13 Best Horror Movies On Shudder Right Now
8. The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
Wes Craven is responsible for creating two of the most recognisable Halloween party costumes of all time - Freddy Krueger and Ghostface. So for those of you who haven’t checked out his earlier work from the 1970’s, The Hills Have Eyes is a great place to start.
The follow-up to Craven’s notorious Last House on the Left (1972), Hills has a lot of similarities in terms of themes and plot structure. As before, we have a typical, white-bread, middle class American family whose lives are destroyed when they encounter cruelty and death. Whereas in Last House it was sadistic outlaws, in Hills it is a Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)-inspired family of mountain dwelling cannibals.
The cannibal family are a filthy mirror image of the squeaky clean Carters, and much like in Last House, Craven sacrifices an innocent family to the heartless world of brutality and slaughter. The surviving Carters of course find their Inner Savage, and seek bloody vengeance against the cannibals. Just like the parents in Last House, Craven is again showing how middle class normalcy can be reduced to savagery.