “Raw.” “Gritty.” “Disturbing.” It’s frequently listed alongside Texas Chain Saw Massacre as a cornerstone of ’70s horror—low-budget, high-impact, and unapologetically savage. And sure, the film deserves a place in the horror conversation. It pushed boundaries. It shocked audiences. It launched ideas and aesthetics that would echo for decades.
But that doesn’t mean it’s good.
Because for all its brutal ambition and dusty nihilism, The Hills Have Eyes is, at its core, a campy, overwrought B-moviethat desperately wants to be seen as something more serious. And while it occasionally lands a genuine chill or moment of gritty tension, it just as often veers into goofy absurdity, undermined by laughable villains, clumsy pacing, and a tone that wobbles between grindhouse and Saturday morning cartoon villainy.
Yes, Dee Wallace turns in a surprisingly strong performance. Yes, Craven was still finding his voice post-Last House on the Left. But watching The Hills Have Eyes today—especially without nostalgia glasses—reveals a film that’s more exhausting than terrifying, and often just plain silly.
The Premise: What Happens When You Take the Scenic Route Through Hell?
The story is as simple as they come. A wholesome, all-American family is driving through the Nevada desert on their way to California. Their RV breaks down in a desolate patch of government land (a former nuclear test site, of course), and they find themselves hunted by a savage, inbred family of desert-dwelling cannibals. It’s Deliverance meets Lord of the Flies, with a healthy dose of post-Vietnam paranoia thrown in.
The setup is effective. There’s something inherently unnerving about being stranded in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by silence and heat. Craven’s knack for squeezing dread out of stillness is on full display in the early scenes. The vast, empty landscapes feel oppressive. The sun doesn’t bring safety—it exposes you. And there’s a creeping sense of inevitability as the RV sputters, the radio cuts out, and the sky turns from blue to bruised.
But once the cannibals show up? That dread gets traded for unintentional comedy.
Great Expectations, Bad Execution
Let’s start with the villains, the so-called cannibal clan that includes Mars, Pluto (played by a genuinely unsettling Michael Berryman), and Papa Jupiter, the snarling patriarch. They’re supposed to be terrifying—feral, mutated, and hardened by nuclear fallout. But instead of being primal and haunting, they come off like cosplaying Halloween fanatics who wandered onto the wrong set.
Papa Jupiter rants like a cartoon warlord. Mars screams and howls like he’s trying to wake the dead. They’re less “monstrous family forged by atomic devastation” and more “stoned community theater actors with glue-on sideburns.”
Even Berryman, with his naturally distinctive features, is rendered ineffective by a script that seems more interested in having him grunt than actually scare. There’s no mystery, no psychology, no chilling stillness—just a lot of noise, fake blood, and awkward monologues.
These are not the cold-blooded killers of Texas Chain Saw Massacre or the calculated sadists of Funny Games. These are loud, clumsy goofballs in tattered leather, swinging hatchets and spouting nonsense like, “I’ll eat the baby!”
It’s hard to be afraid when you’re stifling a laugh.
The Family: Paper Dolls with Shotguns
The protagonists—the Carter family—are written as a grab-bag of archetypes: tough dad, religious mom, rebellious daughter, son-in-law who can’t shoot straight, screaming baby. The actors do what they can with thin material, but there’s not much to latch onto. Their dialogue sounds like it was written by someone who’s never met a real family but has seen one on a mayonnaise commercial.
That said, Dee Wallace stands out. Playing Lynne, the oldest daughter, Wallace brings a genuine vulnerability and strength to the role. She reacts with believable fear, tries to protect her baby, and conveys a real emotional arc—even in the middle of absurd dialogue and cheap shock. Her eyes alone communicate more than most of the cast combined.
It’s no surprise she would go on to shine in The Howling, E.T., and Cujo. Even in a messy grindhouse romp like this, she brings a touch of humanity.
Unfortunately, the rest of the cast spends most of their screen time screaming, whimpering, or wandering aimlesslythrough the desert until they’re either killed or required to turn into Rambo-lite survivalists.
Gore Without Weight, Violence Without Consequence
This is a movie that wants to be brutal, and on paper, it is. There’s murder. Rape. Cannibalism. A baby threatened with death. A woman burned alive. But none of it lands with the visceral punch Craven clearly intended. The gore is theatrical. The assaults feel staged. The stakes never feel real.
This is the kind of horror where characters watch their loved ones die and then immediately move into vengeance modewithout any emotional beat. The father dies? “Grab the gun.” The sister gets shot? “We’ll make them pay.” It’s less about trauma and more about ticking boxes.
Craven was aiming for a moral inversion—the idea that civilized people can become just as savage when pushed to the edge. It’s a solid theme. One that worked beautifully in Last House on the Left. But here, it’s muddied by ham-fisted delivery and a tone that swings from bleak horror to Three Stooges with crossbows.
By the time the son-in-law is setting up traps and stabbing desert maniacs with sticks, the film wants you to cheer for his transformation. But without proper character development, it just feels hollow.
The Setting: A Desert That Eats Its Own Tale
Visually, the Mojave Desert offers a harsh and unforgiving backdrop. Craven and cinematographer Eric Saarinen make good use of the wide, barren landscapes. The rusted trailers, scorched rocks, and isolation help maintain a certain unease.
But even the setting becomes repetitive. The same patches of sand and rock are used again and again. There’s little sense of progression or geography. It’s just people wandering in circles, waiting for the next ambush. The desert doesn’t feel like a character. It feels like a cheap set with good lighting.
Compare this to Texas Chain Saw Massacre, where the house, the surrounding woods, and even the sounds of cicadas created a palpable sense of claustrophobia. In The Hills Have Eyes, the openness ironically works against the film—it diffuses tension rather than building it.
Sound and Score: Nails on the Chalkboard of Tension
The film’s soundtrack, composed by Don Peake, veers between serviceable and annoying. Shrill synths, abrupt stings, and awkward fades plague the movie’s audio landscape. It’s not mood-setting. It’s mood-killing.
Sound design is equally inconsistent. Sometimes, the shrieks and cries echo with horror. Other times, you half expect a laugh track. The film can’t decide if it’s a grindhouse freakshow or a tragic descent into madness, and the sound choices reflect that indecision.
The Real Horror: Tonal Confusion
This is The Hills Have Eyes’ fatal flaw—it has no idea what it wants to be.
If it wanted to be a pure exploitation flick, it should have embraced the sleaze, leaned into the grindhouse vibe, and ditched the moralizing. If it wanted to be serious horror, it should have developed its characters, built tension gradually, and treated its villains with more restraint and nuance.
Instead, it tries to split the difference. You get moments of genuine discomfort (like the campfire ambush) followed by ridiculous outbursts and overacted villain monologues. The result is tonal whiplash. You never settle into the horror. You never buy the stakes.
It’s like watching Lord of the Flies directed by someone who just binged old Looney Tunes.
Legacy Doesn’t Equal Quality
Let’s acknowledge the obvious: The Hills Have Eyes has a legacy. It inspired remakes, sequels, references in pop culture. It helped build Wes Craven’s career, and it pushed boundaries in the horror space. But legacy and quality are not the same thing.
Plenty of films are important without being enjoyable. This is one of them. It’s easy to admire what Craven was trying to do—exploring the savagery within us all, the thin veneer of civilization, the madness of violence—but it’s also easy to see how badly he missed the mark.
And in an era full of horror masterpieces (Halloween, Alien, Carrie), this one stands out for all the wrong reasons. It’s not scary. It’s not smart. It’s just loud, chaotic, and weirdly amateurish for someone who had already made a film as harrowing as Last House on the Left.
Final Verdict: A Deserted Experience with More Bark Than Bite
For fans of grindhouse horror, The Hills Have Eyes will always have a place in the pantheon. But for modern audiences—or anyone looking for a genuinely frightening experience—it’s a letdown. The acting (aside from Dee Wallace) is uneven. The villains are too ridiculous to be scary. And the whole thing feels like a film at war with itself, torn between high-concept horror and backyard bloodbath.
There’s a decent idea buried somewhere in the sand, but it never quite gets dug up.
Rating: 4/10 – Points for ambition and Dee Wallace’s performance, but overall a jumbled, overacted, and tonally confused slog. The hills may have eyes, but they clearly didn’t see how silly this would turn out.
