Wes Craven: Every Movie Ranked Worst To Best
5. The Hills Have Eyes
It's a classic: a family roadtrip through the desert goes terribly wrong when the van breaks down, and as luck would have it, the Carters have happened themselves upon an old nuclear testing ground that has resulted in the rise of a cannibalistic clan of mutants. Sad coincidence, that.
The Hills Have Eyes is one of the seminal piece of work that gave way to a far more intense brand of horror, pairing with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Last House on the Left to conjure up movies that had some serious teeth, and some serious censorship worries to go with it.
This story of predator and prey is one that has lasted for generations on its taboo quality, a continued obsession with video nasties underpinning Craven's seminal work and making it both something special and sickly.
The Hills Have Eyes isn't a nice film, but it is a solid piece of genre work, and one of Craven's (and arguably the horror genre's) defining pieces.