I love this movie so much

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

A Wes Craven classic, he truly nailed the suspense and the awkward atmosphere of the beginning. Almost nothing is revealed to the viewer until the later half of the film, which greatly increases the horror of the movie as a whole.Despite the crappy cheesy costumes and really bad wigs this still manages to hold up pretty well because its all go from beginning to the end and it should have you one the edge of your seat. Basically a cast of unknowns, with Michael Berryman's performance the stand out.Along with the Elm street series it's arguably the greatest contribution from Wes Craven.This style of movie has been copied over and over since, but this one stands out from the rest for genuine horror fans.

In 1977 Wes Craven had just one film under his belt — 1972's controversial Last House on the Left. Apparently, Craven tried to stray from the horror genre with not much success, and his return was at least partially motivated by a desire to not go completely broke. Honestly, I'm not surprised to hear that The Hills Have Eyes could hardly be called a passion project.The resemblance to Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre — which was released in 1974 — is obvious, but mostly serves as a stark reminder of how much The Hills Have Eyes does NOT compare in either quality or sheer terror.The story centers around the Carter family as they travel through the desert on their way to California. They have an odd encounter with a gas station attendant who warns them to stay on the main roads (though not nearly urgently enough), but naturally they take their own route and wind up breaking an axle and crashing off a desert side road. As day turns into night some members of the family start to realize what kind of danger is hiding in the nearby hills…** SPOILER ALERT! **Honestly, this movie didn't do much for me. I feel like it was a conglomeration of lots of good beginnings of ideas that just didn't get fleshed out the way they needed to in order to be sufficiently terrifying, or even meaningful. It's "shocking" in the way that any movie that showcases people outside of the "norm" tries to be — in this case we're dealing with inbred cannibals — but shocking just for the sake of it doesn't really cut it, in my opinion.The cast is largely comprised of fairly unknown actors, which I think in many instances can result in very convincing, organic relationships… but in this case it missed the mark, with much of the dialogue and interactions feeling awkward and stilted.The moments of gore are surprisingly few and far between… aside from one EXTREMELY memorable flash of one of the family's dogs after being slain, which was supposedly a real dog the crew had purchased from the county sheriff. My husband and I just stared at each other wide-eyed for a solid 5 seconds after that. I've seen more than my share of dogs and animals dying in various horror movies, but usually they're much more subtle than HEY HERE'S A REAL DEAD DOG, SURPRISE.The movie was meant to be a modern re-telling of the Sawney Bean story from Scottish folklore. Initially, it was supposed to take place in the mid-90s, in a forest rather than a desert, with dozens of incestuous family members and focused primarily on the adolescents of the group as the leaders. I won't lie, I would have rather seen that movie…To be fair, there are a handful of scary aspects and moments in this film. When the matriarch, Ethel (Virginia Vincent), tries to call for help on the CB radio and gets nothing but heavy, raspy breathing on the other end. The fact that they are all alone in a vast expanse of desert (I maintain that basically anything happening in such isolation is terrifying). Ethel's moment of hysteria after they find her husband, Bob, nailed to a stake and caught on fire ("that's not my Bob!") is brilliant.I also loved how much the surviving dog, Beast, becomes this sort of hero in the movie, pushing Mercury off a cliff and ripping Pluto's throat out. More dogs, please!But those rare moments of fear are largely subdued by how comical much of the movie is. Even if we ignore how stereotypically the people continue to further their own danger (Bobby neglecting to tell the rest of the family about Beauty's death or his own suspicions, Ethel being unable to properly use the CB radio, the entire car crash happening at all as a result of them just screaming about the map and low-flying jets), you can't ignore the cannibals' outfits (which look like the crew just went to the cheapest Halloween store they could find and bought a bunch of half-assed caveman costumes) and their overall exaggerated demeanor. I mean, we get it, they are "the other".That being said, I did appreciate the ending. I know people usually scream about movies not wrapping up in thorough, satisfying ways but I think for a movie aiming to showcase the depravity of humanity, it was perfect. I think it's to be expected that humans will go to violent lengths to protect their family and their own lives, so it wasn't maybe as shocking as it could have been… but the seeming moment of realization, of horror, on Doug's face as he stabs Mars to death was definitely a highlight of an otherwise fairly dim movie.

Boy, the American family barely got through this one, and not without casualties. I've seen our moms and dads, buds and sis's, menaced by lots of critters, but this is first time they almost ended on a dinner table. Not that the cannibal primitives that menace them use anything like a table. Looks like they prefer big rocks instead. Okay, with names like the planets we don't expect the queen's court. But this grotesque clan makes you wonder about evolution itself. So, can our all-American family survive this trip to the desert and the cannibals that live there.Great horror flick. Director Craven not only builds suspense, but also shocks the bejesus out of us. And what about Berryman as the deformed Pluto. His no-makeup close-ups are really jarring, making the whole deal seem real. No doubt about it, he really deserved a big payday. In fact the whole cast deserved combat pay. What with crawling all over that lunar landscape, the bandage concession must have been huge. Kudoes too to the normal folks, who get to do a lot of screaming and running, uphill and down. And I like the way the helpless girl turns it around at the last minute. Should please feminists in the audience. Too bad the old gas station coot is often overlooked. He's enough to make you want to run out of gas. Plus, Virginia Vincent is the most realistic looking corpse I've seen in decades of movie viewing. I hope it was just makeup.No doubt about it, the 90-minutes really delivers the goods for horror fans. The result amounts to a triumph of directing and staging, though the acting does wobble at times. Meanwhile, I'm canceling my trip to the desert, in fact, make that any desert, any time.

I'm not a big fan of the subgenre of horror that is about people terrorizing, raping, torturing, mutilating each other with glee. I've seldom found any of these films to have true scares, just repellent exploitative imagery designed to disgust the viewer. And frankly I don't see the point to that. Nothing about that says "good time" to me. The reason why I give The Hills Have Eyes a better rating than most of the other films of this type I've seen is because it is somewhat original, well-directed, has some good atmosphere, and only dips its toe into the vile rather than soak itself in it as more recent films of the type have done. If you have to watch a film about this type of subject matter and you don't like gratuitous rape and violence, this is probably your best bet. It's not rated PG but it's still pretty tame by today's standards. For those like me who are not fond of these types of films, know that it is not as bad as the torture porn of the 2000s. For those who view that as a negative and want more rape, torture, and graphic imagery: seek professional help.