(re)search my Trash

<body> <div align="left"> <table border="0" cellspacing="0" width="800" cellpadding="0" height="100%"> <tr> <td width="100" rowspan="3" background="../stylepix/square.gif" valign="top">  </td> <td width="4" rowspan="3"></td> <td width="592" height="1%" valign="top">  </td> <td width="4" rowspan="3"></td> <td width="100" rowspan="3" background="../stylepix/squareright.gif" valign="top">  </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="592" height="99%" valign="top">  <p>A typical American family - consisting of Father (Russ Grieve), Mother (Virgina Vincent), Bobby (Robert Houston), Brenda (Susan Lanier), Lynne (Dee Wallace), her hubby Doug (Martin Speer), her baby & 2 family dogs, Beauty & Beast - is travelling to California by camping trailer when their car breaks down in the middle of the desert. So it is decided to have Father & Doug go off into different directions to look for help while Bobby stays behind with the women & a gun to guard them. But soon rather unsettling things start to happen at the trailer: Someone unseen is definitely watching them, Beauty runs off, Bobby, who goes after the dog, finds it killed, & Beast soon breaks its chain & runs off. Dad has meanwhile arrived at the gasstation they passed just a few hours back, where an unnerved owner (John Steadman) tells him about a mutant monsterbaby he & his wife once had that has been hiding in the desert most of the time but now he might come back to civilization to kill ... & he might bring his family. Now this might sound like a wild story but is proven immediately after telling when the poor man is killed by a monstrous human right before poor daddy's eyes, but the killer has vanished without a trace before daddy can get a good shot at him. Runnming back to his family in the trailer, daddy is brutally stopped & cruzified ... The mutant family - who are mutant father Jupiter (James Whitworth), mutant Mother (Cordy Clark), Mars (Lance Gordon), Mercury (Arthur King), Pluto (Michael Berryman - the bald-headed guy from the movie's posters) & Ruby (Janus Blythe) - device a diabolical plan to get to the others: They now burn their crucified daddy before their very eyes & while everyone else is leaving the trailer (including Doug, who has come back from his unsuccessful expedition to look for help) they brutally rape Brenda who stayed behind & steal the baby. & when they are actually surprised by Lynne & her mother, they shoot them both. The rest of the family (now only Doug, Bobby & Brenda) are in shambles, but wait, there's Beast still prowling the countryside & he soon kills Mercury & gets one of the mutants walky talkies back to our family. So early the next day, the dog & Doug set out to both fight the family & free the baby, while Bobby & Brenda set a trap back at the trailer involving their mother's dead body. & while Beast bites Pluto to death, Jupiter steps into the youngsters' trap & is blown up with the trailer. Doug now has to face Mars, who wants to kill the baby, but the child is saved by Ruby who has a sudden change of heart & shows sympathy, even helping Doug to kill her brother in the end. Might be a happy ending, but then again ...<p> <p>Much has been said of the violent, brutal, macabre nature of this movie, often (mis-)judging it by only these traits. Fact is, all this aside, <b>The Hills have Eyes</b> is a great piece of suspense cinema that goes all the way from abstract menace to concrete assaults to all-out-war in a straight line, & while doing so gradually introducing us to the murderous mutant-family of which our <i>good American</i> family (which in its squareness doesn't need much of an introduction) becomes more & more of a mirror image, but does that in an entertaining way that not even some stupid ideas like the mutant girl showing sympathy & changing sides in the end or the Rin Tin Tin-like deus-ex-machina in the form of family dog Beast spoil the picture. <p>  </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="592" valign="top" height="1%">  <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"> currentyear = "2003"; </SCRIPT> <SCRIPT language="JavaScript" src="../scripts/endcredits.js"></SCRIPT> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"> dosworsdonn(); </SCRIPT> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </body> </html>