The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

There are certain films from the 1970s that you hear whispered about rather than recommended, passed down through older siblings and slightly irresponsible parents rather than advertised on the telly. Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes (1977) is very much one of those films. Coming off the back of The Last House on the Left (1972), Craven was already establishing himself as someone willing to push horror to places most directors simply would not go. This second feature, produced on a shoestring by Blood Relations Co., belongs firmly to the American exploitation tradition of the mid-1970s, a period when low-budget horror was testing what cinema could actually show and get away with. The premise is lean and unpleasant: a suburban American family takes a wrong turn through the Nevada desert, their vehicle breaks down, and what follows is a prolonged and brutal confrontation with a cannibal family who have made the surrounding hills their territory. The film draws, at least in spirit, on the Scottish legend of Sawney Bean, a supposed 15th-century cannibal clan said to have preyed on travellers in Ayrshire, though Craven transplants the horror to the bleached American wilderness with considerable effect. It sits, alongside a wave of contemporaries, as a document of a particular cultural anxiety about what lies beyond the edges of civilised, comfortable American life.

Craven, who would go on to direct A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and later reinvent the slasher genre with Scream (1996), is working here with very limited resources and apparently very few concessions to polish. The film runs at a tight 90 minutes and wastes little time on comfort. The principal cast includes Susan Lanier, Robert Houston, and Martin Speer as members of the Carter family, with Dee Wallace (then still fairly early in what would become a long career in the genre) and Russ Grieve among those rounding out the group. None of them are playing glamorous or particularly heroic figures, which is rather the point. The performances are rough around the edges, and the production makes no attempt to hide its budgetary constraints. The camerawork is handheld and scrappy, the desert locations are functional rather than beautiful, and the whole thing has the texture of something that was not designed to be watched in comfortable multiplex seats. It is, in most respects, a grindhouse film, and it presents itself as exactly that.

For those curious about how Craven's career developed after this kind of raw, unfiltered early work, it is worth looking at The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), another of his films reviewed on the site, which shows a director with considerably more resources but still drawn to genuinely unsettling subject matter. For comparison within the horror genre more broadly, the site's review of Blade (1998) covers a film that shares something of the same interest in domestic vulnerability and violence that refuses to be stylised.

The Hills Have Eyes (the original 1977 one)... My dad did the same when I was about 12, and I still haven’t fully recovered. Directed by Wes Craven at his most raw and gritty, it’s classic old-school B-movie horror: cheap sets, shaky camerawork, zero filter, and a whole lot of dread. The story’s simple (decent family stranded in the desert, stalked and picked off by a family of inbred cannibals) but it works because it feels mean. There’s no glamour, no cool kills, just grim survival and a real sense of helplessness. It’s not great, exactly. The acting’s rough, the pacing lurches, and some of the dialogue is laughably bad (“I’m not gonna eat no more white meat!”). But there’s something unsettling about it that sticks with you. The atmosphere, the isolation, the way the violence feels personal and ugly, not flashy. And yeah, it’s supposedly inspired by the legend of Sawney Bean from Scotland. As a film, it’s ok. Not scary by today’s standards, but historically important in the horror world, Craven was laying groundwork here. It’s more disturbing than thrilling now, and definitely a product of its time. Watchable, nasty, and a solid entry in the “grindhouse nightmare” category.

I find myself coming back to the word "nasty" as the most honest description, and I think that is actually the film's strange achievement. It does not try to make you enjoy the horror, which is more than you can say for a lot of what came after it. Craven was clearly working out ideas here that he would refine across his later career, but there is something to be said for the unrefined version, even if it makes for uncomfortable viewing rather than straightforward entertainment. If you watch it expecting a slick genre exercise, you will be disappointed. If you watch it as a piece of film history that genuinely has not lost its capacity to make you feel a bit grim, that is another matter. Just, perhaps, do not watch it with a twelve-year-old.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 1977  | Watched: 2025-09-05

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Wes Craven: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) · Scream (1996)
More from the 1970s: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Here and Elsewhere (1976) · Italianamerican (1974) · Punishment Park (1971)
More horror: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Viy (1967) · Nightmare City (1980) · Angst (1983)