Worth Mentioning - Putting Out Fire with Gasoline

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning. 

A messy sequel, a prestigious remake, and a Lovecraft adaptation.

THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART II (1985)

If you look at the theatrical release dates of the movies Wes Craven directed, it appears that he followed the massive success of A Nightmare on Elm Street – released in November of 1984 – by making a sequel to his 1977 film The Hills Have Eyes, since The Hills Have Eyes Part II was released in August of 1985. But the Hills sequel was actually filmed before Nightmare, and it was made out of pure desperation. Craven was having trouble getting jobs after the box office failure of Swamp Thing, studios kept rejecting A Nightmare on Elm Street, and even when New Line Cinema picked the project up it still took a long time for them to get the money to make it. So Craven turned to the one project he knew he could get the money for right away. The Hills Have Eyes Part II. The first movie had done well for a couple British distributors, they wanted a follow-up. So they got one.

The original The Hills Have Eyes is one of my favorite movies. The sequel, not so much. I’m sure Craven didn’t set out to make a film that would be lacking, he probably wanted to make this sequel as good as it could possibly be, even if it wasn’t a passion project. But it certainly feels like a half-hearted project that wasn’t thought out very well. There were production issues for sure, Craven didn’t have the time or money required to properly bring his script to the screen. But there were problems with The Hills Have Eyes Part II at the script stage, before Craven even ran into the production problems.

The first movie was about a family from Ohio that runs into car trouble while passing through the Nevada desert and find they’ve broken down in the territory of a family of cave-dwelling cannibals. Several members of the “civilized” family are wiped out before they can fight back and whittle down the number of cannibals with the help of a German Shepherd named Beast and one of the cave-dwellers, a girl named Ruby, who turns against her own family to help them. The sequel picks up eight years later to find that Ruby (Janus Blythe reprises the role) is now going by the name Rachel and is married to one of the survivors from Ohio, Bobby Carter (Robert Houston). They own a Yamaha dealership in Burbank, California. They also sponsor a motocross racing team, and Bobby has created a new formula of gasoline that he plans to show off at their next race. Unfortunately, that race is going to be held out in the desert, not far from where the cannibals attacked his family. Bobby has a breakdown. He can’t go back out there. So Rachel accompanies the racing team on her own as they head out into the desert on a bus. 

On this bus with Rachel are: Beast, still in top health after all these years. The team’s racers, nice guy Roy (Kevin Spirtas, then going by the name Kevin Blair) and prankster Harry (Peter Frechette). There’s also a guy called Hulk (John Laughlin), and it’s never quite clear if he’s a racer or a mechanic. We know for sure that Foster (Willard Pugh) is a mechanic. Harry’s girlfriend Jane (Colleen Riley) is there, so is Foster’s girlfriend Sue (Penny Johnson). And then we have the heroine of the film, a blind girl named Cass, played by Tamara Stafford. In addition to being blind, Cass also has a mild psychic ability, but it’s so mild that it never really amounts to anything. This bunch expects to be able to reach the race location with time to spare… until they realize that Daylight Savings Time has ended. Everyone, including the mildly psychic girl, forgot this was going to happen. The clocks have moved ahead one hour. They’re going to be late for the race. Unless they take a shortcut through the desert.

Of course, the bus’s gas tank ends up springing a leak and Bobby’s super gas can’t be used for it. So the group seeks help at an old ranch that sits on top of an abandoned mine. And this ranch happens to be in the territory of Rachel’s cave-dwelling relatives who are still out there in the desert, attacking people, stealing their belongings, probably still eating them, and dumping the remains down the mine shaft. One of the killers in this movie is Rachel’s brother Pluto, with Michael Berryman back in the role. He appeared to have died in the first movie, as Beast munched on his throat a bit, but he’s back. He was patched up and survived. And that’s fine, Pluto was a major presence in the first movie, his face was on the poster, he should have been back for the sequel. The movie would have been a lot better if Pluto was the only killer around. But there’s a second one out there. A maniac called Reaper… and this guy is awful.

Played by 7’4” John Bloom, with Nicholas Worth dubbing over his lines, Reaper comes off terribly in this movie. He looks ridiculous, he sounds ridiculous, cackling like an idiot whenever he’s attacking somebody. And the explanation for his presence makes absolutely no sense. We got the entire history of the cannibal family in the first movie. We know exactly how they came to be. It would have been acceptable if Craven had said Reaper was a sibling to Rachel and Pluto and we just didn’t see him in the first movie. But instead, he wrote that Reaper is the “big brother” to the leader of the cannibal tribe, Papa Jupiter. Which can’t be, because there is no room in the family history for Papa Jupiter to have a brother. Craven made a lot of questionable decisions while writing the script for this movie. Why have every single character forget the end of Daylight Savings Time? Why include this “super gas”? But the one that bothers me the most is the explanation for Reaper. A character who is talked up like he’s the baddest of all the cave-dwellers, but comes off like a joke.

The Hills Have Eyes Part II is poorly written and sometimes nonsensical, but I do get some enjoyment out of watching it. The first movie feels like Craven’s reaction to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and this sequel feels like an underwhelming attempt to try to make something that would appeal to fans of the Friday the 13th franchise. As Pluto and Reaper knock off the characters, it seems like an F13 xerox. And that feeling is enhanced by the fact that the music was provided by F13 franchise composer Harry Manfredini. Since Friday the 13th is my favorite franchise, I find the stalk and slash sequences in this movie to be somewhat entertaining, even though I don’t like this movie nearly as much as any entry in the Friday series. The motocross aspect isn’t handled that well, but it does allow for a fun chase scene when Pluto steals one of the bikes and Roy and Harry go speeding after him.

My favorite thing about this movie is the fact that it has a blind heroine. I think that was a clever idea on Craven’s part, and Stafford did a good job playing Cass. The best scenes in here involve that dopey Reaper stalking Cass as she tries to figure out how to avoid or fight back against an attacker she can’t see. In fact, these moments work so well, I’m left wishing Cass had been a character in a Friday the 13th movie instead. It would have been much cooler to see her going up against Jason Voorhees.

The Hills Have Eyes Part II isn’t a popular movie in general, but anyone who knows about it is aware that Craven padded out the running time to 90 minutes in the most amusing way possible. Throughout the first 35 minutes, the movie features flashbacks to moments from the first movie. There’s only about 5 minutes of footage from the first movie in here, but the flashbacks are spread out in such a way that it makes it feel like there’s more stock footage than there actually is. Bobby has a couple flashbacks, Rachel has a flashback… and in the moment that viewers have been mocking for decades, even Beast has a flashback. He thinks back to his previous encounter with Pluto, eight years earlier. And that’s why this is primarily known as the movie with a dog flashback.

This movie was a blunder, but a somewhat entertaining one. There was eventually a Hills Have Eyes remake and a poorly received sequel to that one as well, but what I wish had been made is a second sequel to the original movie. One that would allow Craven to redeem the story of Pluto and Ruby/Rachel. We almost got one: in 1994, Craven and his son Jonathan were developing a sequel called The Outpost: The Hills Have Eyes III with producer Peter Locke. Locke said the script was very good. But as development went on, they decided to change directions and turn the story for The Outpost into an original horror movie. That movie was called Mind Ripper and ended up having nothing to do with The Hills Have Eyes.

CAT PEOPLE (1982)

In 1942, RKO Radio Pictures tasked producer Val Lewton with making a horror movie called Cat People for a budget under $150,000, and its running time could be no more than 75 minutes. Lewton, screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen, and director Jacques Tourneur delivered a film that is still considered a classic eighty years down the line, and was so popular that it even received a “prestige picture”-style remake in 1982. Directed by Taxi Driver writer Paul Schrader from a screenplay by Deranged’s Alan Ormsby (which Schrader rewrote himself), the Cat People remake takes the basic concept that Lewton, Bodeen, and Tourneur crafted together and turns it into something a lot more twisted. And very sexual.

Nastassja Kinski stars as Irena, a young woman who has come to New Orleans to be reunited with her brother Paul (Malcolm McDowell), who she hasn’t seen since they were children, when their parents died. Irena is happy to see Paul again, unaware that he’s hiding some extremely dark secrets. But it isn’t long before those secrets come to light. Paul soon reveals to Irena that they are part of an ancient race of, yes, cat people. If they give in to passion and have sex with someone, they will transform into leopards. After that, they can only regain human form by killing someone. But there is a way around this. The cat people are an incestuous race. If they only have sex with each other, they won’t transform. So Paul thinks he and Irena need to be a couple. She’s not into that idea. In fact, the virginal Irena has caught the attention of someone who isn’t a blood relative, zoo curator Oliver (John Heard), and is interested in pursuing a relationship with him. None of this turns out well. 

The story of Cat People ‘82 is quite different from the one told in ‘42. The two films really only share the idea of people transforming into leopards, character names, and a few broad stroke details. The remake attempts to recreate scenes from the original a few times, including putting in a scene where Oliver’s co-worker Alice (Annette O’Toole) is stalked while in a swimming pool, but those scenes don’t always fit in that well. The Paul character wasn’t even in the original, but he was added into the remake during the development process because there was some fear that having only a female cat person who becomes a creature when giving in to passion would be perceived as sexist. They needed a male cat person in the mix as well. And they worked him into the story in the strangest way possible, bringing in the whole “siblings need to sleep together” angle with him.

Schrader brought a very artistic feel to his take on Cat People, with a slow, artistic pace to match. At 118 minutes, the film is a bit too long. RKO was on to something when they didn’t want movies to be longer than 75 minutes. But it still remains interesting throughout, and really draws the viewer into its dreamy atmosphere, which is enhanced by the score composed by Giorgio Moroder and the theme song by David Bowie. Like Paul and Oliver become obsessed with Irena in the movie, Schrader also became obsessed with Kinski during the production, and that really comes across in the finished film. It’s like the camera itself is infatuated with Irena.

This is a weird one, but a good one, and stands out as something unique even when compared to its predecessor. It didn’t do well when it was first released, but has gained a deserved cult following over the years. If you want to know more about Cat People, I wrote a video about the movie for the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel.

The following review originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com

H.P. LOVECRAFT'S WITCH HOUSE (2021)

First published in the pages of Weird Tales magazine in 1933, legendary horror author H.P. Lovecraft’s short story The Dreams in the Witch House has been brought to the screen twice before. Once for the 1968 film The Crimson Cult, which had an impressive cast that included Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, Barbara Steele, and Michael Gough. That was such a loose adaptation, Lovecraft wasn’t even given credit. Decades later, Stuart Gordon gave Lovecraft credit and kept the title intact for his 2005 contribution to the Masters of Horror series. Now the story has gotten the low budget indie treatment with director Bobby Easley’s new film H.P. Lovecraft’s Witch House… and this really goes to show how much of a tough act Stuart Gordon is to follow.

Easley’s Witch House was filmed at the historic Hannah House in Indianapolis, Indiana, a place that is said to be haunted – but for the purposes of this movie, the Hannah House (as it is still referred to by the characters) is in a town named after a Lovecraft location, Miskatonic. The character we follow into this place is college student Alice Gilman (an actress credited as Michelle Morris on the film itself, but as Portia Chellelynn in the marketing), who is working on the theory that sacred geometry is the key to inter-dimensional travel. It just so happens that a previous tenant at Hannah House did crack the secrets of inter-dimensional travel and you would think that stories of this might be what inspires Alice to rent a room in the place. After all, the Gilman character in Lovecraft’s story purposely moved into the Witch House because of its history. But that’s not the case here. Alice simply moves into the Hannah House / Witch House because there’s a vacancy and her violent ex, who once beat her so badly that she miscarried their child, is on the loose. She needs a place to hide out while working on her theory, so the Hannah House it is. As soon as she enters the house, she feels like she belongs there. And the “suggested geometric shapes” in her attic room are perfect for her studies!

Alice’s housemates in this place are her landlady Etta (Shonda Laverty), Etta’s deeply religious, alcoholic brother Joe (Joe Padgett), and Etta’s niece Tommi (Julie Anne Prescott), who is around the same age as Alice. Etta and Joe are only a presence for key moments, but Alice ends up spending a good amount of time with Tommi – who helps her look into the history of the Hannah House. Which is when she finally finds out she’s living in a “Witch House”, as it used to be home to Keziah Mason (Andrea Collins), a servant girl who was accused of carrying out human sacrifices – the sacrificed being children – and was burned at the stake. Tommi also manages to seduce Alice so easily, it’s like she’s James Bond levels of irresistible, leading to a gratuitous sex scene. Paving the way for more gratuitous moments of nudity and scenes of Alice in her underwear. But given that the best Lovecraft adaptation we’ve ever seen (Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator) features a gratuitous scene where a nude female is assaulted by a severed-but-living head, it’s tough to fault other Lovecraft-inspired filmmakers for trying to spice up their movies with bare flesh.

The story of Keziah Mason inspires Alice to work occult symbols into her studies and to look up the Necronomicon. She also starts having intense nightmares about occult practices, Keziah, and the witch’s buddy Brown Jenkin. If you’re familiar with the source material, you’ll know that Brown Jenkin was described as being a rat with a human face, something that Gordon was able to effectively bring to the screen for his adaptation. Of course, this one didn’t have the budget necessary to create Brown Jenkin, so the character is represented through shots of a regular rat and a scuzzy-looking human. While Alice is there dreaming, someone is stalking around the town of Miskatonic, abducting children. It looks like history is repeating itself. And somehow, even though Alice is an established Lovecraft fan – she’s reading Lovecraft the first time we see her – she never ponders how it could be that she’s living something similar to The Dreams in the Witch House. Maybe she’s too terrified. Maybe the adaptation is too loose. Or this oversight could be explained by the final moment of the film, which will have many viewers groaning and rolling their eyes.

Much of Witch House’s mercifully short running time is dedicated to the nightmares Alice has. Trippy sequences that are soaked in colorful lighting. Easley has said that he was drawing inspiration from Italian genre filmmakers while making Witch House, so the lighting must be his tribute to Mario Bava and Dario Argento. The nightmares are certainly the most visually interesting parts of the movie, as the low budget is very apparent in the overall look of the film. A cheap look is easily overcome when the story and/or characters are interesting enough… but the storytelling here is very messy and scattered, and the characters aren’t interesting. So Witch House very quickly becomes frustrating and difficult to sit through. My favorite thing about it was the fact that the end credits kicked in after just 75 minutes.

Witch House might find some appreciative viewers who are intrigued by the strangeness of the dream sequences, but I found the film to be poorly crafted and a bit of an endurance challenge.