The Hills Have Eyes 1977

The late, great horror auteur Wes Craven, most famous for his authoritative postmodern slasher flick Scream and the childhood-ruining A Nightmare on Elm Street, finally gets the Blu-ray treatment he deserves for his seminal hillbilly cannibal horror The Hills Have Eyes, from 1977.

Having been brought up on fundamentalist Christianity and Disney movies, Craven abandoned his respectable academic life to write and direct some of the most deranged horrors of the 20th century. The Hills Have Eyes was Craven's sophomore low-budget exploitation effort after his successful B movie splatter-fest Last House on the Left, from 1972. Like Last House, Hills also revels in rape, graphic violence and the grotesque, with the most dangerous threat to central characters being the degeneracy and evil of humanity's baser instincts rather than any supernatural threat.  

Hills follows the unfortunate Carter family, an average Middle America brood of three generations from Cleveland, who get diverted off the beaten track into the desert, leaving civilisation and normalcy behind and becoming prey for their doppelganger, redneck family, headed up by Papa Jupiter, a radioactive freak formed from the fallout of nuclear tests and his harsh, primal environs. Michael Berryman is particularly striking as Papa Jupiter's mutant son Pluto, with the actor's hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia – a condition that left him without fingernails, hair or teeth – utilised by Craven to create a display of monstrous, aberrant human freakery.

Art director Robert Burns was fresh off the set of Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and brought a similar Southern Gothic aesthetic, fetid and abject, to Craven's film.

Extras

The Blu-ray is a stunning 4K restoration overseen by original producer Peter Locke, with informative extras aplenty. A particular highlight is the hour long making-of doc with illuminative talking head interviews with most of the cast, Craven and Director of Photography,  Eric Saarinen. A thrilling alternate ending is also a fascinating watch for horror fanatics.  [Rachel Bowles]