The Hills Have Eyes Part 2

Dir. Wes Craven

86 Minutes

USA

1984

Starring: Robert Houston, Tamara Stafford, Kevin Spirtas, John Laughlin, Willard E. Pugh, Peter Frechette, Janus Blythe

*/*****

With Craven looking to make some quick cash and a studio looking to capitalize on the success of A Nightmare on Elm Street, the seven-years-later sequel The Hills Have Eyes, Part 2 was lazily slapped together. Craven would later disown the film.

The root narrative is about a group of teenage bikers crossing through the desert on their way to a race before becoming terrorized by the inbred cannibals from the first film, with an added twist that one a member of the group is one of their own who has run off to civilization. The picture settles into a slasher rhythm of the group slowly being whittled down to its final two: the blind Cass (Tamara Stafford, rocking quite the interesting headband and sweater combination) and her boyfriend. There ends up being absolutely nothing of interest, narratively or even stylistically, with features like Cass' blindness seemingly incorporated for no other reason than some obviously confused writers confusing the feature with a personality trait. And Craven pads the film with full scene clips from the first film as tortured characters reflect on those events. The first one of these is from the perspective of son Bobby, recounting the events to a therapist in a moment that perhaps could have been some inspiration for how Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 came into existence, but the most wild one of these comes from a flashback courtesy of the family dog. 

There are some brief glimmers of some opportunities that Craven may have had before abandoning the piece for green pastures, such as an on-screen text and narration clearly making a jab at Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but to what effect? Parody? Homage? Playful jab? Angry one? It briefly makes one wonder if perhaps Craven wanted to go into a more outlandish, broad, humorous direction (as Hooper would with the Dennis Hopper starring sequel to his film), but it finds its bland and wasted rhythm and rides that wave to the tepid conclusion. There is no doubt that this hasty assembly of total nonsense did exactly what Craven and company wanted it to do: made some bank and allowed him to move onto projects in which he clearly had more vested interest.

October 20th, 2019