So with an average score of 57%, I now turn my attention to his seventh film, The Hills Have Eyes Part II. Will it bump up the average or will it bring it done? Will I recommend it, will I not? In other words: will it be any good?
My guess is that this film will fall into the not very good category. I can't see it being as bad as Swamp Thing but I do believe it will be worse than the original The Hills Have Eyes. There are a few reasons why I believe this to be true. One reason is that I didn't like the first one very much and sequels usually aren't as good (usually, but not always the case). Craven has improved as a director since he made the original but then again, his last two movies don't come recommended.
Another reason why I believe this movie will be no good is as follows. When I began collecting the films of Wes Craven, on DVD or Blu-ray, this film was very hard to find. All that was available was a full frame terribly transfered version on DVD. This version would be unacceptable by my rules (posted here). So in my search for a legitimate copy I came across a few reviews (which I try refrain from reading) which lambasted this film. I barely read them but they basically said it is one of the worst films they have ever seen (and that was just in the first few sentences). I can't believe it could be worse than Swamp Thing, as well as I am under the firm belief that the original isn't as good as people say.
The last reason why my beliefs on this film lean towards to the negative is that when it finally was released in a new widescreen print, on both DVD and Blu-ray, it was released with no features. None! Nothing what so ever!! That's a bad sign in general, but when Craven won't even talk about a film you know it must be bad. But then again I could be wrong and I could be pleasantly surprised.
Once again I know very little about this film. Well, maybe I know more about it than many of the films that have come before it but I still don't know very much. I know it is a sequel to the original and thus will have a similar story. I know that Michael Berryman returns as Pluto, although he did die in the original. I know that people and/or critics don't seem to like this film very much. And I know that this is the last film Craven made before he would become the legend that he is.
So there you go. That's the pre show entertainment and it's coming to an end. The main feature is about to begin and I need to quieten up while it plays. It's time to discover if this sequel is better than the original or it's time to see how bad a film The Hills Have Eyes Part II actually is. All I can say is, please god let it be better than Swamp Thing.
Review:
Film Rating: 44%
Breakdown (How The Hills Have Eyes Part II scored 44%):
Directing: 6 out of 10
Better handled than it's predecessor, The Hills Have Eyes Part II, is a better put together film but is also shorter on story and is still missing anything resembling substance. Not terrible but no more than a 6 for Mr. Craven.
Re-playability: 4 out of 10
Pretty weak film to watch again. Not gory enough, not enough nudity, not enough excitement. Too much darkness, too much stupidity in the characters actions. I wouldn't watch it again unless I had to and if I did I guess things could be worse.
Originality: 4 out of 10
Repeats of the first films scenes, a truly unoriginal score, and nothing very creative in the writing. It does work well enough as a sequel to the original though and for that it gets a 4.
Production Design (Special Effects/Sets/Locations): 5 out of 10
Nice locations and one half decent set that ultimately comes off worse than it should have due to the lack of good photography. The special effects are only slightly better than the original film here and again poor photography allows for the viewer to see very little of the very little that exists. A low, low 5.
Costumes and Make-Up: 3 out of 10
The mutants look more like mutants. The costumes they wear are slightly better. The costumes worn by the normal folk are generic but look okay, except for Janus Blythe who looks too 80's with her hiked up pants and tucked in shirt. In general the make-up is fairly weak, leaving no lasting impressions and looking pretty fake more times than not. A 3 because I feel generous.
Script: 3 out of 10
The story starts off well, setting up what looks to be a promising sequel. But then returning characters disappear and never return and dead characters return for less than convincing reasons. The second half of the film loses any semblance of story and turns into The Hills Have Eyes done by way of a slasher film. Oh, and there is a dog flashback.
Cinematography: 4 out of 10
In Invitation to Hell Craven used Dean Cundy as his cinematographer. Here we have David Lewis. Who? Exactly. Boring and bad framing of shots and scenes that are so dark you can barely make out what is happening on the screen. It does look better than the original though with some nicer colours and one or two shots that are pleasing to the eye. Only one or two though. A 4 seems fair.
Editing: 5 out of 10
Better edited than the first Hills, with no awkward cuts or bad juxtaposition of cuts but still rather generic and nothing much to it. Not terrible by any means but not great. Plus it does drag on and could of been cut by at least 10 minutes. A mid range 5 for those reasons.
Acting: 6 out of 10
Not great acting but not bad acting either. A few familiar faces pop up here and there but most have given better performances. Michael Berryman is better here than in part one, and the rest of the cast does an alright job. Plus the mutants, when talking off screen, sound more realistic and less wooden than in the original. Worst performance in the film is by John Bloom as the reaper. Pretty bad but again, not as bad as anything in part one.
Music: 4 out of 10
Music: 4 out of 10
Craven uses Henry Manfredini here to score his film. At least I think he does. It says he does in the credits. But the music sounds like it is stolen from Friday the 13th right down to the cha-cha-cha sounds that signify Jason Vorhees is near. I like the music but it is totally unoriginal so it gets a low 4.
***ALERT: THE REST OF THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SERIOUS SPOILERS: ALERT***
***ALERT: THE REST OF THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SERIOUS SPOILERS: ALERT***
After:
The remake was followed by a sequel a year later. That sequel was and still is one of the worst horror movies I have ever seen. It is so bad it makes a movie like this one actually seem okay. The sequel to the remake of The Hills Have Eyes is not a remake of the sequel to the original film. The new sequel puts a new set of mutants up against a bunch of soldiers and it just plain sucked the life from me when I watched it.
This sequel tells the story of a bunch of teens who go out to the hills, led by survivors from the first film, and subsequently get whacked off one by one by the mutants. Robert Houston returns as Bobby, Janus Blythe returns as Ruby and Michael Berryman returns as Pluto. The rest of the cast are all new characters, one of them is played by Penny Johnson who will one day become First Lady Palmer in 24.
There are many problems with this film. So many problems its hard to begin to think about where to begin discussing them. So let's begin with Craven's directing then. While not as bad as the original film he still manages to let this one slide. It's not a terrible job but after seven movies you would think he would be better. That's not really fair of me to say as his debut The Last House on the Left did show a lot of promise, Summer of Fear was well put together and Deadly Blessing was his best effort to date. But somewhere along the production line of this film he seemed to get lazy.
It is an overall better acted, better shot and better edited film than the original but otherwise it is worse in every aspect. The writing is lazy and there are scenes that don't seem to have been written at all. Written by Craven, he must of been smoking something funny when he put pen to paper. He has long scenes of people calling out each other's names in the dark. Minutes upon minutes of this in this movie. He has a few funny lines spurted out by various characters but otherwise there is very little comedy here but one can't help but laugh when the dog has a flashback of years before.
Speaking of the dog, Beast, this animal is supposed to be the same Beast as in the original film. It is now eight years later and Beast hasn't aged a day. He looks just as young and vibrant as he did in the original film, where he was no puppy. And in the first film it is Beast who kills Pluto. Pluto, played by Berryman in his best performance so far, died in the first film but now we are told he was just maimed and has made a full, scarless recovery.
The two other characters that return from the first film have no reason to be in the film except to link the stories. Bobby returns at the beginning only to cower out of going to the desert and he is never heard from again. Ruby returns, seems like she is going to be a hero and then gets knocked unconscious. She is never heard from again and even forgotten by the rest of the survivors.
That's not all that's bad. When The Reaper, played by John Bloom, crashes through a roof to grab a blind girl (who survives longer than anyone else) she escapes easily enough and instead of chasing her right away he just throws his arms around yells. When The Reaper catches up with each teenager he quickly kills them off but he, for some reason only knocks out Roy (played by Kevin Spirtas) and leaves him to wake up and come save the day by making a more complicated rip-off of the caravan explosion in part one.
With the sequel, it seems Craven has taken ideas from his original film, and put them into a slasher film. The movie plays out exactly how a slasher film works and the mutants here are just variations of the slashers that came before. The originality is completely gone from The Hills Have Eyes and instead we are left with a bunch of teens being hunted down by unseen mutants that can be everywhere and anywhere a la Friday the 13th.
Speaking of that movie, Henry Manfredini is that man behind it's music and the man behind the music for this film. Here's how I think he scored this film. Craven said: I like what you did with Friday the 13th. Can you do the same thing for this film? Manfredini said: sure. He went home, sat down to write something new and realized that Craven wanted the same thing. So he just took the music from Friday the 13th along with a few unused cues and handed it over. The music is so uninspired and has no sense at all of originality.
And finally (I'm sure there is more that I can't even remember) the film is so dark that for the most part you can't really see what is going on. It hides to much of the gore and the special effects. It hides to much sets and locations and it hides to much of the faces of both the mutants and the teenagers. Dark works for horror but this film is to dark and you end up squinting and moving closer to the screen just to try and see a little better.
So there you have it. Another bad film from Craven. That makes four bad films and three good ones. The fence is tilting and it's tilting the wrong way for him. The Hills Have Eyes Part II has ended up being his second worst movie. But with all said and done I still don't think it was as bad as those previews of reviews that I glimpsed a few months ago made it out to be. It's not good and I don't really recommend it but it was better than Swamp Thing.
Written and directed by Craven it is actually shocking that this is the film he made before A Nightmare on Elm Street. That film is also written by Craven and from what I remember the two films are on different levels. Nightmare is where Craven found success and where he became a legend in horror. If that movie hadn't come out when it did, I think The Hills Have Eyes Part II might of just pushed Craven into TV territory and left him there for good.
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