The Hills Have Eyes


The story follows a suburban American family who take a trip cross-country, but after their trailer breaks down in the New Mexico desert, they are preyed upon by a family of deformed hill people.

LATEST NEWS

2/11/06
You can check a spoiler-filled clip from the film here.

2/07/06
I've added the official site, the one-sheet poster above, and some new trailer links.

2/01/06
IGN got their hands on an exclusive clip. You can check it here.

12/28/05
The trailer is now available. Also, a couple new pics can be seen below.

12/17/05
Fango got their hands on the official poster (above) along with a handful of unofficial ones that you'll never see anywhere. I've also added some new pics below, courtesy of Eyes on the Hills.

12/04/05
According to Empire Online the MPAA slapped the film with an NC-17 rating deeming it "too intense and gory". Here's what producer Wes Craven had to say: "It’s a very strong picture and we’re trying to figure out what to do with that, without ruining it. “We have to deliver an R rating. We looked at it last night in the screening room and before we started, we said to Alex ‘what do you think?’ And he said ‘this is a PG-13 now’. And one of our producers said ‘Alex, can we commit you to an insane asylum if this isn’t an R?’ and then he showed it to us and ohmigod, there’s no way you would get an R for that."

11/03/05
You can check a couple handful of new pics for the film thanks to an unofficial site.

8/10/05
The film has been reported to have a March release.

6/20/05
I've added some new faces to the cast. The film should be filming June 27th in Morocco.

6/03/05
DC spoke with director Alexandre Aja about the film, where he reveals what to expect: "...what we're trying to do is keep the spirit of those films [Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes original] again and update it, first of all, but then also focus on the family facing something in the hills instead of the feral 'Hills' family versus and American family. We're gonna keep the same setting and it'll go in the same direction of the survival story with a lot of tension and gory elements, for us it's the perfect step to develop and push further what we tried in 'High Tension'."

5/26/05
Ezra Buzzington (Ghost World) is the first actor casted in the film. He'll be playing one of the cannibal family's watchdogs named Goggle.

5/07/05
Director Alexandre Aja spoke with Now Playing about the film recently. Here's a quote from the aritcle: "I think we keep the spirit and we keep the savage and the nasty [tone] of the original one, but we try to bring the movie into the more Straw Dogs [reference to a 1971 film starring Dustin Hoffman] way. More of a survival way. It's more about the family facing the unknown in the hills… a little bit different. I hope it's going to be very scary."

2/17/05
The following is a cast breakdown of the deformed family that was first posted at Fango. You'll notice the characters of Jupiter, Ruby, and Pluto return:

RUBY: The youngest of the hill people, 14 years old (but 18+ or emancipated preferred). Very small—five feet tall, frail, but rather pretty despite her abnormally large eyes and deformed hands. She wears a hooded sweatshirt, preventing us from seeing the part of her skull that is permanently caved in. Ruby is intrigued by this "normal" family—particularly Bobby, who is the first boy her own age she has ever met before. She is the only one of the hill people with a sense of right and wrong—she tries to help the family and protect Catherine, the baby.

PAPA JUPE (JUPITER): The leader of the mutant hill people, around 50 years old, his voice is deep, distorted and devilish; he has long hair and a beard, and evil eyes. He is the most menacing and violent of the hill people.

BIG BRAIN: One of the hill people, confined to a wheelchair. His head is 10 times bigger than his face—his head is so heavy that he is unable to hold it up, it rests back on his chair. His body is skeletal, his voice is weak and asthmatic. He is the character most representative of the damage the hill people have suffered from the nuclear fallout. He tells Doug of the fate of the hill people, of the disregard the government showed for their plight.

LIZARD: One of the mutant hill people, so named both because of his almost supernatural agility and because of the spiky chain he uses to provoke car accidents (when not is use, it drags behind him like a lizard tail). Extremely thin, and pale, with a cleft lip and a deformed jaw. He is, quite simply, a savage with no sense of pity. Scary and sadistic.

PLUTO: A giant, one of the hill people, bald, hulking and terrifying, but with the face of a cruel child, with asymmetrical eyes. And there is something childlike and dim about him, despite his huge size. And yet he is capable of terrible violence.

GOGGLE: One of the mutant hill people, so named because he keeps watch on the desert through a pair of binoculars. He has no face—his eyes, nostrils, and mouth exist in a mass of flesh. His voice is rough and deep, his pronunciation is poor and we can’t understand everything he says.

LARGE WOMAN/THE OBESE WOMAN: One of the hill people, Ruby’s mother. As her name suggests, should be very overweight. She also takes care of the handicapped Big Brain. She sits in a rocking chair, holding a huge pig in her arms and petting it like a dog.

CYST: One of the mutant hill people. Enormous cysts disfigure him and cover every part of his body; a metallic brace is screwed on four sides of his head helping him stand straight. No dialogue—his character is mute—but much on-camera time.

2/11/05
The film is scheduled to begin filming in late April for 9 weeks.

10/01/04
Diabolical Dominion spoke with writer Alexandre Aja recently, where he revealed that the script is done and filming is planned for the beginning of next year. Read more here.

3/03/04
Director Alexandre Aja (Haute Tension) talked with Fango recently about how he got the part in directing, saying...

"Wes [Craven] had seen HAUTE TENSION in LA at a screening that our agent at William Morris organized for us in November. He loved it and asked us if we had seen HILLS HAVE EYES, and if we’d be ready to consider an original approach for a remake. Scriptwriter Gregory Levasseur and I went back to France, thought about it and came back to him with ideas he liked. Then we went to see several studios with him. Many were interested, but Dimension picked up the project in January. We were very lucky that the remake of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE was such a success. Survival movies from the ’70s and ’80s are fashionable again, and we’re surfing on that wave. We were in the right place at the right time."

He then goes on to say... "HILLS HAVE EYES is very well-known—maybe not as much as TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, but the title and Michael Berryman are still very popular. It was quite popular on video in France, and people who were too young to see it when it was released can discover it on TV. Gregory and I were kids when the movie opened theatrically, but we were terrified when we watched it together. We’ve seen it again recently, and even though it’s still scary, it looks a bit outdated. There’s a lot of latitude to do something else with the story, to go further. It was probably more difficult to do a remake of TEXAS CHAINSAW, because that was a masterpiece to start with."

He continues, "For the moment, Wes is leaving us total freedom, even if he’ll have final cut on the movie,” Aja continues. “We’re thinking of doing a realistic survival movie in the tradition of John Boorman’s DELIVERANCE, while being respectful to the wishes of the fans. In our version, Michael Berryman would look almost too normal, though we might ask him to do a cameo. We’re writing the script at the moment, and we’re dreaming of getting John C. Reilly for the cast and to be ready to shoot this autumn."

2/06/04
Looks like the rumors about this film being made are true, because Variety recently posted an article on it.

DETAILS

- You can expect a backstory with the Hills family as well as more deformities.
- Fox Searchlight is releasing.
- Filming begins in June.
- Dimension Films co-chairman Bob Weinstein is behind this remake.
- Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur (Haute Tension) will write the script.
- Original writer/diretctor Wes Craven will produce alongside Marianne Maddalena and Peter Locke.
- This is a remake of the 1977 Wes Craven flick.