The Hills Have Eyes

In the late 1960s, the United States was still reeling from the devastating effects of the atomic age. The legacies of the Cold War were tangible in the desolate landscapes of abandoned wastelands and radioactive zones. Against this backdrop of post-apocalyptic dread, the Carter family set out on a road trip from Cleveland to California, fleeing the monotony of their daily lives and seeking adventure on the open road. The Carters were a quintessential all-American family, with a proud father, Big Bob (Robert Wisdom); his plump yet loving wife, Ethel (Veda Smith); and their four children: Bobby (Dan Byrd), Brenda (Emilie de Ravin), Doug (Ted Levine), and Lynne (Kathleen Quinlan). As they traversed the barren expanse of the desert in their tired station wagon, the family's generational dynamics and personal conflicts simmered beneath the surface. As night began to fall on their journey, a violent sandstorm swept down from the horizon, forcing the Carters to seek shelter in an abandoned gas station. Without a working radio, they were unaware that they had inadvertently driven into a strictly off-limits zone – a former nuclear testing ground – teeming with radioactive fallout and birth defects. A while after the incident, a family of cannibalistic mutants, driven mad by genetic mutations from eating radioactive food in the desolate wasteland, start to hunt the Carters down. Led by the monstrous and menacing Father Jupiter (Leonel Claude), this backwoods family boasted an array of violent dehumanized offspring: Hercules (Tom Sizemore), a towering and imposing brute; Venus (Tristan Sinclair), a hulking giant with mangled and twisted limbs; and a huddled-looking cave-dwelling sister whose face has been disfigured with hideous blemishes (Liesel Matthews). This family didn't only represent threat to the Carters but were also used to typify a darkly mocking representation of what mutated effects have upon people suffering from nuclear radiation poisoning and living in a post-nuclear apocalypse world. The frantic Carters desperately tried to escape their terrifying predicament, only to find that they were miles from the nearest civilization, their car broken, and their mobile phone batteries drained. Abandoned and vulnerable, the family was picked off one by one by the sadistic and hungry mutants. Within the radioactive wasteland, society had clearly turned against the remaining inhabitants in such a place. Their hopes of rescue had disbarred, the remnants of the family were now forced to rely on each other to survive, but their collective trust began to unravel as fears and animosities – stemming from pre-existent squabbles and personal demons – began to surface. Mother, Ethel, and teenagers, Brenda and Bobby, were compelled to confront their emotional weaknesses when the situation turned out worse and their male counterparts were gravely injured by the predators' relentless pursuit. This desolate, radioactive terrain slowly turned the once vibrant family members into victims, losing all sense of humanity, and degenerating into brutal survival instincts that could sometimes evoke guilt in members when faced with a particular choice. Father Jupiter brought his malevolent presence into play, watching his prey become increasingly besieged by his nightmarish crew as he had a hunch that by watching and manipulating them it would give him another form of agony when ultimately killing members of their party. In its portrayal of an altogether dreadful confrontation between the inhabitants with wholesome morals and an entirely unforgivable breed of people with warped values, the events that followed in The Hills Have Eyes were capable of escalating at any moment into gruesome bodily harm or even the gruesome and chilling bloodshed at the very least.