Sunday, September 15, 2019

Cannibal Hillbilly Vacation




Hidey-ho, horror people!  And welcome to another edition of WTFHM!


Today, we'll be covering yet another remake. Yes, I know. It's so thrilling.


That being said, I have to say, we've had pretty good luck in the remake/reboot/reimagining section of horror movies. For the most part, we've run into some pretty good ones. Soo...


Yay! So, like The Hitcher remake, The Hills Have Eyes remake managed to stay on track with the same story as the original...except the remake has a little more sauce to it.



So, let's do a little Do or Don't for this one.


The Hills Have Eyes starring Ted Levine, Tom Bower, Kathleen Quinlan, Dan Byrd, Emilie de Ravin, Aaron Stanford, Vinessa Shaw, Maisie Camilleri Preziosi, Robert Joy, Laura Ortiz, and Billy Drago.



 Now, I know you guys recognize at least one name on that list -- Billy Drago, arguably one of the scariest looking dudes to ever act. (They didn't put much makeup on him for this movie, by the way. They just slapped a beard on him and rolled him in dirt.)



But most of you probably just ran right past Ted Levine, which, yeah, you probably would because he's a character actor that's in a whole lot of stuff - including Silence of the Lambs:



Yeah, NOW you remember him, right?

So. Ahem.



DO:

Go on road trips!  I've said this before. Road trips are fun. Take the wife. Take the kids. Definitely take a trailer. Have a blast. However...





DON'T:

Do anything to piss off the locals.

So, at the beginning of this movie, the grizzly old gas station owner (Bower) wants to get out of the murdering for the local cannibal family business, but when one of the family dogs get loose and ends up in his office where he's keeping the valuables of poor dead travelers. The oldest daughter, Lynn (Carter) chases after the dog and sees the stuff and is caught in the office by the gas station owner. He suspects that she might've seen the ill-gotten goods and decides to steer the family right into the path of the cannibal family.

That reminds me...






DO:

Bring your dog.

In fact, bring more than one if you can. The more vicious, the better. One of the family dogs, Beast defends the family upon several different occasions throughout the film and AND makes it to the end. Thus proving that a big vicious dog is worth all the bullets in your gun in a tight spot. Get yourself a good heckin doggo before you go on a road trip.

*This rule does not apply to any dog under 30 pounds. Chihuahua's are pretty vicious, but they will not really protect you against psychotic hillbilly cannibals.






DON'T:

Gripe about your family.

You'll regret it when they're dead. Like when they go missing and the next thing you know, they're burning in a desert...




Yeah. Feel bad now, don't you, Doug?






DO:

Bring weapons. Axes, baseball bats, crowbars and such are all assets. Guns are definitely a must, however...





DON'T:

Give your kid a gun if he has the worst aim on the planet. Which, young Bobby (Byrd) has. I think he must have fired his gun twenty-five times and hit one dude twice.





DO:

Pay attention to your surroundings.

At a certain point, Doug (Stanford) and Big Bob (Levine) go in separate directions to find help. Doug finds a giant crater filled with abandoned cars. He looks at them curiously, even takes a teddy bear with him presumably for his baby daughter. There is no indication that he might be thinking there is something very wrong about this setup. It's just a curious oddity as he passes through the station wagon graveyard. 

Not kidding. I was watching this scene like;


Yeah, so...





DON'T:

Be afraid to man up.

Okay, so, here's the thing. Doug...well...is a wuss. Big Bob eludes to it in the beginning, and Doug is pretty sore about being called all kinds of wimps at every turn and you kind of brush it off as normal Father-in-law propaganda.



And when he and Bobby find that his wife and mother-in-law (Quinlan) have been murdered and his sister has been sexually assaulted, it still takes him a minute to get with the whole program. He's spurred on to face the cannibal hillbillies after they kidnap his daughter, but he basically has to go through a whole lot of stuff to get to this point:



I mean, he gets knocked out like five times trying to rescue his kid before this point. Thank goodness he had the dog with him.


Last, but not least...





DO:

Kill all the cannibals.

That's it. No explanation necessary. Kill them all. Kill them twice. Burn everything down after.



And for Pete's Sake, don't forget to double tap!

So, needless to say, I have to jewel this one.




It's a good movie. I really can't hate on it at all. It's gorey, suspenseful, and it had a few moments that managed to scar me just a little. I mean, it's going to take me some time to forget the whole breastfeeding...thing.



AND it manages to compliment the original. All the original elements are there - in fact, they didn't take much -- if anything -- out. They just added some seasoning and hot sauce to the pot.

Okay, so, next week we're going to get a little sexy with Horsehead an indie horror!  Yay for indie horror!

See you next time!

--O~
    *


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