The Hills Have Eyes Family Funny
It's one of the most iconic horror settings of all time, and one that can still make lone travellers feel uneasy upon remembering. A dusty, uncomfortable expanse of desert surrounded by rocky, unforgiving hillside terrain, with only animals out there.
In Wes Craven's 1977 classic The Hills Have Eyes, we see the ordinary, suburban Carter family preyed upon like 'human French Fries' by a wild clan of cannibals after their trailer breaks down in the Nevada desert.
As they are picked off and brutalised in various horrifying ways, the remaining Carters are forced to fight savagery with savagery – prayer circles and walkie talkies soon cast aside for rocks and traps and bloody, screaming vengeance.
The final closing scene, which sees newly-grieving widower Doug Wood (Martin Speer) unleash bestial fury on Mars (Lance Gordon) is arguably one of the bleakest endings in horror history.
Our last vision of Doug is from the perspective of the dying Mars, the rock coming down again and again as Doug's eyes burn wildly.
Ruby's (Janus Blythe) pitiful sobs almost humanise her repulsive brother in his final moments, while Doug is framed as having become as animalistic as those who terrorised his family, all traces of the humorous, easy-going father and husband lost to the dry winds.
A masterpiece in spinning suspense from ever-growing dread and claustrophobia, this exploration of fears of those outside the supposedly neat borders of society remained an important part of Alexandre Aja's bloodier remake, released on this very day 15 years ago.
Although they follow the same narrative threads, family dynamics and themes, the two versions vary notably. Aja's version turns the guts and gore up a notch, while giving us a markedly different sort of villainous pack to contend with.
In the original movie, Papa Jupiter is sent out into the wilderness as a boy by his father Fred, having burned his home and sister to a 'cinder'. We never hear Jupiter's version of events, and by the time we meet him he is more wild thing than man.
Jupiter's strength, size and physical appearance are attributed to a mixture of a mysterious genetic mutation, violent, Frankenstein-esque parental rejection and an intrinsic badness that has marked him out since his gruesome birth.
Out in the wilderness, Jupiter builds a ferocious, feral family in his image, far away from the social niceties and gin and tonics favoured by the likes of the Carter family. They carry his blood, his cruel appetites and his complete disregard for the law and order of human civilisation.
The remake takes this origin story in a notably different, and arguably much more eerie, direction, with the feral family having been cruelly forced from society and into the mines and the desolate, crumbling ghost town they call home.
The physical differences of the family are this time attributed to nuclear testings at a mining town; testings that were later covered up by the US government.
We based all our descriptions and directions on real documents, pictures and footage that we found on the effects of nuclear fallout in Chernobyl and Hiroshima.
This human cruelty on a larger scale arguably lends greater pathos to the wretched cannibals, with Big Brain's (Desmond Askew) accusatory 'you've made us what we've become' placing the blame high above the everyday scramblings for meat and survival.
However, the true origin story of The Hills Have Eyes dates back to long before concerns over nuclear testing, although the fear and fascination with social outsiders was just as strong.
Having always imbued his work with myths, legends and folk tales, Craven drew from the tale of Sawney Bean, the diabolical head of a cannibalistic family who supposedly terrorised doomed travellers in 16th century Scotland.
Accounts of Bean's life vary, with the first accounts emerging decades after his supposed death by execution. Some historians have expressed doubt he ever existed in the first place, while others believe the story is rooted in truth but has become exaggerated somewhat over the years.
Either way, the story of Bean's bloodthirsty lawlessness has continued to inspire storytellers over the centuries, the ultimate tale of the horror a civilised person could encounter should they stray from the proper path.
As the story goes, Bean was born in East Lothian and raised by a father who worked as a ditch digger and hedge trimmer.
The younger Bean initially attempted to follow his father into the honest family trades he would have been expected to take up. However, much like Jupiter from the original movie, it quickly became apparent that he was bound for a darker destiny.
Bean took up with 'Black' Agnes Douglas, a woman who shared his bloody nature and taste for human flesh. They made a home together in a cave by the Galloway coast, far away from the orderly world of work and toil they had left behind.
The exact number of children and grandchildren who were raised in the cave differs from account to account, however it's widely understood that the incestuous clan burgeoned to around 48 family members during the 25 years Bean lived in the cave.
Much like the family in the films, the Bean clan would sustain themselves on the bodies of poor, unsuspecting travellers who were unfortunate enough to stumble within their hunting ground.
Creeping out of their cave at night, the family would capture people and bring them back to their grotesque home. Here, they would dismember their victims, before pickling, salting and feasting upon their body parts.
Those from nearby villages would occasionally find the gruesome remnants of these family dinners, washing up on the picturesque shore. However, for a full quarter of a century, they were able to get away with it, strange disappearances blamed on local innkeepers or vicious animals.
The legend goes that the family murdered and devoured 1,000 human beings during this time, a figure that has been disputed by historians, without ever setting foot in the neighbouring towns and villages. Men, women and children were dragged into that cave, and never came out.
As the years went on, there were more and more Bean bellies to fill, all while, no doubt, any lingering memories of social niceties and mercy held by the clan patriarch faded from memory. It's unclear whether, like Ruby in the films, there were any Bean children who felt remorse.
The family were a law unto themselves, and one can only imagine the hierarchies, rituals and bonds that shaped life in the darkness of the cave. But such a life could not last forever, and those in the area beyond gradually came to realise that something was seriously wrong.
A man and his wife had been travelling home on horseback one evening when they were pounced upon by the Beans. The man fought against their assailants as best as he could, but sadly this was not enough to protect his wife, who was murdered before his eyes in a truly harrowing manner.
Smith wrote:
The female cannibals cut her throat and fell to sucking her blood with as great a gust as if it had been wine.
This done, they ripped up her belly and pulled out all her entrails. Such a dreadful spectacle made the man make the more obstinate resistance, as expecting the same fate if he fell into their hands.
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Thankfully, the man was able to escape the clan's clutches, and was able to tell others about his wife's terrible end. In Smith's account, the King himself led a 400-strong group of men to the area, where they searched high and low for the family's lair.
At first they were unable to locate the cave, even when bloodhounds alerted them to it, with the group being unable to 'conceive that anything human could be concealed in a place where they saw nothing but darkness'. But when they did find the home, the stuff of nightmares awaited them.
According to Smith:
Now the whole body, or as many of them as could, went in, and were all so shocked at what they beheld that they were almost ready to sink into the earth. Legs, arms, thighs, hands and feet of men, women and children were hung up in rows, like dried beef.
A great many limbs lay in pickle, and a great mass of money, both gold and silver, with watches, rings, swords, pistols, and a large quantity of clothes, both linen and woollen, and an infinite number of other things, which they had taken from those whom they had murdered, were thrown together in heaps, or hung up against the sides of the den.
Under the King's orders, the family were seized and any remaining pieces of human flesh were buried in the sands, a final attempt at dignity at what must have felt like the doors to hell.
The clan, which in Smith's telling included 'eight sons, six daughters, eighteen grandsons, and fourteen granddaughters' alongside Sawney and Agnes, were taken to Edinburgh, where crowds gathered with morbid curiosity.
Here, they were committed to the Old Tolbooth prison before being 'conducted under a strong guard to Leith' the very next day. Here they were executed 'without any process'. In Smith's words, it had been thought 'needless to try creatures who were even professed enemies to mankind'.
The ways in which the family members were executed could make even the most hardened horror film buff's stomach churn, making for difficult reading all these years on:
The men had their privy-members cut off and thrown into the fire; their hands and legs were severed from their bodies; by which amputations they bled to death in some hours.
The wife, daughters and grandchildren, having been made spectators of this just punishment inflicted on the men, were afterwards burnt to death in three several fires.
They all in general died without the least signs of repentance; but continued, to the very last gasp of life cursing and venting the most dreadful imprecations upon all around, and upon all those who were instrumental in bringing them to such well merited punishments.
During an interview with Arrow upon the film's original release, Craven spoke with some surprising sympathy for the ways in which the Bean family were punished, echoes of which can be seen in the plot:
They did horrendous things to them. Broke them all on the wheel. Hanged the women in front of the men and then they dismembered the men.
And I was so struck by how on the one hand you have this feral family that's killing people and eating them.
But if you look at it they weren't doing anything that much worse than civilization did when they caught them. And I just thought what a great kind of A/B of culture. How the most civilized can be the most savage and how the most savage can be civilized.
He continued:
I constructed these two families as mirrors of each other. I found it very interesting to look at ourselves, to think of ourselves as having the capacity not only for great good, but for great evil.
Craven realized that by updating the Sawney Bean story to 20th century California, he would have the opportunity not only to comment on a cult society dwelling inside modern civilization, but also the chance to comment on that civilization's less-than-civilized retribution against the cannibals.
Forty years on and Aja revamped and repackaged the story for a new generation, expanding upon ideas of how society treats outsiders against a dreary backdrop of grinning mannequins and miners' home left to rack and ruin. An uncanny realm of crumbled domesticity.
The scene where Big Bob (Ted Levine) lies dead and incinerated with an American flag planted in his skull feels explicitly critical of the notion of the American dream, a common trope of movies in the years following 9/11.
Also more explicit is the dynamic between Big Bob and Doug (a bespectacled Aaron Stanford this time around), with their polarised politics made clear by their differing views on gun ownership.
By the end of the film of course, both are stripped of their humanity; Big Bob reduced to charred meat and Doug – in the newest version – still being stalked by some unknown being with binoculars, vulnerable even as he embraces the remaining members of his family.
Unlike the traditional Sawney Bean story, The Hills Have Eyes doesn't end with the clan being wiped from the face of the Earth, scoured from the land where they have built their home. We don't see a safe and final return to civilisation.
In both movies, we leave the Carters exposed and visible in the dry heat of the desert, the feeling of unseen eyes persisting even after their tooth and nail fight for survival.
The Sawney Bean story, will no doubt continue to shift and reverberate in the years and perhaps centuries to come, firing up the imaginations of writers and filmmakers who will never not be fascinated with the world that lies beyond the surest road.
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Source: https://www.unilad.co.uk/featured/the-terrifying-true-story-behind-the-hills-have-eyes
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