Hills Have Eyes

Theatrical Release Date: 2006 03 10 (USA)

UPC: 024543247470

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Summary: Alexandre Aja directs this remake of Wes Craven's film The Hills Have Eyes. In this update, a family is taking a cross-country road trip when their trailer breaks down, leaving them stranded in the desert of New Mexico. There, they find themselves under attack by the savage "hill people," who were deformed by radiation during nuclear testing. ~ Cammila Collar, Rovi

Category: Horror

Features: ccAudio commentary by director/co-screenwriter Alexandre Aja, art director/co-screenwriter Gregory Levasseur and producer Marianne Maddalena
Audio commentary by producers Wes Craven and Peter Locke
Surviving the Hills: Making of the Hills Have Eyes documentary
Production diaries
Music Video: Leave the Broken Hearts by the Finalist

Hills Have Eyes

Format: DVD

Release Date: 06/20/2006

Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Cinemascope

Audio: DDS2.0 Dolby Digital w/ 4 channels, DD5.1 Dolby Digital 5.1

Runtime: 108 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Language(s) English,Spanish

Subtitles: English,French,Spanish

Region: USA & territories, Canada

Chapters: Disc #1 -- The Hills Have Eyes
1. Death in the Desert [2:19]
2. Main Titles [2:15]
3. Unwanted Gifts [4:09]
4. The Carter Family [:20]
5. Driving Through the Desert [7:33]
6. Stranded [2:49]
7. The Watcher [4:57]
8. Beauty's End [1:04]
9. The Wasteland [2:48]
10. What Kind of Place? [3:14]
11. The Trouble With Bobby [2:46]
12. The Beasts Within [3:17]
13. A Bloody Mess [6:03]
14. Kill Them All [:20]
15. Into the Dark [5:24]
16. The Test Village [2:26]
17. Big Mama's House [7:24]
18. Twilight's Last Gleaming [2:42]
19. Breakfast Time [5:10]
20. Rampage [:25]
21. Jupiter Rising [4:50]
22. A Father's Vengeance [1:43]
23. Safe? [1:31]
24. End Titles [3:40]

Jason Buchanan

The year was 1977 and the the Vietnam War had just ground to a slow and painful halt. The definition of "family" in America was changing as shell-shocked troops -- considered "lucky" by the na?ve for having survived the horrific atrocities viewers at home only glimpsed on the nightly news -- were attempting to return to their families and loved ones and make sense of life in the serenity of the suburbs. But there was no going back; America had changed, and after two excruciating world wars and an extended quagmire in which the nation's youth were fed into the war machine and spat out in chunks, the culture of violence was flowing through her veins like an all-consuming disease. Ambitious horror filmmaker Wes Craven had absorbed the death and destruction that had become too much to bear for the numbed masses, and proceeded to shatter the senses of moviegoers with the boundary blasting sadism of Last House on the Left. As horror fans ached with curiosity to see what terrors he would bring to the screen next, Craven was cooking up a nihilistic tale of raw survival set against the scorching sun of the Nevada desert. Politically, Craven's sophomore vision personified the growing chasm between the right and the left while simultaneously serving to explore the differences between where we thought we were as a culture, and the contradictory reality so painfully obvious to anyone who still had the stomach to keep up with current events. Flash forward to the year 2006 and another war is going on. This time it's the "war on terror" and, much like its mid-20th century counterpart, it seemed to have no end in sight. Over in Hollywood the remake trend was on fire, and whose catalogue better to raid than Hollywood horror franchise factory himself, Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream creator Wes Craven? Fresh-faced French filmmaker named Alexandre Aja's had just delivered what many considered to be one of the most unforgiving mainstream horror efforts in the last decade, and he needed a winning follow up to cement himself as a true master of the genre. Though the first half of the new The Hills Have Eyes seems to follow Craven's original screenplay almost to the letter -- including the harrowing initial raid on the family caravan that nearly recreates the original atrocity shot for shot -- the heavy handed second half takes an ill-advised turn off the main road to offer a none-too-subtle commentary on the destructive capabilities of the American machine that paints in broad, reactionary strokes where a steady, subtle hand may have been a bit more effective. In terms of surface aesthetics, Aja's flick is retro-hip thanks to Maxime Alexandre's hyper-saturated palate, Daniel Glicker's throwback costume design, and Alessandra Querzola's sparse sets. Composers Tomandandy's unconventional use of discordant, tune-bent strings is strikingly effective in creating a mood of ill-ease early on before inexplicably, and somewhat tragically, swelling to an overbearing eagre of faux-triumphant horns in the final scenes. On the civilized side of things, the performances are generally strong thanks in large part to Ted Levine's turn as the jingoistic, praise-the-lord and-pass-the-ammo patriarch, a pacifist-to-pit bull transformation by unrecognizable X-Men alum Aaron Stanford, and a nurturing, heart-rending show by matronly Kathleen Quinlan, whose suffering at seeing her family butchered before her very eyes is only the beginning of her agonizing trauma. In the end though, Alexandre Aja wants it both ways; he wants to remain staunchly faithful to the original while altering the proceedings to take on new meaning in a new era, and he wants to turn in an inventive, viscerally grating, nuevo-grindhouse epic that will subvert the multiplex experience while simultaneously getting sucked into the creatively exhausted remake trend. While the resulting film could certainly be considered reprehensible in its relentless pursuit to torment the audience, the exact same could be said for Craven's original back in 1977 -- and for viewers looking to be run through the ringer, the new Hills certainly obliges with ruthless abandon. For audiences who hunger for some form of intellectual nourishment amongst the bloody chaos, however, Aja's ponderous, ham-handed evisceration of the American swagger may prove a bit too bombastic to truly drive home his point effectively. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Maxime Giffard  Actor 
Gregory Nicotero  Actor 
Adam Perrell  Actor 
Ivana Turchetto  Actor 
Cedric Proust  Actor 
Maisie Camilleri Preziosi  Actor 
Judith Jane Vallette  Actor 
Wes Craven  Producer 
Peter Locke  Producer 
Marianne Maddalena  Producer 
Frank Hildebrand  Executive Producer 
Tomandandy  Composer (Music Score) 
Alexandre Aja  Director 
Alexandre Aja  Screenwriter 
Gregory Levasseur  Screenwriter 
Samy Layani  Producer 
Aaron Stanford  Actor 
Kathleen Quinlan  Actor 
Vinessa Shaw  Actor 
Emilie de Ravin  Actor 
Dan Byrd  Actor 
Tom Bower  Actor 
Billy Drago  Actor 
Robert Joy  Actor 
Ted Levine  Actor 
Desmond Askew  Actor 
Ezra Buzzington  Actor 
Michael Bailey Smith  Actor 
Laura Ortiz  Actor 

Country: USA