Part 2 Week: The Hills Have Eyes Part II

Welcome back movie nuts to Day 4 of Part 2 Week and let me just say...  this one was a bit difficult to get through.  Oh, it wasn't gore splattered against the lens, the cliche lines being spouted or even an exorbitant amount of nudity.  It just felt long, uninteresting and frankly I could have been spending time learning how to knit, of which I have no desire to even do.  That in mind, I was a bit surprised and did a bit of research on the old IMDB site to get the skinny to why this follow-up to a genuinely creepy film fell on its proverbial ass.   This is The Hills Have Eyes Part II.

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. Craven.

Foster: Sue, it ain't natural to be in a place without a spoiler.







Our film opens at a psychiatrist office with Bobby recalling  barely surviving the first encounter of the mutantinous Hill people of Death Valley.  This is a flashback sequence interspursed  with new close up panned daily footage with Bobby still at his wit's end coping with the loss of family and taking lives of the Hill loonies eight years prior.  One would conclude to NEVER EVER TAKE A TRIP in California again but alas our plucky survivors Bobby (Robert Houston of The Hills Have Eyes, The Great American Girl Returns, Shogun Assassin and Growning Pains) , Ruby now calling herself Rachel (Janus Blythe of Phantom of the Paradise, Eaten Alive, The Hills Have Eyes and Soldier's Fortune) and Brenda (Suzie Lanier-Bramlett of  Barnaby Jones, Electra Woman and Dyna Girls, The Hills Have Eyes, Madame X and The Night the Bridge Fell Down) are touring across California with Bobby's rocket fuel formula for the motocross bike team he now owns.  Well, not the people themselves.  I am pretty sure he just owns the bikes and the logo.   The formula is almost out of test phase and should put them on the gravy train with biscuit wheels...   until...  the team is due to race in the very same frickin' desert all the nightmares began!!!

Hmm Slash and Gollum's love child really got messed up.

Yeah that seems like a fairly safe place to camp out.  Hell Rachel even took Beast, that huge dog the Hills had as her own lovable pet.  Along the way they meet Jane (Colleen Riley of Soap, Breaking Away, Deadly Blessing and The Renegades), Sue (Penny Johnson of What's Love Got to Do with It, Molly & Gina, ER, 24 and Castle) and Foster (Willard E. Pugh of The Color Purple, Robocop 2, CB4 and Air Force One) hitch hiking so of course let's pile them in.  We need a higher body count, don't we?

The motor-cross doofus duo Roy (Kevin Spirtas of The Young and the Restless, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, Bloodstone: Subspecies II, Bloodlust:  Subspecies III and Valley of the Dolls) and Harry (Peter Frechette of Grease 2, Profiler, Inside Man and The Savages) screw up in their directions and take a short cut across the old bombing range , thus jacking the gas tank causing a steady leak.  We see an old abandoned mining ranch so of course the Scoobies want to investigate...  None of that, we should find a gas station nonsense, phone booth, cops or some hope of civilization.  Nope, let's go to the creepy mine up the stretch of the hill.   Yup they run into the Hill folks and all hell proceeds to break loose.

Now just a few comments and observations at this time.  Firstly, the principal photography (daily shots) was not finished because our director Wes Craven was shooting it and was yanked from that project to get A Nightmare on Elm Street up and running.  No sooner was that a hit at the box office the producers felt Craven could finish their insipid sequel but not to waste any more time with filming it further.  Yeah, he had to use film stock of the original and pad the film out in order for it to be long enough to meet the requirements.

Craven has gone on record saying he was desperate for the scratch and really needed it for future events.   Let me point out that unlike most sequels the violence level is fairly tame, the nudity is actually mild almost nonexistent and even the swearing is really not there.   Unfortunately, the crux of the continuous story makes little to no sense with Pluto surviving a fairly malicious dog attack in the first flick, why our survivors could not have taken any route but through Death Valley or have just shipped their bikes via train?

Now what was filmed looks gorgeous throughout Griffith Park, San Bernadino and a lot through Joshua Tree and again lovely cinematography but seeing this was not a documentary on the adverse and harsh conditions atomic mutation can do on an indigenous family, well it really doesn't matter then.  You end up with a garbled, lost and unsolvable project.   Think Laid to Rest on accident and there you have it.

Jason Vorhees joins the Hell's Angels!!!