Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Written and directed by Wes Craven
• Starring
  • Susan Lanier
  • Robert Houston
  • Martin Speer
  • Dee Wallace
  • James Whitworth
  • Michael Berryman
• Produced by Peter Locke

It’s acknowledged as a minor or cult classic. I shouldn’t begrudge whatever credit it gets, but I think that, by and large, The Hills Have Eyes is a far more impressive movie than most people recognize. Maybe someday (like when a DVD edition is finally released), it can take its place in the pantheon of giants alongside Psycho and Dawn of the Dead.

And in terms of this specific Video Binge, this movie is to Michael Berryman what The Terminator was to Arnold Schwarzenegger: The first time that someone figured out how to use the performer to greatest effect.

“So we said, ‘Well shucks, it’s been a long time since we’ve gone on a vacation that left us defenseless and vulnerable…’”

The setup is so simple, it’s almost primal. The Carter family is on an RV trip from Ohio to California; that’s father Bob (Russ Grieve), a retired Cleveland cop, and his whitebread wife Ethel (Virginia Vincent), and their three pretty-much grown children, Lynn (Dee Wallace), Bobby (Robert Houston), and Brenda (Susan Lanier). Lynn’s husband Doug (Martin Speer) and their baby are also along for the ride. (If you really need it, I suppose I could include a family tree for you.) Their itinerary takes them through the boonies of Nevada in order to see a depleted silver mine that was given to Bob and Ethel for their wedding anniversary.

Their last stop on the edge of nowhere is at the dilapidated service station of grizzled old Fred (John Steadman), who warns them in terms both vague and strong to stay on the main road and just get their asses to California. It’s not just that the silver mine is forty years gone; it’s not just that the territory off the main road is sometimes used by fighter planes out of Nellis AFB for target practice. No, there’s some other reason that he’s anxious for them, and he doesn’t let on what it is.

Big Bob’s an old-school male, though, and isn’t going to change his plans, so they end up lost off the paved roads. One little swerve to miss a rabbit in their path, and they end up with a broken axle in the middle of the desert, fifteen miles from the last sign of habitation.

“I knew I shoulda made that left turn at Albequerque.”

And being watched from afar.

Given that Michael Berryman is glowering out at us from the poster and video box, decked out in Survivalist-Scavenger Chic, it’s not too much of a surprise that the “someone” turns out to be a clan of savages, living off abandoned military surplus, wild animals, and whoever wanders into their territory. Big Bob gets part of the backstory when he hikes back to old Fred’s station and finds him panicked for his life. Seems that fifty years ago, he and his wife had themselves a throwback of a child who practically crawled from the womb and grew up without any conscience at all. Fred had left him in the desert to die… but instead, he had survived, grown to be Papa Jupiter (James Whitworth), found himself a woman, and bred a pack of similarly sociopathic progeny.

Big Bob’s skepticism doesn’t last long, as he sees one of the pack come out of the night and turn on “Grandpa Fred.” Unfortunately, Bob doesn’t get to warn his family, as his weak heart and the sadistic playfulness of the savages conspire to keep him from getting back.

And from here out, it’s city-bred lambs at the mercy of the human wolves.

You know that if we ever do discover a “white goddess” living in the jungle, this is what she’d look like.

From even the most superficial standpoint, everything here works well as a horror-thriller. The Carter characters all have that certain ambiguity that, paradoxically, speaks of well-formed personalities behind what we see exhibited of them here (as opposed to the single-trait cliches that populate most horror movies in strict ratios). The build-up, while slow, is inexorable, and though the budget is low, the premise is such that the stripped-down, spartan production values reinforce the stranded suburbanites’ plight. Even the bare-bones cinematography is a plus; the desert is shot with an oppressive character completely at odds with the austere mystique we’ve come to expect from a cinematic heritage of Westerns that dwelled lovingly on its arid beauty.

Even acknowledging everything I’ve said, these are not grounds for rating a movie a classic. But a movie is indeed a classic when it’s successful both on a surface level (a suspense story about a normal family versus psychos) and deeper levels (explorations of the role of socialization in civilization, and subtle comparisons and contrasts between our two main families).

Consider the parallels between our two families. By movie shorthand, we know of course that the normal family out of their element are the protagonists, and the savages are the antagonists. But Big Bob never shows himself to be a terribly compassionate or considerate man — he’s very authoritarian and controlling, and we get the impression that, back on his days on the force, he could have played Good Cop or Bad Cop with equal levels of sincerity. His wife, Ethel, is the milksop of the family, the most obviously “domesticated” member of the family, with her placid optimism and her expressions of faith. But she’s right there chuckling at the memories when someone else brings up the time that the Carters’ German Shepherds tore up someone’s poodle, with the only regret being the money that it had taken to placate the owner. Jupiter’s family may indeed be congenital sociopaths (certainly, the inclusion of Michael Berryman as one of his sons was meant to indicate that the genetics of the clan were outside the ordinary); but how much different would Bob Carter’s children be, had they been born to and raised by Papa Jupe?

“Ooh… optional wood paneling!”

Underscoring this is the crux of the entire second half of the movie: The clan steals Doug and Lynn’s baby, most likely to eat, and the surviving members of the Carter family have to move beyond their grief over the family members they’ve lost and concentrate on getting the family back. Obviously, I wouldn’t be so crass as to assert that the characters’ actual motives have more to do with proving a point about possessive procreation than honest familial love. But the fact that the terms of the conflict have been stated entirely in the vocabulary of the nature/nurture debate brings the thematic conflict into harmony with the physical plotline conflict. This is about family.

In the end, the Carters have to go further toward the violent end of the behavioral spectrum than their suburbanite existence had let them believe possible, leaving their defensive posture for one of active decimation of the enemy. As if to make sure that those viewers ready to see the deeper motifs could pick them out, Craven gave us a cheatsheet: The German Shepherds mentioned earlier, whose names are Beauty and Beast. Beauty dies early on, the first clue to young Bobby that there are actively malevolent forces at work against them. Beast, though, survives, and is instrumental in the surviving Carters’ offensive plans. That may be a bit heavy-handed, but I suppose in a movie featuring cannibal mutants you have to paint the subtext in brighter colors than normal. At worst, Craven wanted to make sure that astute, subtext-reading viewers knew that he knew it was all there.

Original title: The Hills Have a Nose.

Any complaints? Well, I do have to concur with the hordes of reviewers who have mentioned the too-abrupt ending; rather than wrapping up and tying up the loose thematic ends, it very suddenly stops as soon as the physical threat has been negated. Perhaps, after raising all of the questions about nature vs. nurture, Craven had to admit that he didn’t have any conclusions or answers for us. And since I don’t have any more answers than he had, maybe I’ll just do as he did, and rather than wrapping this review up tidily, I’ll just stop here.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 8, plus 1 pig, 1 tarantula, 1 German Shepherd, and 1 budgie (the rabbit survived, though)
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 3
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • 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”