The Hills Have Eyes

Director: Wes Craven

1977 / 89min / DCP

Craven’s shoestring-budget grindhouse smash begins with a vacationing suburbanite family on their way to Los Angeles, going off the road in Middle-of-Nowhere, Nevada. When they run into a family of backwoods brigand cannibals that includes Michael Berryman’s Pluto, it turns into a real trip to remember, replete with crucifixions, burnings, and boundless brutality. Look underneath the generous gore, however, and you’ll find keen insights into city/rural class division in America, specifically the obliviousness of the comfortable to the misery they keep themselves aloof from. It turns out what you don’t know can hurt you.