Speaking of The Last House on the Left, if you've read my review of that film, you'd know that I had very mixed feelings about it when I first saw it and I still do, in spite of the pros that I agree it does have. That's virtually the same way I feel about The Hills Have Eyes, although I do think it's a better film and, as one person said, it feels like Craven learned from the mistakes he made before and tried to correct them. I must confess, though, I was a little bit bored the first time I watched it, as the buildup felt like it went on a little too long and I honestly didn't find it to be all that shocking, including the entire trailer scene. (When I watched the documentary on the DVD and Michael Berryman said that he feels anybody who doesn't squirm while watching the movie is either sedated or sleeping, I thought, "Well, sorry, dude, but I wasn't sedated or asleep and I didn't squirm.") There are definitely parts that make me go, "Ugh," like the death of Bob Carter, when Mars rips the head off of that finch and drinks its blood, and when the family is eating Bob's charred remains, but I've always felt that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which is similar in how it tries to make you squirm through sheer intensity rather than overt gore, is far more effective in every respect. Plus, while the acting is certainly not bad, I need a little more to the characters than what's given here; I don't find the "Hills" clan as a whole to be as unsettling as the Sawyer family; and the editing and camerawork are very clearly that of a man who was still learning at this point. It's certainly not a bad movie by any, and I agree that it does have its fair share of pluses, but, as with The Last House on the Left, I don't think it's among Craven's best work or is the iconic classic that so many others feel it is.
Fred, the elderly owner of a rundown gas station and trading post, is preparing to close down for good and get out, when he's approached by a feral-looking teenage girl he calls Ruby. Ruby wants to trade some items she has in a bag for some food but Fred tells her that he's getting out, saying that she and her family have really crossed the line by attacking a closed down airfield nearby. Saying they did it because they're desperate and hungry, Ruby asks him to take her with him, which he also refuses, saying that she'd never survive out in the civilized world, adding that if her father, Jupiter, found out that she was trying to leave, he'd tear her apart. A station-wagon towing a large trailer pulls up to the building, the occupants of which are the Carter family, made up of retired policeman Bob Carter, his wife Ethel, their teenage children, Bobby and Brenda, their married, eldest daughter, Lynne, her husband, Doug, their baby girl, Katy, and their two German shepherds, Beauty and Beast. They're on a road trip from Ohio to California, taking a detour to visit a supposed silver mine that was given to them by Ethel's aunt for her and Bob's silver anniversary. Fred, however, tells them that there's no silver to be found in the hills and that they should just stay on the main road and go on to California; after they leave, Fred's truck is blown up by unseen assailants, preventing him from escaping. The Carters, meanwhile, ignore Fred's warning and drive out into the desert, with Bob thinking that the old man lied to them because he wants all of the silver for himself, when they end up skidding off the road and crash. No one is hurt, but they're stranded. Bob decides to walk back to the gas station to get some help, while Doug continues following the road to see if he can find anyone up there, leaving everyone else at the trailer. Unbeknownst to them, they're being watched from the hills, and little by little, they start to realize it when Beauty, after running off, is found dead and disemboweled, and they hear strange sounds over the trailer's CB radio when they try to call for help. Reaching the gas station, Bob learns the horrific truth of what's going on from Fred, but it's too late, as the cannibalistic clan in the hills have already begun descending upon the family, and if they want to survive, they may have to become savages themselves.
The cast of the film can definitely be described as an ensemble, as there's no one protagonist since, not counting the baby, the three members of the Carter family who are left alive by the end make up one family unit that's trying to survive. Two of them, Brenda (Susan Lanier) and her brother, Bobby (Robert Houston), don't have much to them but they're not annoying or loathsome (most of the time, anyway). They're a very typical brother and sister, as they constantly bicker and push each other's buttons, with Brenda coming across as a bit of a complainer about where they are, especially after they get stuck, while Bobby has moments of coming across as a tad dopey, like when he doesn't think to unlock the door to get out of the trailer following the crash. At the same, though, they're both the ones who first realize that there's something sinister going on, as Brenda has a feeling of foreboding about the desert they're stuck in, while Bobby comes across the mutilated body of one of their dogs, Beauty, after she runs off. Any lightheartedness about him is immediately dropped, as he comes back to the camp, shell-shocked and frightened, especially when his father, who left to go back to Fred's gas station, is gone much longer than he should have been. Not wanting to scare the others, he doesn't tell them about what happened to Beauty, but when he's lured outside by what sounds like Beast, only to realize that it's somebody who's able to imitate him, and then finding himself locked out of the trailer, he has to admit what's happened to Doug and Lynne. Immediately afterward, both he and Brenda are put through the wringer along with everyone else, as Bobby has to deal with watching his father get blown up and burned to death, while Brenda, unbeknownst to the others, is held hostage and sexually assaulted by Pluto and then Mars inside the trailer. Bobby nearly snaps, as he goes off to kill the family with the gun his father left with him, firing at Pluto and Mars as they leave the trailer, but then has to deal with the knowledge that Lynne has been killed and his mother mortally wounded. Things just get darker and darker for them as the night goes on, especially for Brenda, who's traumatized by Mars' threat to come back and finish her off, although Beast gives them a bit of an edge when he brings them one of the walkie-talkies the family uses to communicate with each other. Ultimately, when their mother dies and they realize that no one is coming to save them, Brenda and Bobby decide that they must protect themselves and come up with a trap that, while rather morbid in one aspect, contributes to Jupiter's eventual death.
I love Dee Wallace, be it in The Howling and E.T. or Critters and, my personal favorite film of hers, Cujo, but here, as Lynne, I don't see her as anything other than just a sort of caricature of the roles she tends to play. Granted, this was only her second film, having first been in The Stepford Wives, so she was undoubtedly still rather rough as an actor and hadn't yet established her approach but, when I watch her in this movie, I just see Dee Wallace being Dee Wallace. Not that that's a bad thing, though, as she manages to come across as a kind of cynical, sarcastic, slightly foul-mouthed young woman (according to her mother, she picked that up when she moved to New York), but still likable, as she clearly loves Doug and would die for baby Katy, which she does end up doing. I like how, as freaked out as she is at the sight of Pluto and Mars at the trailer, when she sees that Mars is trying to take Katy, she's not having it and tries to stop him, getting as far as managing to give him a nasty stab in the leg before she's ultimately shot to death. She wasn't able to stop Katy from being abducted but she still gets points for trying, particularly since it eventually gives Doug the incentive to stop at nothing at getting Katy back. Speaking of Katy (Brenda Marinoff), you really have to feel bad for the crap the baby is put through, being abducted from her parents by a clan of disgusting cannibals, one of whom kills her mother, almost getting eaten by them, and being dragged through the hot, dusty desert during the climax as her father and Ruby desperately try to keep Mars from killing her. The fact that she's so cute only makes it all the worse.
It's not often in a horror movie where the pets are actual characters but that's certainly true of the Carters' German shepherds, Beauty and Beast. Both of them are quite ferocious towards strangers, given how they snap at Fred when they've stopped at his gas station, and it's said that Beast is trained to kill and has killed other dogs before, but when they get stranded, the dogs can sense that something is wrong and become quite skiddish and panicky, barking at the hills. At one point, Brenda accidentally lets Beauty out of the trailer and she bolts off into the hills, where she's lured and gutted by Pluto, with Bobby later finding her disemboweled body. When Bobby falls and knocks himself out upon seeing this, Brenda goes out into the hills to try to find him with Beast, only for Beast to break his chain and run off as well. Bobby finds him and brings him back to the trailer but, somewhere down the line (I say that because you don't see it), he gets loose again. In any case, Beast proves to be much smarter and not as easy to put down as his mate, as he finds what's left of Beauty and begins tracking the family through the hills. He kills Mercury by pushing him off of a cliff and brings Brenda, Bobby, and Doug his walkie-talkie so they can listen in on their conversations and know what they're up to. He proves to be really badass during the climax, when Doug sends him out after Jupiter and Pluto as they head towards the trailer and, knowing that he's the one who killed Beauty, he stalks and attacks Pluto when his guard is down. He rips open his Achilles tendon, avoids being shot by Jupiter, continues stalking the now limping Pluto, and, when he least expects it, charges him and tears his throat out. He even stands there and growls at him as he watches him expire (something that he actually remembers and flashes back to in the sequel, but lets not get ahead of ourselves).
For me, that's the most disturbing aspect of this whole story: how Jupiter (James Whitworth) was a bad seed in every sense of the term. The idea of him being unnaturally huge and hairy at birth for no discernible reason, coming out sideways and killing his mother, and being as big as his father when he was ten adds a layer of eeriness to the fact that he was evil from the get-go. Being attacked by his father with a tire iron (he has a big scar on his nose and across his cheeks from it, which is a pretty nice bit of makeup) after he burned down the house, killing his sister, and then left out in the desert, Jupiter, instead of dying, raises a brood of monster kids of his own with a woman who was probably a prostitute that, as Fred describes, no one would miss. For a good, long while, he and his family have had an uneasy sort of partnership with Fred, trading stuff that they've stolen for supplies so they can keep on going, but when Fred tries to leave, his truck is blown up and Jupiter later kills him, beating him before stabbing him to the inside of an outhouse door with a tire iron. Jupiter does manage to come across as a very intimidating presence, being a big, burly man, with a deep, growling voice, and a real sadistic streak, with how he stakes Bob Carter to a tree and blows him up. He's also as intelligent as he is brutal, as Bob's death was part of a ploy to lure everyone out of the trailer so Pluto and Mars could ransack it and steal everything they needed.
As a father, Jupiter is one you don't cross, as seen with how Ruby is punished for trying to run away by being tied up outside of the den and forced to eat what's left of Beauty before Jupiter shows up and slaps her, telling her that he "fixed" Grandpa good, while the way he moves in on Mars at one, growling, "Did you kill 'em all, like I told you to? Did you kill 'em all, like I said?", is very, very threatening. At the same time, though, family is family to him as much as it is to anyone else, and when he learns that Beast killed Mercury, he's absolutely enraged, telling Bob's corpse as he's eating him, "Your dog made sport of my blood, you pig. I'm gonna kill your kids for that. You come out here and stick your life in my face! Stick your fingers in my pie! That was a bad mistake!... I'm gonna watch your goddamn car rust down! Yes, I will! I'll see the wind blow your dried up seeds away. I'll eat the heart of your stinkin' memory. I'll eat the brains of your kids' kids! I'm in, you're out!" Knowing that Doug will come for Katy, Jupiter decides to keep her alive to ensure that he does, telling Mars to kill him when he does inevitably show up, while he and Pluto head out to the trailer to kill Brenda and Bobby. However, when Beast attacks Pluto and rips open the back of his foot, Jupiter decides to forget about Doug and orders Mars to kill Katy out of revenge. He then goes on to the trailer himself, only to get caught up in part of a trap that Brenda and Bobby set for him. However, he's smart enough to figure out what the endgame of their plan is, which is to blow him up along with the trailer, and manages to avoid it to keep on attacking them. It doesn't keep him alive for too much longer, though, as he's ultimately axed by Brenda and finally shot dead by Bobby. For the most part, Whitworth is able to come off as very menacing in his performance, although, that said, there are some moments where I feel he's so over-the-top that he's kind of silly, like when he screams about eating the brains of Bob's grandchildren and the volley of yelling he lets loose when he charges at Brenda and Bobby after they drag him across the desert floor using their car and a cable as a lasso.
Peter Locke himself, using the name "Arthur King," has a brief role as Mercury, the rather dim-witted member of the clan who acts as something as a sentry, watching things from atop a large rock and using a walkie-talkie to communicate with the others. He's first seen briefly during the opening scene, when he drags Ruby back into the desert, right before Fred's car is blown up, and then tells the clan of the oncoming Carter family; more significantly, he's later seen when Pluto and Mars contact him at they hurry back to their lair with Katy. Coming across as very dopey, to the point of seeming retarded, and looking really silly with the Native America-like feather headdress he wears, Mercury is quite happy when he finds out what his brothers are bringing home for dinner, knowing that Jupiter will be glad, and adds, "Maybe I make that joke like last time, and eat the toes." He doesn't get to, though, as Beast pushes him from behind and causes him to fall off his perch to his death, an act that enrages Jupiter to where he decides to kill the remaining members of the family. Finally, the mother of the clan (Cordy Clark), who's only referred to as "Mama," likely started off as a prostitute that had no one to miss her, given what Fred tells Bob, and seems to have adapted well to their primitive, frontier lifestyle. She also has no qualms about what her family does and is extremely cruel to Ruby for trying to run away, forcing her to stay chained up outside the den and made to eat Beauty's remains as punishment, suggesting when she cringes from it that dog is too good a meal for a runaway. While it's not totally clear, I think it's possible that Ruby knocked her out in order to escape with Katy, which is the last time you see Mama, and significantly, she and Ruby are the only ones of the pack still alive by the end of the movie.
Of all of Wes Craven's films, this and the sequel are the ones where the characters are the most isolated and cut off from the rest of the world. Always a good type of setting for a horror film, the real stroke of genius was to make it the center of a hot, barren desert and comes off as sort of the inverse of the Arctic landscape in John Carpenter's The Thing. Nothing about this place is inviting: it's hot as crap during the day and freezing at night, it's many, many miles from even a semblance of civilization, meaning that you'd die long before you reached any sort of town, there's nothing edible or refreshing to be found in the dusty, harsh landscape, the surrounding hills are rocky and jagged, with washes full of thorny plants, and, besides the Hill family, there are things like rattlesnakes and ugly tarantulas to deal with. Speaking of which, deep in the hills is the family's lair, which is little more than a primitive camp outside of a tiny cave, the opening which is covered by a combination of some kind of old, animal pelt and camouflage netting. On top of that, the Air Force often uses the place as a gunnery range, with jets constantly peeling through the sky, the loud and sudden sound of which could scare the life out of you (that's one of the reasons why the Carters get stuck in the first place), the road dead-ends at an abandoned airfield, and, according to their map, there's a nuclear testing site nearby. And besides the cramped quarters of their trailer and station wagon, the only thing they have near them that's even close to a functioning piece of civilization is Fred's gas station and even it's so rundown and desolate, with Fred having very nearly run out of food, water, and fuel, that it barely qualifies.
Aside from the way it looks, there's also the atmosphere it emits, which is one of being out there all alone, feeling like the desert has completely swallowed you up, and yet, at the same time, a sense of being watched. Both Brenda and the dogs pick up on this, even if they can't exactly put their finger on why they feel that way, and it lingers both during the day and at night. Whether you're scanning the seemingly empty landscape with your eyes in the bright sunlight or surrounded by pitch blackness at night, the characters can't help but wonder if something's watch them. That sense of foreboding is not helped by the sound of the wind cutting through the silence at night or the feeling of complete abandonment during the scene when Bob makes it back to Fred's gas station that night, hearing a howling sound that turns out to be the wind going through the spout of a pot left outside. And then, of course, there are the moments when the family slowly but surely starts to realize that they really aren't as alone as they think, hearing what sounds like someone breathing over their CB radio and a glimpse of someone stalking in the brush. In short, the desert makes for an inspired setting for a horror film and it makes you wonder why, besides this franchise, there aren't more of them that take place in these kinds of areas.
The fact that, much like Tobe Hooper and company with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the cast and crew basically lived the movie while making it comes through onscreen and helps give it some authenticity. While filming out in Apple Valley, California, they all virtually lived in the very camper they used in the movie and you can tell that they had to deal with the same, harsh conditions as their characters in the movie. They're really having to be out there in truly brutal heat (it got well over 100 degrees during the day, which was especially brutal on Michael Berryman, who has no sweat glands because of the condition he has) and freezing cold, surrounded by a rocky and spiky landscape that's full of deadly creatures, a place where you could seriously hurt yourself without even trying. You can also tell that the place is absolutely filthy and unsanitary, with no first-class accommodations to be found, and you would be uncomfortable simply being there. The film's being shot on 16mm brings this feeling home, as it just looks so grimy and dirty that, just as the same type of look helps you almost smell the sleaze in The Last House on the Left, it's like you can literally feel the heat, the dirt, and the dust blowing in the wind.
Comparisons between The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre are quite apt in more ways than one. Not only are the stories very similar (a group of people get stranded, in some way or another, in the countryside and have to content with a family of cannibals) and they were both shot on 16mm in very harsh conditions but they also share the same art director: Bob Burns. Just like he did with the Sawyer house in that film, he gave the environment in which the Hill family live a grisly sense of reality, filling the small cave they live in with bones, deer antlers, and draping that animal pelt and camouflage netting over the entrance, while putting up totems of bones and strewing some others and skulls here and there. I think that some of those props he put in there were stuff he had made for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and, since he designed Leatherface's masks there as well, he also had a hand in designing the costumes for the family, which are often a combination of actual clothes with animal furs, bones, and other objects that they find and use for decoration (Pluto wears a sort of necklace made of bones, gun shells, and raccoon skin, Jupiter and Mama wear bones here and there on their outfits, etc.). And while I don't know if Burns had any say in some of the distinct weapons the family use, particularly that one knife that almost looks like a thin pyramid sticking out of a crudely-fashioned blade, they look just as wild and feral as the place in which they live.
Yet another similarity between these two films is that, as violent as they get, there aren't a lot of overt bloodshed to be found in them. While the deaths are quite brutal, like Jupiter beating Fred with a tire iron before sticking him to the inside of an outhouse door with it, Bob getting staked to a tree before being blown up and slowly burning to death, a bird getting its head snapped off and its blood being drunk, Lynne and Ethel getting shot, Pluto getting his throat torn out, Jupiter getting axed before being shot himself, and Mars getting stabbed to death, it's more about the chaotic, violent tone and suggestion rather than showing a lot of gore. In fact, some of the ideas are more gruesome than the violence that's actually seen, like how the Hills family plans to make baby Katy into a "tenderloin" and the notion of Bobby and Brenda having to use their mother's corpse as a means to lure Jupiter into their trap. That's not to say there's no blood whatsoever, as there's actually more to be found here than in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: a bloody handprint is left on the inside of the door to Fred's gas station, you see Beauty's body with her guts spilling out), Lynne stabs Mars in the leg, you see Bob's burnt, disembodied head as Jupiter chews on his arm, there's a very nasty shot of Pluto's Achilles tendon after it's ripped open, and during the final fight between Doug and Mars, the former sticks his finger into the latter's leg wound before stabbing him to death. But, in spite of these "lovely" sights, the film is nowhere near as sickening and grotesque as The Last House on the Left, where it felt like Wes Craven was trying to break every taboo he could, and it's certainly not as sleazy either. While Brenda does indeed get sexually assaulted, first by Pluto and then Mars, it's not done in as graphic and skin-crawling a manner as what Krug and his crew put Mari and Phyllis through, and other than Lynne and Doug making love in the station wagon, during which you see nothing, it's the only sexual content in the entire movie. Like I said earlier, it feels like Craven, while still trying to make an effective horror film, didn't feel the need to push the envelope as far as he did the first time around, no doubt because he didn't want to go through that kind of venomous backlash again.
What he did bring over from that movie was one of the major themes, which is the notion that even the most "civilized" of people are capable of great savagery when they're pushed, something that, in this case, he took from the stories of how, when the Sawney Bean clan was captured and brought back to civilization to pay for their crimes, their punishment was no less hideous than what they did to the scores of innocent travelers they killed and ate over the years. By the third act of the movie, with so many of their family dead, baby Katy abducted, and stripped of their food, water, and weapons, the remaining Carters have to go to extreme measures in order to survive, be it in how Brenda and Bobby set up a trap for Jupiter, which involves their mother's corpse being used as bait, and end up stabbing him with an axe and shooting him down, or the very end of the movie, when Doug brutally stabs into Mars again and again in an uncontrollable fury. In fact, the ending to this and The Last House on the Left are very similar, as they both fade out on a final image of a parent or parents standing over the body of one of their family's killers, which they themselves have just butchered and appear to be finally coming terms with what they've just done. In this case, there's more of a ray of hope, in that Doug has succeeded in saving his baby, and there's a difference in that, unlike Mari's parents, who brutalized Krug and his gang out of pointless revenge, the remainders of the Carter family have committed these acts purely out of an instinct to survive (one of the taglines sums it up nicely, saying, "A nice American family. They didn't want to kill, but they didn't want to die,"). However, the ending still has the same meaning, that they've become just as savage as their cannibalistic counterparts.
Speaking of which, that's another thing: the Carter family and the Hills family are depicted as not being that much different from each other (in fact, some have seen the movie as Craven's twisted take on The Grapes of Wrath, splitting the family traveling through the Dust Bowl in that story into both clans here). For one, they're both hierarchical and patriarchal, both run by big, gruff, loudmouthed father figures, each with a son who acts as a second-in-command (in Bob Carter's case, it's Bobby, whereas with Jupiter, it's Mars), and in both families, the women are sort of expected to fall in line and obey, given how, when Bob leaves Bobby in charge, he tells Brenda to listen to him. Significantly, both fathers end up inadvertently dooming their respective clans, with Bob's insistence on trying to find the mine leading to their getting stranded, while the animalistic way of life Jupiter teaches his kin is what leads to their deaths when their attacking the Carters forces them to fight back. There's even a sort of a shared feeling of the right to defend private property amongst them, given how Jupiter rants about how they've invaded his family's home, while the Carters' dog, Beast, has been trained to attack on command, meaning that he's probably a lethal guard dog for the family's house. But, the biggest parallel between them is the notion that, middle-class or feral, blood is blood to either of them and, when it's spilled, there's hell to pay.
As much good as I can get out of The Hills Have Eyes, there are things about it that keep it from becoming one of my top horror films or Wes Craven films, for that matter. I can appreciate that Craven and a lot of the people working with him didn't have much experience or, for that matter, barely any money (well under $1 million, although, ironically, Craven said that, at the time, he thought it was a major step up from the tiny budget he had with The Last House on the Left), but it still shows in some areas. For one, the cinematography, while fairly well-done during the daytime scenes, really suffers during the big chunk of the movie that takes place at night. It is commendable that they actually shot at night, rather than resorting to day-for-night like a lot of low budget films do, and I get that the pitch blackness is meant to add to the tension, but sometimes, it's so dark that it's hard to tell what you're looking at. That image of Jupiter that you see here was what I initially used for the first paragraph where I talked about his character but I decided to switch it with one that was easier to make out and, as you'll see as we go on, it's far from the only instance of that (there's a brief shot of Jupiter making off with Bob's body in the darkness at one point but it took many viewings for me to realize that's what it was). In addition, I find the editing, which Craven also did himself, to often be really choppy and chaotic. Again, I get that that's probably how it's meant to come off but, when the cutting is so kinetic and involves a bunch of closeups, whatever is happening is often over before I can process what it was I saw (seriously, the first time I watched the movie, I wasn't able to grasp exactly how they wrecked other than Bob swerved so as not to hit a jackrabbit that was in the road). Some may feel it adds to the crazed nature of the movie, which I do think it does in the attack on the trailer, but I personally prefer to be able to really see everything to enjoy or at least be affected by what's going on. Also, this is a minor quibble but the transition from one scene to another is always done in cuts, rather than dissolves or fades to black and sometimes, it's so abrupt and sudden that it's a bit jarring
Other problems that I have go deeper than the technical aspects. One of them is the Hills family as a whole. Individually, I find some of them to be very effective and unsettling, like Jupiter and Mars, but as a single unit, the idea of them doesn't get to me like the Sawyers in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. An aspect of the Sawney Bean story that truly interested Craven was the notion of a primitive, feral family existing during a time and place that was ostensibly civilized, rather than one where cultural isolation and a lack of social conditions would understandably lead to such a thing, and he felt it would be interesting to update that 1970's America; for me, though, while the idea of a cannibalistic clan living out in the middle of nowhere, waiting for unsuspecting travelers to come there way, is creepy, I get more freaked out at the idea of such a thing being closer to home. The Sawyers still lived in a place that was very out-of-the-way, in the Texas backwoods, but they still operated right under the noses of the residents of a tiny town, with one of them running a local gas station and selling questionable barbecue, another roaming the roads and desecrating local cemeteries, and the third and most monstrous of them lurking in an innocuous-looking house that you could easily stumble across if you found yourself lost and in need of help. That chills me more, as it feels you'd have a much greater chance of running into them. Also, even though I understand the logistics behind it, the way the Hill family looks sometimes feels unintentionally silly. I'm not talking about their physical appearance (although, Mars' shaggy, Afro-like hairdo does make me snicker a little) but rather the way they're dressed. Those furs and bones are sometimes hard to take seriously, especially the bone necklace and headdress that Mama wears and that necklace that Pluto has with that coonskin, which make him feel like a kind of feral Davey Crockett, not to mention that stupid-looking Native American headdress Mercury wears. I don't mean to be racist but I half expect Mercury to pull out a tomahawk and start yelling with his hand over his mouth.
Finally, I feel that the movie takes too long to get going, as it's not until around the hour-mark, in a movie that's only 89 minutes, when things start to ratchet up (once they do, though, it's pretty good). I'm all for a slow-burn and building suspense but, if it's not done well enough, I'm just going to be sitting there, bored. As I've said, I don't hate the characters of the Carter family but they're not quite interesting enough to where I want to spend the better half of a movie with them, waiting for something to happen, and though the landscape and the atmosphere that permeates it are used well, tonally, I don't think the movie creates enough tension to where I'm on the edge of my seat for what's coming their way. Instead, during all the buildup of Pluto watching them from afar with binoculars, luring Beauty in to kill her, Ethel and Lynne hearing deep, animal-like breathing over the CB, and Mars using his skill at imitating animals to lure Bobby out of the trailer, I'm just sitting there, thinking, "Come on, let's get to it." Craven may have eventually become skilled with all of the tools necessary for a slow burn but, at this point, his inexperience causes it to not quite hit the mark in this film.
The movie opens at Fred's gas station, Fred's Oasis, as he's preparing to close down and leave, gathering everything he can find into the back of his pickup truck, when Ruby shows up out of nowhere. When she gives him some things to trade, Fred tells her that there's going to be no more trading, as she and the "pack," as he calls them, have gone too far in robbing an Air Force field. He says he has nothing else to trade, adding that the people in the nearest town have cut him off completely and there's been talk of the National Guard coming through. That's when Ruby asks him to take her with him but he refuses, saying that she couldn't fit in with the real world and that Jupiter would kill her if he found out; Ruby then her father would do the same to him if he learned he was leaving. Hearing someone outside, and thinking it's the state troopers, Fred hides Ruby in a cupboard and heads outside, only to meet Bob Carter. He decides to give them what fuel and water he has upon their asking him to fill it up, while the other members of the family get out to stretch their legs, with Bobby going around back to use the bathroom. There's a moment where, after walking out of the outhouse, Bobby goes up to this little pig that Fred has in the back of his truck and plays with it, only to seemingly get an eerie feeling and look around the desolate place. As Fred checks the car's water, Ethel asks him about the silver mine that her aunt is said to have given her and Bob for their silver anniversary, but he insists that there's no silver to be found and the Air Forces uses the land as a gunnery range, his point being made by a jet that flies by. After Bob pays him, Fred tells that there hasn't been any silver in those hills for forty years and that there's nothing back there but animals. While they're talking, Doug and Beast walk into the gas station to look around, when the dog starts growling and looking out the window. Doug notices a broken part of the glass which seems to have blood on it and he then hears Ruby talking to someone out back. He tries to keep Beast quiet but he lets out a loud bark and then drags him out the back door, continuing to bark at something that he senses. At the trailer, Bobby yells for Doug to come on, saying that Beast probably just smells some animals back there. Doug then pulls the dog back, not seeing a figure running around back there, taking cover behind pieces of the old farm (said figure is later revealed to have been Mercury).
Going back to the trailer, Doug tells Fred that he thinks one of his "grandchildren" cut himself on the window before walking in, and as they drive on, Fred again tells them, "You folks go right to California and have a good trip. You folks stay on the main road now, you hear?! Stay on the main road." Fred then walks back inside to find Ruby is no longer in the cupboard and, glancing at the window, he gathers up all the stuff that she brought with her to trade on the floor and puts it in there. Outside, as the Carters drive off, Mercury tells Ruby to come on as they head back into the wilderness, right before Fred's truck explodes. Hearing it, Fred rushes to the front door of his station and, seeing his truck engulfed in flames, he moans, "Oh, lord." Closing the door, he finds a bloody handprint on the back of it and, grabbing a gun, sits down and says, "There'll be hell to pay now."
As the Carters drive down the barren, desert road, there's a POV that's apparently from atop a high ridge, as Pluto, seeing the car, tries to contact Jupiter. His mother tells him that Jupiter is out hunting and Pluto tells her that Mercury was right about a station wagon and a trailer approaching. In the car, the family debates about whether or not they're lost, while Bob talks about how he thinks Fred didn't want them to go that way because he stole all of the silver from the mine for himself. Trying to figure out where they are on the map, Brenda sees a spot nearby that's labeled, A.E.C. NUCLEAR TESTING SITE, causing her to exclaim, "Holy shit, Daddy!" Bob promptly loses it, telling everybody to shut up, growling, "Man alive! We're not a bomb range and we're not goddamn lost and we're..." Suddenly, he's cut off when a fighter jet flies right over them, with a noise loud enough to make them all about jump out of their skins. Exclaiming, "Jesus Christ in a crunch, what was that?!", Bob hits the gas and starts speeding down the road, as Lynne, trying to calm Katy, who's crying, tells him to slow down, that they're going to lose the trailer. Another jet flies over them and startles everyone again, with the map flying in Bob's face, causing him to skid off the road a bit, and once he grabs it and flings it, Ethel screams, as he's about to hit a jackrabbit that's in the road. Bob quickly swerves and they go careening off the road, slamming onto a large bush and stopping dead. In the next cut, everyone's gotten out of the car and making sure that they're okay, with Bobby stumbling out of the trailer, letting the dogs out as he does, while Doug and Lynne comfort each other. Bobby and Brenda, meanwhile, get into a squabble when the latter is more concerned about her finches, while Bob goes on his tirade about his job as a Cleveland police officer didn't come as close to killing him as his own wife just did. As Bobby and Brenda stand out in the desert, looking up at some turkey buzzards circling above them, they're unknowingly watched by Pluto, who takes a piece of a stick and draws some sort of figure, that's possibly meant to be Brenda, into the dirt. Creepily saying, "Pretty. Pretty girl," he wipes it away.
Finding the axle has snapped, Bob tells Brenda that they have no choice but to walk. He's then getting ready to head back to Fred's Oasis, putting on a coat for when the sun goes down and giving Bobby a handgun, before loading his own: a howitzer that the men at his precinct gave him as a retirement gift. Over by the trailer, Brenda is beginning to get an ominous feeling that's more than just the discomforts of the environment, while Lynne goes into the trailer to fetch Doug's coat, only to find a big tarantula crawling across it. Carefully, she lifts the coat up, dropping the spider to the floor, and promptly stomps it, freaking out a bit while doing so. Once he has his coat, Doug tells Bob his plan to head north to check out what appears to be a sort of military installation on the map. Ethel suggests that Doug take one of the guns but he says that he feels one of the two guns they have should stay at the camp with them. Once they've decided on what they're doing, Ethel suggests they all say a prayer, which Brenda isn't too thrilled but she joins in when everyone else does. After the prayer, Bob and Doug set on their respective paths, all while Pluto keeps watch from nearby, telling his mother over the walkie-talkie, "They stuck good. Easy pickings, now."
Beast is shown chained up by the trailer, while Beauty walks over to where Brenda is standing and begins to whine out of fear while looking at the hills. Bobby calls her over and puts her in the trailer, where she looks out the window and continues to whine, as Brenda glances warily at the hills. The remaining Carters are setting up to have lunch, as Beauty keeps whining and Lynne wonders what her problem is. Brenda then makes the mistake of walking over and opening the door, with Beauty then bolting out straight into the hills. Bobby chases after her, yelling at her, while Beast starts barking as well, which he wasn't doing beforehand. Beauty reaches the rocky hills and begins climbing them, following the sound of Pluto's voice, as he calls for her. Hearing Bobby call for her, she almost turns around and goes back, but when Pluto calls to her again, she starts climbing up to find him. As Bobby reaches the hills himself and is forced to start climbing them, Beauty continues upward, barking aggressively as she reaches the source of the scent she doesn't like. Bobby hears her barking, just before she comes across and lunges at Pluto, snarling at him, but then, he hears her let out a pained howl that echoes across through the hills. Ignoring Ethel's calls for him to come back, Bobby, seeing rocks being tossed over a large stone at the top of the hill and hearing someone laughing, makes the trek up to the top and, reaching there, finds a bloody handprint on the side of one of the rocks. He then takes a few steps and, rounding a corner, makes the grisly discovery of Beauty's disemboweled body, her entrails spilling onto the ground. Suddenly, a nearby bush rustles and the sound of someone yelling at him sends him running back down the hill in a panic, his frantic running causing him to trip and fall, knocking himself out.
Night falls and so does the temperature, as those back at the camp have had to light a fire outside. Lynne heads inside the trailer, as Ethel tries to reach somebody over the CB and when she doesn't get anything, Lynne tries. Her message doesn't go unnoticed, as Pluto picks it up on his walkie-talkie and, simply to toy with them, breathes heavily over it for a couple of seconds. Worrying about what that was, and fretting where Bobby and the other men are, Lynne walks back outside and finds that Brenda is gone. As it turns out, she took Beast and went out to look for Bobby, but as she walks in the pitch blackness, she trips and falls, prompting the dog to run off without her. Now stuck in the dark, she walks on, calling for Bobby, while brandishing the gun Bob left with them. She stops upon hearing something and looks at the gun, wondering how it works, unaware that she's being watched from nearby. She's then startled by a loud sound but it turns out to be Bobby, who emerges from the darkness, holding Beast's chain. Seemingly in a daze, she walks right by Brenda, ignoring her question about a cut on his face and walks on back to the trailer. At this very moment, Bob reaches Fred's Oasis, which appears to be deserted. After finding that an eerie, high-pitched whistling sound he hears is just the wind rushing through the spot of a jug left outside, Bob heads into the station, drawing his gun just in case. Walking up to the desk, he picks up the phone, only to hear the dial tone die as soon as he puts it to his ear. Hearing a loud noise akin to a gunshot behind him, he swings around and fires, hitting a door on the other side of the room that quickly closes from the inside. Some rustling comes from behind it and Bob walks over to it, kicking it open to find Fred hanging from a belt tied into a makeshift hangman's noose. He lifts him up out of it and sets him down, Fred choking wildly while grabbing at his throat. He demands to know what's going on and Fred, after saying that he thought Bob was someone else, asks him how his family is. Bob tells him about the wreck but says that they're all fine, to which Fred says, "Like hell they are." Walking over to the window and taking a swig of booze, Fred tells him that there's something he needs to know.
Back at the camp, Bobby learns that Bob and Doug still aren't back, and when Brenda asks him about Beauty, he says that she ran off. The two of them go into the trailer, where Bobby receives a warm greeting from Ethel and Lynne, all while someone watches from a nearby bush. Meanwhile, as Bob looks around the station for something useful, Fred tells him the story of the monstrous kid his wife gave birth to and how he completely destroyed his life. When Fred gets to the part where he hit his son with a tire iron and left him out in the desert to die, Bob, believing that he thinks his ghost is after him, says, "That was a long time ago." Fred then retorts, "Long from to steal a whore that nobody'd miss. Long enough to raise a passel of wild kids. Long enough for a devil kid to grow up to be a devil man!" Bob then finds the bag full of stuff that Ruby was wanting to trade earlier but, before Fred can explain what it is, Jupiter smashes through the window behind him, grabs him, and pulls him out, lifting him into the air like he was nothing. Bob watches all of this in horror, hearing Fred's desperate screams as they vanish into the dark, while outside, Jupiter pulls his father across the ground, grabs a tire iron, straddles his waist, and beats him to death with it. Bob takes out his gun and heads outside, initially finding no sign of either of them, but when he walks over to the outhouse to find a piece of Fred's shirt snagged on a nail, the door suddenly swings open and he sees the old man's body impaled through it with the tire iron. At the trailer, Bobby learns about the strange sounds Lynne and Ethel heard over the CB, with Lynne telling him that what they heard was not static, as Ethel tries to explain it away as. Hearing something outside, Bobby goes out there, armed with his gun, and runs to the rear to see if he can see anything. Finding nothing, he wonders, "Aw, Jesus! What's going on?", while elsewhere, his father runs down the road in the dark. Stopping to catch his breath, he hears Jupiter taunting him out in the dark, yelling, "Daddy! Come and try and get me!" Enraged at this, Bob runs on but doesn't get far before his heart condition starts to give him problems and collapses to the ground. Hearing Jupiter nearby, Bob takes some shots at a bush but then recoils in pain from his heart. Jupiter walks over to him and puts his foot on his hand when he tries to go for his gun. Taking it and putting it away, Jupiter contacts Pluto on his walkie-talkie, telling him, "We about ready."
At the camp, Bobby is still standing guard outside, when hears someone approaching and sees their figure out in the darkness. Getting behind the station wagon, he points the gun, only for the person to reveal themselves to be Doug, carrying some items he found at the airfield and who politely asks Bobby to point the gun elsewhere. Sensing that something's wrong, Doug asks Bobby what the problem is and he tells him that Bob isn't back yet, as well as that Beast broke his chain and ran off a while ago (when did that happen?). He's about to tell him what happened to Beauty, the others come out of the trailer to greet Doug. He tells them about the abandoned place that he found and shows them some of the items he picked up, which include a long, metal rope. When asked if he found anyone, Doug says that there was no one out there and the road ended right there. As everyone heads back in, Beast, having found what's left of Beauty, angrily barks up at the rocks, while at the Hill family's lair, Ruby, who's chained up outside and forced to eat Beauty's cooked body parts, hears Beast howling. Looking at what she's eating and thinking that she hears is Beauty's ghost, she stops eating and spits out what's in her mouth. That's when her mother comes out and, asking her if she doesn't like dog anymore, suggests that it's probably too good for a "runaway slut like you." Hearing Beast, Mama realizes that it's another dog, which calls, "A great, big stud." Mama then heads back inside, refusing to let Ruby in, leaving her chained out there. Elsewhere, Jupiter stuffs something into Bob's mouth as a gag and, taking a stone, uses it to stake his hands to a tree, all while smiling in a sadistic way.
Heading inside the trailer when Ethel calls him in, Bobby locks the door, only for Lynne to tell him that her and Doug are going to go to bed in the station wagon. Bobby tries to tell Doug that he doesn't think that's a good idea and is about to tell him why, when Lynne comes up to them, ready to go out. Thinking that Bobby is worried about his father, Doug assures him that he'll back by 9:30 but, as he and Lynne are heading out, he tells him that if Bob isn't back by 11:00, they'll go looking for him. Once they step out and the door is closed, Bobby, reluctantly, locks it and starts listening to some music to try and calm his nerves. As Lynne and Doug make love out in the station wagon, a bony hand that's revealed to belong to Pluto lifts up the lid to the fuel tank and he then uses a rubber tube to suck the fuel out and into a can. Once that's done, he subtly signals to Mars, who's sneaking around in the dark just outside the light of the campfire. Inside the trailer, Bobby sees on his watch that it's now 11:00 and he takes off the headphones he was using, only to hear what sounds like Beast outside. Taking his gun, he walks outside and calls for Beast, only to get what sounds like pained barks and yelps in return. Walking into the darkness, he runs a short distance when it really sounds as if Beast is in trouble, tripping and falling at one point, and he becomes frantic when he gets up and looks around in the dark, trying to find Beast. The sounds of Beast yelping soon become those of other animals, like a sheep bleating and a cow mooing. This freaks Bobby out and he heads back to the trailer, only to find that he apparently locked himself out of it. Frustrated, and with Doug and Lynne having the only other key, he futilely rattles the door, unaware that on the other side, Pluto is standing with a knife, ready to stab him if he manages to get in. Once he stops and sits down in front of the door, Pluto, with Ethel and Brenda asleep in another part of the trailer, unaware of the danger they're in, gets to work taking all the valuables and food that he can find. Bobby then goes over to the station wagon and, interrupting Doug and Lynne's alone time, motions for them to roll down the window, while Pluto, having gathered everything and setting it on the table, heads to the back of the trailer. Bobby asks them for the keys and, as Doug gives them to him, he finally breaks down and tells them that something strange is going on. Telling them that Bob's not back yet, he then finally admits what happened to Beauty, that someone killed her. Now knowing that something serious is going on, Doug gets the flashlight and tells Bobby that they'll go look, with Lynne refusing to stay behind by herself.
Inside the trailer, as he looks at Brenda as she's asleep in bed, Pluto gives a signal over his walkie-talkie and, in an instant, a huge and very loud explosion lights up the sky nearby. The sound of it causes Ethel to bolt up in her bed, as everyone then hears the sound of Bob screaming for help in agony. Doug tries to stop Ethel as she comes through the trailer door but she gets by him and runs out there. While Pluto silences Brenda with his mouth, Doug rushes inside, grabs a fire extinguisher, and, unable to see Pluto because of the closed drape, tells Brenda to keep an eye on the baby. After he rushes out the door to the site, Mars hops down from atop the trailer and tells Jupiter over his walkie-talkie that he and Pluto have made it into the trailer before walking in and shutting the door. The others reach the spot to be faced with the horrific sight of Bob being burned alive on a scorched Joshua tree and Doug douses him with the fire extinguisher, smothering the remaining flames with his coat, as Lynne tries to restrain Ethel. Back at the trailer, as Pluto has his way with Brenda behind the drape, Mars helps himself to whatever he can find in the kitchen, such as raw meat, some milk, and one of the finches, which he takes out of its cage, snaps its head off, and pours its blood down his throat. Hearing Brenda screaming and Pluto laughing, Mars walks over to the bedroom, pulls Pluto off of her, and throws him to the floor. Enraged, Pluto pulls a knife on him but he kicks it away and pulls a gun on him before he can retaliate, telling him, "Pee-Wee, you wait till you get to be a man." This sends Pluto into a fury, as he throws and smashes the plates at the sink, rips out the cupboards, throws some eggs, and takes the axe he found earlier to the table, before finally stopping and glaring at Mars. That's when Mars notices baby Katy in her cradle and, turning to Brenda with an evil smile, he tells her, "Baby's fat. You fat. Fat and juicy." He then moves in on her, pulling her into position on the bed, and proceeds to have his own way with her, moaning creepily as he descends on her.
Out in the desert, Doug and Bobby lift Bob's charred body off of the Joshua tree and lay him down on the ground. As Doug tells Bobby that he needs some water, Ethel has a complete mental break, saying, "That's not my Bob," repeatedly, to the point where she starts laughing hysterically about it. Humoring Ethel, Doug has Lynne take her back to the trailer, while Bobby tosses Doug his jacket to put over Bob's body. He then takes his gun and is about to walk off, telling Doug when he tries to stop him, "You're not my father. I'm gonna get those bastards." He heads out into the darkness, continuing to ignore Doug, who hears Bob moan, with smoke coming out of his mouth, before he suddenly stops moving, succumbing to his injuries. Telling him, "So long, Bob," Doug pulls the jacket over his head, while back at the trailer, Pluto sees that Lynne and Ethel are coming back. He tells Mars that they should just take what they came for and leave, hopping out the door, right in front of the two frightened women, and immediately running off into the darkness. Hearing Katy crying inside, Lynne runs in and is faced with Mars, who's trying to carry her baby off. Mars tries to get past Lynne but she knees him and tries to wrestle Katy away from him, only to get thrown to the floor and held there, as Mars tries to get his gun out of its holster. Ethel walks in and, seeing Mars, grabs a broom and smacks him in the head with it, as Brenda crawls to the knife lying on the floor nearby. Mars then pulls the gun out and promptly shoots Ethel, who immediately collapses on the couch behind her; elsewhere, Bobby hears the shot. Brenda reaches the knife and rolls it across the floor to Lynne, who grabs it but gets shot in the lower torso before she can use it. With Bobby heading back to the trailer, Brenda screams in horror at what's just happened to her sister, but while Mars is distracted by it, Lynne lurches forward and stabs Mars in the side of the leg. Blood gushing out of the cut, Mars shoots Lynne again, this time finishing her off and causing her to violently roll over onto her stomach. Pluto, having heard the commotion, comes back in and sees Doug coming from nearby. Mars hands him Katy and Pluto ducks out, while he goes and grabs Brenda, drags her through the trailer, and out the door. Seeing both Bobby and Doug coming, Mars takes out his gun and is about to shoot her point-blank in the head, only for it to click empty when he pulls the trigger. Growling, "I'll come back for you later, girly," he flings her to the ground and quickly hobbles off, just avoiding getting shot by Bobby when he arrives, while Doug tries to comfort the hysterical Brenda. After firing three shots and missing each time, Bobby is then handed Brenda, while Doug walks into the trailer.
In there, Doug is horrified to find Lynne lying on the floor and Ethel slumped on the couch. Turning his wife over, he finds blood on the floor underneath her and, lifting her up, he cradles and kisses her, trying to rouse her. But, when her head falls back, he realizes that she's dead and lays her back down. Leaning over to Ethel, who has a bleeding gunshot in her torso, he finds her still alive and promptly puts every blanket he can find on her. Realizing it's too quiet, he immediately goes to check on Katy and finds her gone. Rushing outside, he tells Bobby to get Brenda inside and to see to his mother, as he then rushes out into the dark wilderness, hysterically screaming at his baby's abductors. Stopping, he says quietly, "Give me back my baby. My Katherine. Please." In another part of the desert, as they stop to take a rest, Mars tells Pluto that they still have a gun but he says that he took their bullets. He then takes out his walkie-talkie and, despite some initial problems, manages to get ahold of Mercury, who says that he sees them. Spying what Pluto's holding and realizing what it is, Mercury says that he knows their mother and father will be really happy. Laughing with their dim-witted brother, Pluto and Mars head on back to the lair. Unbeknownst to Mercury, he's being watched from nearby by Beast. With his back turned to him, the dog rushes down towards him on his ledge, not making a sound, and when Mercury turns around, Beast lunges at him, sending him falling off to his death with a loud thud. Having heard the sound, Pluto stops and tells Mars he heard what sounded like rocks falling. Scoffing, "You got rocks in your head, asshole," Mars tells him to just come on and they both resume walking back home. Back at the ledge, Beast, spying Mercury's walkie-talkie, grabs it and heads off with it.
At the lair, Jupiter, who made off with Bob's corpse without the other realizing it, dumps it on the ground upon arriving. Seeing Ruby, who's still chained outside, he stomps up to her and slaps her, before grabbing her, lifting her up, and growling, "I heard you tried to run away." When Ruby denies it, Jupiter adds, "I heard you messin' with Grandpa Fred. I fixed Grandpa Fred good." Laughing, he makes a throat slashing gesture with his finger for emphasis, saying, "I like fixin' people good." Back at the trailer, Doug wearily shows back up, having to knock on the door to get Bobby to let him in, and even then, Bobby puts a gun in his face before allowing him in. He then stumbles in and looks absentmindedly at Katy's empty cradle, while at that very moment, Pluto and Mars make it back with her. Everyone except Ruby is really happy at the sight of her, as Jupiter proclaims, "About time we got some powerful food around here!" He then tells Pluto to call in Mercury, as they don't need a guard anymore that night, while he shows Katy to Ruby and Mama, calling her a Thanksgiving dinner. While at the trailer, Bobby hysterically asked an out of it Doug what they're going to do, and as Doug finds Brenda in shock and not wanting to be touched, Pluto comes back to tell Jupiter that he can't get Mercury to answer. Pluto then tells Mars, "I told you I heard somethin'," and Jupiter, hearing that, puts his hand on the back of Pluto's head and asks, "You heard what?" Nervous, Pluto says, "I'll go find him," and runs off to do just that, while Jupiter looms towards Mars, demanding to know if he called them all, like he was supposed to.
Pulling a blanket over her, Doug has to deal with a dying and confused Ethel, who asks if "Daddy" is back yet and then asks if Lynne is asleep, which Doug is just barely able to answer. Ethel asks for another blanket, despite already having one on her, saying it's chilly, and Doug does his best to keep her warm. Suddenly, the lights go out in the trailer due to the battery dying and, as they look around, they realize that Pluto and Mars took the lantern; Brenda becomes hysterical, frantically telling Bobby not to let Mars get her. She hears something outside and screams in a panic, as Bobby fires three shots through the door. Not hearing anything, Bobby thinks he might have hit whoever it was, when they're confused to hear the sound of Pluto yelling for Mercury. Looking through the keyhole of the door, Doug warily opens it and steps outside to find a walkie-talkie lying in the dirt. As he picks it up, he hears Pluto trying to contact Jupiter, and then hears what sounds like Beast around the edge of the trailer. He goes to look, with Bobby warning him that they can imitate Beast perfectly, and there's a moment where he stops next to the trailer, looking around in total silence. That's when Beast jumps out at him and about scares him to death. They're all relieved to learn that it was just him, Bobby realizing that he purposefully brought them the walkie-talkie, and they then hear Jupiter learn of Mercury's death, becoming enraged when Pluto tells him that he was pushed off the ledge by Beast. Hearing this, Doug hugs Beast, telling him he's a good boy, while Jupiter tells Pluto to get back to the lair, that they got some things to do. The next scene is when Jupiter, as he munches on Bob's severed arm, tells his charred head that he's going to kill his children for what Beast did to Mercury, his family applauding him for it. He then tells Mars to keep an eye on Katy, who's currently being held by Ruby, saying he doesn't want anything to happen to her unless he says so. Mars insists that he's going with Jupiter the next day but Jupiter tells him he'll do no such thing, saying, "Where you got that cut on your leg's a blood pipe as big as your thumb. Good place to cut somebody, but not so good to get cut there yourself." Figuring Doug will come for Katy, Jupiter tells Mars he can kill him then. After Pluto hands him the gun, telling him it's loaded, Jupiter says, "It's getting light out. Let's get started."
Come dawn, Doug and Beast are trekking across the rocks, Beast leading him to the spot where killed Mercury. Getting there, Doug sees Jupiter and Pluto trekking down below. Realizing where they must be heading, Doug tries to contact Bobby with the walkie-talkie but, at the trailer, Bobby's trying to call for help. In the bedroom, Brenda discovers that her mother is dead and, crying over her body, walks into the kitchen and makes Bobby aware of what's happened as well. Out in the hills, Jupiter and Pluto find a spot where they can look down at the trailer and figure that they might be armed and ready for them. In the trailer, Bobby suddenly gets a response to mayday he's been sending out, the voice telling them they're "Air Force Rescue." When asked what their defensive capabilities are at the time, Bobby tells them that they have one gun with just two bullets. After a brief pause, the voice says, "We are recommending that, until we can get to you, you stand on your heads with your thumbs up your ass..." before turning into laughter, as Bobby and Brenda realize it's them and that they just told them they're sitting ducks. Jupiter tells Pluto that they'll use a nearby wash to reach the trailer, saying they'll never see them coming, and head out. Elsewhere, Doug and Beast reach the lair, looking down on it to see Mars limping around outside. Mars gets a call from Pluto, who tells him that they've seen some signs and that Doug may show up any moment. Doug again tries to contact and warn Bobby that Jupiter and Pluto are coming but, again, he gets no response. Desperate, he sends Beast out after them and the dog, understanding, runs off. At the trailer, Bobby takes one of the tires off the station wagon and douses it in gasoline, hoping to create a smoke signal that the Air Force will see; Brenda, however, tells him that they're going to have save themselves. As Jupiter and Pluto continue making their way through the wash, Brenda starts unraveling the metal rope that Doug brought back the day before, saying that she has an idea.
In the wash, Beast sits behind a bush, waiting for Pluto and Jupiter, and when they pass by, he begins stalking after them (I always found it odd to be able to see him sitting there in that long shot; it feels like we shouldn't know he's there until he starts after them). It doesn't take long before Pluto begins to feel that something's wrong and stops, with Jupiter promptly stopping as well, watching as Pluto looks around and sniffs the air. Pluto then looks at him and gestures his head in a, "I guess it's nothing," manner and Jupiter then heads on. Pluto stays behind, still sensing that something's not right, glancing behind him before looking back ahead. Seeing his chance, Beast comes charging at him and knocks him to the ground, causing him to drop his knife. As Pluto reaches for it, Beast comes back in and sinks his teeth into the back of his foot, dragging him away from the knife and ferociously ripping into him. Pluto struggles to get him off but is no match for Beast's ferocity and strength, as he begins to yell in pain, still unable to get his knife. He yells for Jupiter, who comes running back and fires a couple of shots at Beast, missing both times and with the second being the one that finally makes the dog let go of Pluto and run off. Running up to Pluto, and seeing the hideous, bloody gash in the back of his foot, as well as him wincing and whining in pain, Jupiter decides enough is enough, pulls out the walkie-talkie, and tells Mars to kill Katy. At the lair, Mars tells Ruby to bring Katy out from inside the cave. Trying to stall, Ruby has Mars limp over to the cave's entrance, where she steps out and hands him a bundle, telling Mars not to do it until she's out of sight. Taking the bundle, Mars brings it over to the table and unwraps it, only to find that what's inside is a little piglet, possibly the one from Fred's Oasis. Enraged, Mars screams for Ruby and limps back to the cave. Pulling back the drape, he finds no sign of Ruby, with Mama not knowing where she is. Going back outside, Mars sees Doug running across the side of the hill, yelling for Katy, and he looks to see Ruby on the opposite side, carrying the baby. He immediately starts after them both, as Ruby and Doug meet up with each other and she gives Katy back to her frantic father. Seeing Mars coming, they both run for it. Back at the trailer, as upsetting as it is to them, Brenda and Bobby set up some morbid bait for the oncoming killers, sitting Ethel's corpse in a folding chair near the trailer. They both cry over having to do it this way but Brenda tells Bobby it's the only way to ensure they fall into the trap.
Limping back down the wash and moaning in pain, turns and sees that Beast is stalking him, hiding behind a thorny bush and growling. Pluto proceeds to yell profanity at Beast as he comes out from behind the bush, telling him, "I killed your bitch. I'll kill you." Threatening to strangle him with his own guts, Pluto tries to lunge at Beast but falls to the ground due to his injured foot. Undeterred, he crawls towards Beast, who ducks out of sight behind the bushes. Sneaking around the bush, he looks inside and is startled when something jumps out at him, but laughs when he sees it's just a little rabbit. Falling back on the ground while laughing, he unknowingly leaves himself open to attack, as Beast comes charging at him, grabbing him the throat and tearing at his jugular. Again, Pluto struggles with the dog and manages to push him of an instant, trying to reach for his knife again, but Beast gets right back on him in an instant and repeatedly bites into him, sending blood all over his chest. Finally, Beast lets go, and watches as Pluto writhes back and forth on the ground, holding his torn throat, before finally expiring. At the trailer, Brenda is sitting atop the station wagon, watching the spot where they left Ethel's body, when she sees Jupiter emerge from the wash. She watches as Jupiter warily approaches the spot, not sure what to make of the setup with Ethel's corpse, and when he gets right in front of her and reaches out to touch her, Brenda tells Bobby down below to fire up the car. Jupiter hears the engine cranking when Bobby turns the switch, having trouble in getting it to turn over, but doesn't move as he hears the car actually start. Brenda then yells do it and Bobby hits the gas, making the tires spin in place, one of which is the one axle with no tire on it but with the metal rope tied around it. As it spins, the other end of it, which has been tied into a lasso, snags Jupiter's feet, pulls him out from under him, and drags him rapidly across the ground, sending dust flying everywhere. Brenda and Bobby are both elated at their plan working but it doesn't last long, as the car suddenly cuts off. Bobby tries to start it back but it doesn't work and he then sees why: it's out of gas.
Smoking and roaring in absolute rage, Jupiter gets to his feet and charges at Brenda and Bobby, who both abandon the station wagon and run for the trailer, ducking inside, with Bobby telling Brenda to hold her nose. As Jupiter approaches outside, Bobby tapes a match with the head facing down to the bottom of the door, right on the sandpaper section of the matchbox, which itself is taped to the floor. Unaware that the trailer he's approaching is filling up with gas from a couple of fuel tanks, Jupiter continues running towards it, while Bobby and Brenda climb out the back window and run for cover nearby. Reaching the door, Jupiter is just about to open it when he hears the gas hissing inside and, slowly but surely, realizes what the two teenagers are planning. Bobby and Brenda wait behind a bush, with Bobby anxiously waiting for Jupiter to open the door, when the trailer is suddenly and instantly destroyed in a huge explosion. The two of them cheer over their apparent victory, with Bobby holding Brenda up in the air, but then, he puts her down and heads over to the burning wreckage, saying that they better make sure. Brenda frantically chases after him, telling him not to leave her, and as they reach the wreckage, Bobby checks every corner of it, finding no sign of Jupiter, as Brenda starts screaming at her not to do it, yelling that he's dead (she gets really annoying here very quickly). With no sign of him, Bobby stops to take a breather, only for Jupiter to lunge at him from the side of the station wagon and grab him (how he managed to get the trailer to blow up and dodge the blast is anyone's guess). Seeing this, Brenda grabs a hatchet at her feet and runs for them, as Jupiter slams her brother against the car and body-slams him to the ground. As he's bent over, Brenda puts the hatchet to his back, chopping him repeatedly, as Bobby grabs the near gun and shoots him with both of the remaining bullets. Jupiter collapses to the ground and, grabbing him by the hair and lifting his head up, Bobby sees that he really is dead this time.
Deeper in the desert, the knife-wielding Mars is still chasing Doug and Ruby through the hills. Reaching a summit, Doug gives Katy to Ruby and tells her to hide, as he stops and jumps at Mars when he reaches the top, sending him tumbling backwards down the hill. Doug rushes down past him and Mars, now wanting to kill him out of revenge, chases after him, only to get a rock to the head when he gets over a rise that Doug climbed over and fall back a bit. He then chases Doug through the stacked rocks that make up the hillside, with Doug climbing up, over a spot where Ruby is hiding with Katy, and finally ducking into a tight cranny high up in the rocks. Hunkering down and putting up a knife that he has with him, Doug sees Mars coming and is about duck through a small passage behind him, only to find that it's full of rattlesnakes. Telling him that he's trapped himself where they breed, Mars comes in for the kill, when Ruby shows up behind him and tells him to come after her instead. Mars tries to ignore her, telling her that she isn't worth it, but when she starts throwing handfuls of dirt in his face, he becomes enraged and does chase after her, just barely missing her leg with his knife when he stabs at her. Doug, having gotten himself away from the snakes, hears Katy crying in a nook at the top of a cliff and starts climbing up to find her; unfortunately, Mars hears her too and decides to go up and find her as well. Doug frantically chases Mars down and tackles him to the ground and the two of them struggle, with Mars at one point getting Doug down, grabbing him by the throat and attempting to bring his knife down on him, with Doug using all of his strength to hold his arm back. Seeing the two of them struggling, Ruby spies a rattlesnake nearby and, as Mars comes close to stabbing Doug in the face, only to get punched and for Doug to stick his finger into the bandaged wound on his leg, just to get back on him again and try to stab him again, Ruby uses a stick to pin the snake's head down. As the fight continues, Ruby secures the snake and picks him up. He carries him over to Mars just as he has Doug where he wants him and puts the snake on his back. Mars is promptly bitten on the back of his neck and, grabbing the snake and struggling with it, Doug is able to shove him off of him and down to the ground. Doug grabs his dropped knife, jumps on Mars, and viciously stabs him again and again in the chest, yelling, "Die!", as Ruby cries over her brother and looks away. Doug finishes Mars off with a very deep stab into the left side of his chest before pulling the knife out and, breathing crazily, kicks the body in the side for good measure. Only then does he start to come to his senses as he looks down at his body, the movie then ending, in an abrupt manner akin to The Last House on the Left, with the shot of Doug's face turning red before the screen fades to complete red as the credits begin.
If you were to ask me to pick out my absolute least favorite aspect of The Hills Have Eyes, I'd have to say that it's the music score by Don Peake. That said, like the movie itself, I don't find the score to be bad but rather, just kind of underwhelming. It's a low budget movie, so you shouldn't expect a big, fancy, orchestral score anyway, but this is just so average, with a bunch of plucking strings, low notes on a piano, instances of synthesizers being used, and some very unusual-sounding, fast-paced pieces for the scenes of people running and being chased. What's more, it's very forgettable and its pieces have no real structure which you can latch onto. The only part I find kind of memorable is the solemn piano theme which is accompanied by some downbeat strings and which plays during the scene where Fred tells Bob about Jupiter and over the ending credits, as it does hit the right kind of hopeless, melancholy tone, but I'll be damned if I can remember exactly how it sounded. Like some of the more chaotic aspects of the movie, I'm sure that many people can view the score as fitting what it's accompanying well and that it's not meant to be melodic but it doesn't work that well for me.
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