While traveling in a trailer through the desert to California, the retired detective Big Bob Carter (Russ Grieve) stops in an isolated gas station with his family for fueling and rest. Bob is traveling with his wife Ethel (Virginia Vincent), his son Bobby (Robert Houston), his daughters Brenda (Susan Lanier) and Lynn (Dee Wallace) and his son-in-law and Lynn's husband Doug (Martin Speer) and their daughter baby Katy (Brenda Marinoff). When they leave the gas station, the owner advises Bob to stay in the main road. However, the stubborn driver takes a shortcut through a nuclear testing site and wrecks his station wagon. With the family stranded in the middle of nowhere, Bob and Doug walk on the road trying to find some help. Bob is captured by an insane and sadistic member of a deranged evil family that lives nearby the spot. Doug returns to the trailer, and along the night the Carter family is attacked by a group of psychotic cannibal criminals. Absolutely trapped by the murderers, they have to fight to survive.
The 1977 "The Hills Have Eyes" is still an impressive movie thirty years after the release date. I have never had the chance to see this low-budget movie, which has not been released on DVD in Brazil, and the VHS is rare. The violent, crude and claustrophobic story has not been dated; on the contrary, I believe it is more credible in the present days, when we can see violence everyday on the news, than in 1977. This movie is certainly one of the best in the filmography of Wes Craven. The cast is pure emotion and fear on the side of the Carter family, and evilness and sadism on the side of Jupiter's family. Ruby, performed by Janus Blythe, is probably the most interesting and ambiguous character, living with a dysfunctional family but still acting like a human being. My vote is eight.
Title (Brazil): "Quadrilha de Sádicos" ("Sadistic Gang")
Note: On 30 December 2014, I saw this movie again.
Note: On 09 July 2020, I saw this film again on DVD.
