Don’t drive through the desert, folks. There are at least fifty reasons why I won’t, and one of those reasons is The Hills Have Eyes. This is Wes Craven’s second movie, made when he was still vicious and hadn’t yet gone Hollywood. It’s all about a family of sicko hayseeds who live a little too close to a nuclear test site and, naturally, became misshapen neanderthals who like to stalk, murder, and eat people. A family passing through on their way to California gets stranded after a little accident when they very intelligently decide to drive off the main road. Things don’t end well.
This is the film that made tall, bald, bug-eyed actor Michael Berryman—definitely the Rondo Hatton of the 70s and 80s—into a horror icon.