Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Written and directed by Wes Craven
• Starring
  • Michael Berryman
  • Tamara Stafford
  • Kevin Blair
  • John Bloom
  • Janus Blythe

In many ways, The Hills Have Eyes, Part 2 is to Wes Craven what Halloween 2 was to John Carpenter. Both originals were independent productions, erupting onto the scene at roughly the same time. Both were successful (Halloween more so, obviously), to the point that the original creative powers were eventually roped back into make a sequel. Both sequels are easily identified as Product created to cash in instead of passionately developed premises, and both stumble under the weight of the slasher movie conventions what had become obligatory since the originals helped give impetus to the genre (again, Halloween more so than The Hills Have Eyes).

I suppose we could be thankful that the full formula for horror movie sequels hadn’t yet been set in stone, i.e., having the same baddie or baddies encounter a wholly new group of victims in a “novel” takeoff on the original setting. There’s an effort here to preserve some continuity of the original movie. Unfortunately, that only serves to consistently remind us how much better the original was.

I know who typically rides the “short bus”… but what about those who ride the red bus?

The only returning member of the beset-upon Carter family is Bobby (Robert Houston), who’s still so traumatized by the whole experience (relayed to his shrink (David Nichols) complete with flashback footage) that the very idea of going out into the desert still makes him quiver in his boots, eight years later. Unfortunately, he’s now a motorbike race guru who’s invented a super-zowie new fuel mix, and his team is scheduled to test it at a race in — you guessed it — the desert. After much soul-searching, he decides he can’t go, and chickens out of the race and the rest of the movie.

But not to worry, his team of young racers, mechanics, and other victims decide to go on anyway. They consist of the standardized “diverse” group you’d expect. You’ve got the jock, the annoying jerk, the black couple (because, hey, you can’t take just one black person — why, that could lead to interracial necking or something!), Generic Girl (needed another body), Designated Boyfriend, and Final Girl.

Oh, what a Final Girl. She couldn’t be any more obvious if she had “Born to Make it to the Closing Credits” tattooed across her forehead. Now, granted, we’re let in on the fact that she’s not a virgin (gasp!) really early, which usually disallows one from Final Girl status, but look at what else she has in her favor: She’s blind — in a very Daredevil-ish way that allows her to hear people’s breathing rate on noisy buses and feel drafts from across the room and smell Michael Berryman from three-quarters of a mile away. On top of that, she never says a bad thing about anybody, and is the only one who starts getting worried when things begin going horribly, horribly wrong. And her name is Cass (Tamara Stafford), which can only be an intentional reference to the prophetess Cassandra of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, whose curse was to know the future and yet have no one believe her.

“I sense, like, a tremor in the Force.”

The other notable along on the team’s bus is Bobby’s Significant Other, Rachel (Janus Blythe). It doesn’t take long before we’re given enough clues to figure out that she’s actually Ruby, surviving member of Papa Jupe’s clan from the first movie. That’s right, Bobby took her home and managed to civilize her completely in eight years, so that there’s no sign that she was once a feral cannibal. And Bobby wonders why he can’t shake his nightmares of that ill-fated vacation? Hint: The souvenir warming the other half of the mattress, Bobby.

And they also stop to pick up — Beast, the German Shepherd from the first movie, who’s got to be about a hundred and seventeen in dog years by now. In the first movie, Beast (along with his ill-fated mate Beauty) was part of the thematic centerpiece of the movie. Here, he turns out to be probably the smartest and most likeable character.

Anyway. The team finds themselves running behind, thanks to the fact that not a one of the remembered that Daylight Savings was ending that weekend. That’s right, folks, Daylight Savings is another of nature’s ways of culling the slow and stupid from the herd. (As luck would have it, I watched this about two hours before setting my clock forward for Daylight Savings.) One of them gets the bright idea of taking a shortcut across the dotted-line roads on the map. That’s right, folks, dotted line roads are another of nature’s ways…

“Just kiss me, you fool!”

They soon hit a big enough rock to rupture their gas tank, leaving them with just enough to roll into an abandoned-looking little homestead, built over the remains of a played-out mine. But they’re not as alone as they think — because far up in the hills, Pluto (Michael Berryman) is watching!

Yup, it sure looked like Beast tore his throat out in the first movie, but thanks to a flashback with some careful re-editing, he’s shown to have survived. And what are the odds that he’s right here right now, just in time to meet up with his deserter sister again? Better and better all the time, naturally — in fact, the first person who meets Pluto is Ruby, who almost manages to kick his ass right then and there. He escapes, though, and grabs one of the team’s bikes from the unattended bus, which leads Designated Boyfriend and Annoying Jerk to chase him through the craggy hills. Naturally, even though Ruby tells the entire story of how she was rescued from her savage days by the love of a good man and how Pluto is her murderous brother, no one bothers to believe her, or even act like there’s anything wrong.

Designated Boyfriend (all right, I’ll give him a name — he’s Roy, played by Kevin Blair) catches Pluto, and again, one wonders how he’s survived out here all this time, given how easily his ass keeps getting handed to him. But he’s not alone out here, a fact which Annoying Jerk (Harry, Peter Frechette) finds out when a rock falls on him and splatters him (guess you really didn’t need to get acquainted with him after all). But because Roy then gets knocked unconscious, he can’t go back and warn the others, who continue to act as if two of their number never returning from chasing a bald mutant all over the desert isn’t uncommon.

“Well, at least it missed your pacemaker.”

In fact, they fill their time in time-honored Slaughter Fodder fashion: They split up and have sex. Well, only two have sex — the black couple — but everyone else splits up, most of them veering off on their own within twenty seconds of Ruby cautioning them to “stay together!” Even with it being night, they still find dumb excuses to wander away so that they can be killed in new and novel ways by… the Reaper.

The Reaper? Yes, the Reaper (John Bloom) — a giant inarticulate moron who is, as Ruby explains, Papa Jupe’s older brother. (Whoops, I take back that remark about preserving a semblance of continuity.) He and Pluto now hang out, killing people and dumping their bodies down the old mineshaft.

Gosh… How long do you think it will be before there’s no one left but blind Cass, stumbling around at the mercy of our two whackos? I’ll give you a hint: It’s a good part of the last reel.

What is so disappointing — and maddening — about this movie is that Craven seems to be ignorant of all those things that made the first one work. Gone is the sense of growing dread among the hapless strandees, and an awareness of their predicament. (Not a damned soul knows he or she is in danger until about ten seconds before they die.) And the killings now happen in ways that go for simple shock instead of story logic. (For those of you who have seen it: If the Reaper crashes through the skylight after Cass climbed the ladder to the loft, who dropped the helmet that lured her up there in the first place?)

“Grunk?”

And what’s worse, the heavy thematic elements of the first are missing entirely. Gone is the idea of Good Family vs. Bad Family, or the descent into savagery to beat the savage (not even Ruby “cuts loose”). Gone, even, is the sociopathic intelligence of the clan; in contrast to Papa Jupe’s uncultured cleverness and malevolent sense of humor, the Reaper is merely a witless ape with a glandular condition. The only reason that he manages to catch any of his victims here is that collectively they have the survival instinct of soggy toast. That’s right, witless apes with glandular conditions are another of nature’s ways… If it weren’t for Beast (smartest damned one of them), and the fact that the back of the bus is packed with barrels of super-volatile racing fuel, there would be NO survivors at all.

The only good to come out of it is that Pluto ends up good and truly dead, which thankfully cut short any thought of The Hills Have Eyes 3. As if the disappointing fan reaction to this installment wouldn’t have been enough to kills the chances of any further sequels.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 7 (plus 2 in flashback)
• breasts: 3
• explosions: 1 (plus 1 in flashback)
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 3
  • Michael Berryman (Pluto) played “Starfleet Display Officer” (under tons of latex) in Star Trek 4, and “Captain Rixx” (under blue makeup) in the TNG episode “Conspiracy”
  • John Bloom (the Reaper) played “Behemoth Alien” in Star Trek 7
  • Penny Johnson (Sue, the black girl) played “Dobara” in the TNG episode “Homeward,” and had a recurring role as Cassidy Yates on DS9