Editorials
40 Years Later and ‘The Hills Still Have Eyes’
40 years ago today, Wes Craven unleashed his follow-up to the grim and nasty Last House on the Left with the equally grim and nasty The Hills Have Eyes. Hesitant to dive into another exploitation flick, Craven eventually came around to persistent urgings from the film’s producer, Peter Locke. And as if Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was nothing more than a dare, Craven crafted Hills with a similar hysterical energy, upping the gore quotient and tossing in an innocent baby for demented measure. The two films share many similarities, not just in plot but crew as well. Craven’s survival horror yarn doesn’t shy away from rough subject matter, and unsurprisingly, the production itself was no cakewalk. Despite the struggles the cast and crew may have weathered to get the damn thing “in the can”, it all paid off in the end. To steal a tag from Herschell Gordon Lewis’s Blood Feast, “There’s nothing so appalling in the annals of horror!”
Spoiler Warning!
Blood Relations
Last House (1972) was Craven’s first feature as a director. He aspired to create something different in his sophomore effort, something outside the horror genre. Producers weren’t interested in what he was selling, however, unless it featured a little blood and depravity. A close friend of Craven, Peter Locke, had some money and wanted to funnel it into a horror picture. Finally, “I was broke,” Craven has stated, so he got to work on a new horror script. The writer/director took a great deal of inspiration from the purported case of the Sawny Bean Clan. From the lore’s Wikipedia page:
“Sawney” Bean was said to be the head of a 48-member clan in Scotland anywhere between the 13th and 16th centuries, reportedly executed for the mass murder and cannibalisation of over 1,000 people.”
While the obvious connective tissue is there (feral cannibal family), it was the treatment of the Bean Clan after their capture that proved interest to Craven. After finally being hunted down and arrested, the entire family was slowly tortured by burning, quartering, hanging, and more. The filmmaker was struck by the parallel between the cave-dwelling cannibals and the animalistic revenge meted out by more “civilized” people. A script entitled Blood Relations was born.
Eyeing a Massacre
Only three years had passed since Hooper’s TCM came along and blew up the indie scene. Wes Craven certainly wasn’t a stranger to the film and was open about the fact. He’s stated he was crafting a bit of an homage to the grindhouse classic. I’d say that’s blatantly obvious. Though, there are some who would prefer to call Hills a straight “rip off.” Certainly the plot is colored in several shades of Chainsaw. A family on vacation cuts through a barren desert in hopes of coming upon an old silver mine. After wrecking their car, they’re now stranded in the wide open nowhere and must protect themselves against a tightly knit family of cannibals. Both films even feature their own take on the “gas station of doom”. In all fairness, however, TCM is likely the originator of said trope.
Production designer Robert Burns actually worked on each film. The home of the clan in Hills was decorated with numerous bones, animal hides, and various knick knacks that were carried over from the set of TCM! The two films will always be linked as early examples of extreme survival horror. That said, I have, perhaps, a controversial opinion on the matter. Hooper’s film is a genuine masterpiece of gut-wrenching, grounded terror, but I’ve always prefered The Hills Have Eyes. Maybe that’s blasphemous to say, but no matter how many times I’ve seen it, I find the tension Craven builds to be overwhelming…and my eyes always end up watering up at least once (more on that later).
So, sure, in terms of tone, both films feel hot, sweaty, and covered in dirt. There’s a genuine discomfort felt in the actors’ performances which is palpable, mostly due to the fact they were uncomfortable given the exhausting shooting conditions. It’s interesting to note the style of Hills is inline with that of Craven’s first feature. Last House was an ultra low budget, lean-mean exploitation machine. With that in mind, it’s hard to call Craven a thief in terms of style. Considering Last House was released in 72′, who copied who? At the end of the day, these are two distinct filmmakers with their own claim to genre fame, so no one was really aping anyone. It was the late 70’s and these two filmmakers were at the forefront of the type of grindhouse horror cinema that was about to explode into mainstream culture within the next decade,
Sick and Depraved
With temperatures upwards of 120 degrees during the day and as low as 30 at night, it was a difficult shoot for everyone involved. The budget was around 300k. That’s about 3x as much as Craven had on Last House, but it still meant that people were scraping by to get the film finished. There were no luxuries, a lot of the actors were doing their own makeup, and Dee Wallace quasi-jokingly stated the dogs (Beauty and Beast) were treated better than anyone else on set. The entire cast was drained from their physically demanding roles after clocking in 6 day work weeks ranging from 12 to 14 hours a day. Apparently when the clan is devouring some char-grilled Big Bob around the fire, the actors were starving. The fake human flesh was actually a leg of lamb roast. As repulsive as the idea of cannibalism was to them, it was actually a treat to “play pretend” for that particular scene.
According to Craven, a majority of the crew were made up of Roger Corman regulars . They’d apparently come straight from wrapping a production with Corman to the set of Hills. They were a surly, tired bunch. Craven believes they changed their tune a few weeks in after realizing what they were doing was something special. The Hills Have Eyes wasn’t going to be just another quickie cash grab. The young director’s enthusiasm was beginning to rub off. The producer was enthusiastic as well, he just channeled the energy a tad differently. Locke was always on set, rushing Craven to keep shooting. After all, this was his money on the line. He needed to ensure there was a finished product to show off at the end of the day. Of course, when he wasn’t barking behind the cameras, he was hamming it up on screen. Locke begged Wes to throw him a cameo role. The little seen member of the clan, Mercury (credited to Arthur King), who seemed to think eating a baby’s tongue was hilarious, was actually the producer himself.
Speaking of the baby, we all know that lil’ cutie-pie survives to see the end credits roll. That wasn’t always the plan, however. Craven was contemplating having baby Kathy wind up as an amuse-bouche for Papa Jupiter. The majority of the cast revolted against the idea. Michael Berryman (the iconic Pluto) stated if it came to it, he would refuse to do the scene. Craven eventually acquiesced, and baby Kathy remained off the menu. That’s not to say the film holds back in any other regard. The most impactful sequence of the film revolves around the clan’s initial assault onto the family’s tractor-trailer. One moment after the next is a flurry of brutal violence. The scene comes to a head with the pull of a trigger, empty of bullets and a threat. I always feel the need to steady my breathing after this scene. It’s one of the reasons a concerned mother during an early screening shouted out, “This movie is sick and depraved!” Unbeknownst to her, in the next row sat Michael Berryman. He politely tapped the woman on her shoulder and stated, “You damn right, lady.”
The Hills Have Legs
The film’s title, Blood Relations, didn’t seem to be going over well. So, out of a hat of a hundred odd names, the winner was The Hills Have Eyes. Craven wasn’t crazy about the new title, but it tested well. In the 40 years since the film was released, The Hills Have Eyes has amassed quite the large following. It’s hard to throw a rock at any decent horror convention without clocking someone involved with the film’s production in the head. Obviously, gorehounds flock to the film for the few but wonderfully staged moments of brutality. Others manage to relate not to the wholesome family at the center of the story but instead to the cannibalistic loonies on the fringes. Thrill seekers enjoy the catharsis of seeing the beaten down survivors fight back and take down the bad guys one by one. Of course, everyone loves Wes Craven’s MacGyver-esque antics as well. To me, the reason the film has had such a lasting legacy is the strength of the characters.
Craven molded the Carters after his own family and neighbors, and that familiarity shines through the screen. I see my mother and father so clearly in Ethel and Bob Carter, and it hurts watching the fate that befalls the patriarchs of this everyday family unit. I seriously get a bit teary eyed when Ethel has her breakdown upon discovering Bob’s burnt body. It’s tough to watch, and even more difficult still when Doug attempts to comfort her as her life slowly slips away. It’s these moments of true horror that make the finale so satisfying. The closing note is certainly no stereotypical happy ending (unlike the more traditional alternate ending rejected by Craven).
Bobby and Brenda are jumping up and down as if they just won a contest after bloodily dispatching of Papa Jupiter. Doug is wildly stabbing Mars when the frame freezes on his insanity filled gaze. In The Hills Have Eyes we don’t fade to black. No, we fade to blood red upon the realization our heroes, our nuclear family, have been completely broken in the face of a literal nuclear affected family. It’s the type of subversion Craven built his career off of. Despite resisting a return to the horror genre, Craven nonetheless went “balls to the wall” once he got behind the camera on Hills. The Hills Have Eyes is a wild, untamed film that has the power to stir the feral child within us all. “Juicy.”
Those who haven’t seen the film in a long time, I highly recommend the Arrow Video release from last year. The original 16mm camera negatives (shot on cameras borrowed from a California pornographer!) are presumed lost and what remains were 35mm prints. This leads to a fairly uneven transfer, but it’s likely the best the film will ever look. Plus, a little film grain and grime makes a movie like this all the better.
Horror was thriving so well in the 1980s that movies like Pen Densham’s The Kiss (1988) would understandably get lost in the shuffle, only to then gain their fans later on in life. Even still, this one Canadian-American curio has had a more challenging time than others, as far as contemporary reevaluations go, which is very likely due to the movie’s limited availability—at least as of this write-up.
However, the scarceness of The Kiss, while a bit annoying, makes it like catnip for ‘80s horror completists everywhere. Hopefully, a lot of them will walk away satisfied after watching this hidden gem.
Even though The Kiss was intended as the first of several horror collaborations between Astral Pictures and TriStar, as well as the first feature produced by Densham, Richard B. Lewis and John Watson’s Trilogy Entertainment Group, it ended up being the only one produced from that former union. Once the movie was released, TriStar’s distribution jitters—they opted for a regional rollout—did the $6-million flick no favors. TriStar’s cold feet toward horror releases have been well noted, but The Kiss still did a tad better than Night of the Creeps (1986), another genre outing that flopped due to its regional opening.
Shot in Montreal, but set in Albany, New York, The Kiss—which was still called The Host just a few months before its October premiere—concerns an average middle-class family and their forthcoming situation. The uncanny problem in store for them was, in fact, set in motion some years earlier. As that hot and dusty flashback to the Belgian Congo shows, a familial curse was set upon the two Dunbar sisters well before Meredith Salenger’s teenage character was born.
Meredith Salenger, Nicholas Kilbertus and Mimi Kuzyk in The Kiss
The Kiss, which was based on a story by co-writer Stephen Volk (Ghostwatch) and penned by both Volk and Tom Ropelewski, has the outward appearance of The Stepfather (1987). This movie, though, is anything but a gender-flipped retread of that classic domestic disturber. For starters, The Kiss is far less grounded in reality—that much is clear from its unsettling opening scene. There, a trusting girl (Priscilla Mouzakiotis) is the victim of her own deceptive aunt (Céline Lomez); the movie’s titular act, and the story’s first shock, becomes the means of transferring an ancient evil from one host to another.
In the present day, Salenger’s role of Amy Halloran, a religious schoolgirl, is dealt a harsh blow in life once her mother, Hilary Halloran née Dunbar (Pamela Collyer), suddenly dies in a freak accident. But rather than a complete stranger sweeping the Halloran widower (Nicholas Kilbertus) off his feet some months later, Joanna Pacula’s character is that chosen temptress. Here, Pacula plays the grown-up version of the afflicted girl last seen in the movie’s opener. Since Amy’s mother is insistent about there being no reunion between estranged sisters, and she even contemplates buying a gun shortly before her tragic demise, it’s presumable that Aunt Felice poses a threat to her family.
The Kiss isn’t a movie ever too concerned about its own predictability. The audience is indeed often one step ahead of the story here, but also keep in mind how every one of those steps is loud. Take, for instance, the death of Amy’s mother; the Halloran matriarch goes out in garish, gruesome fashion, as a supernaturally commandeered truck sends Collyer’s character through a store window first, then leaves her one leg short. The directorial enthusiasm truly comes out in horrific moments such as these.
The Kiss is always sure to revel in its characters’ ills and misfortunes. So if the plot doesn’t impress, then its lurid parts should. Amy’s mother’s exit scene was proof of an eager, first-time horror director proving his worth. Then, bestie Heather (Sabrina Boudot) survives to tell the tale of a bizarre escalator mishap that, despite showing relatively less gore, spikes viewers’ empathy meter. The wilder bits of this movie, however, commence with that inevitable hookup between Felice and Amy’s bewitched father; their kitchen coitus is paralleled by Amy’s feverish classroom terror. The outcome there is a disquieting cross-cut of sex magic and a young woman’s menstrual onset plus hallucinations.
Sabrina Boudot in The Kiss
From foam appliances to bladders, that parade of special effects in The Kiss casts its own spell on the audience. Felice’s familiar, a visibly malevolent cat, was realized here with several models, some more articulate than others. Admittedly, the demon cat’s not as convincing as most of the effects here, but accepting that artifice, as opposed to fighting it, will make the whole experience way more enjoyable. As for the makeup used to manifest Felice’s inner villainy, it is more minimal and subtle than one might like; yet the work done to turn Pacula into an antithesis of herself is nonetheless compelling.
The otherworldly perils and dreadful goings-on wouldn’t work half as well as they do in The Kiss without the story’s contrast effect. Finding frights in picturesque, extremely ordinary settings was something that took off in the ‘80s, thanks to that sweeping shift to locales like the suburbs. And Amy’s home, a replica of a real Montreal suburban house, is the ideal battleground for any proper good-versus-evil story. It’s also prime real estate for this movie’s satanic panic-inspired horrors.
Because of their ostensibly similar plots, The Kiss has been compared to The Exorcist (1973). Except in Densham’s movie, the sinister, non-Christian entity targeting a teen girl lies within something less apparent and, perhaps, more devastating upon its exposure. To an outsider, Pacula’s Aunt Felice is too beautiful and unobjectionable to ever suspect of being a monster. More suspicious is how quickly she rips into the fabric of the Halloran home. Felice’s mere presence upsets the “texture of family life,” according to the director.
The demon cat in The Kiss
Taking out Amy’s mother and best friend, and distracting her father, would suggest The Kiss is playing by a different set of rules. It is initially leaving its adolescent target unsupported in a rather grim scenario. In contrast, though, this story offers up a surrogate parent who does her best to fill in the holes of Amy’s eroding home life. Mimi Kuzyk does good work as that family friend and doctor, Brenda, who guides the lost child without also steering her in any one direction; she is naturally skeptical of Amy’s accusations until it’s almost too late to do anything about them. So although The Kiss does an admirable job of undoing the main character’s support system, it never leaves her without a lifeline. This dark movie, in spite of everything that’s transpired, doesn’t deprive itself of light and hope.
The Kiss is a potent mélange of familiar ideas. If not for the director’s surprise flair for horror, though, the movie would have been less effective. What a shame that Pen Densham didn’t continue with the genre. As for Joanna Pacula, she is, too, owed credit as the wicked vixen opposite Meredith Salenger’s pitiable Amy; she never fails to be unsettling in her role. Pacula makes Aunt Felice a sexy yet intimidating character.
For horror that steadily doles out madness and menace, while also delivering a flashy and ghastly conclusion, The Kiss is certain to please. Yes, it’s cheesy all the way, but most favorably, everyone involved plays everything straight. That kind of commitment goes a long way with this movie.
The Kiss
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