THIS MONTH'S SPECIAL EDITION DVD 17/6/06

This month we have the remake of Wes Craven's "The Hills Have Eyes" [As above the DVD cover of the Region 1 (USA) Unrated Version] by Director Alexandre Aja - Wes Craven is kept on as a Producer on this production. Now having moaned about remakes I cannot compare this to the original as I have not seen it; so I'll go along with it's own merits, from the opening to the end. This does not waste time and roars straight into an extremely unpleasant opening with a throbbing and grinding soundtrack that more or less set's the tone for the whole film. In fact besides getting increasingly violent and horrific right from the start it keeps this going until the end of the movie. Ted Levine ("Silence Of The Lambs") heads his family out onto the road into the desert and regrets it big-time alongside wife Kathleen Quinlan ("Event Horizon") with assorted family members including Aaron Stanford (from "X-Men") and Emilie de Ravin (of TV's "Lost" and upcoming thriller "Brick") who meet a hellish horde of mutants intent on fucking, killing & eating them. Cropping up as one of these muties is genre king Billy Drago (as Papa Jupiter) with so many credits to his name it is hard to keep up with him. Not only are the SFX in this film extreme but also very realistic - So realistic in fact that I genuinely had a couple of FUCK ME moments when I actually shouted out - Once with a scene in an outhouse and later on with a spiked axe and someone's anatomy. Also I must have jumped or been startled a couple of times as well. This is a very graphic, nasty picture that does not pull any of it's punches. You either kill or be killed. This isn't all sleaze and blood and guts though - It does actually have a plot thread running through it and the tone can be seen quite clearly in the opening titles from the footage of atomic bomb testing and subsequent mutations seen. Well acted; with good effects, this film is the true horror within a horror in several ways and with several meanings.
SPECIAL FEATURES: This Unrated DVD Version has the footage not seen in the Cinema Version which had an R Rating. Audio Commentary by Alexandre Aja, Gregory Levasseur and Marianne Maddalena. Audio Commentary by Wes Craven and Peter Locke. "Surviving The Hills: Making Of The Hills Have Eyes" Documentary - a very thorough and informative background piece on all aspects of the Film's production. Production Diaries - Interesting in themselves. Music Video: Leave The Broken Hearts by The Finalist. English 5.1. Spanish Dolby Surround. Close Captioned. 2006/Colour 108 Minutes. Widescreen Anamorphic 2.35:1 Subtitled in English, Spanish, French. Dual Layer. Region 1 (USA) NTSC. Special Features not Close Captioned. 20th Century Fox HE/Fox Searchlight Pictures. ISBN # 024543247470.