Seraherrera The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

capkronos Apparently desperately in need of money during his pre-Elm Street days, Craven agreed to write and direct this unnecessary follow-up to his 1977 cult success. After filming most - but not all - of the original script, the backers reneged and pulled funding before it could be completed, leaving the unfinished film to languish on a shelf somewhere for a spell. It wasn't until after Elm Street's success that the studio convinced Craven to finally finish it. And no, he wasn't given money to shoot the rest of the footage, he was simply left with the task of piecing together what WAS shot and then padding the rest out with "flashback" footage from the first. To tie it to the original, several cast members return to reprise their roles and the same basic premise and desert setting are retained, but the tone and the approach to the material is quite different this time out. In fact, it's almost impossible to believe the same man could possibly be responsible for both films. This sequel seems more like a second-rate cash-in made by an inept, inexperienced hack attempting to capitalize on the first film's success than an already-established filmmaker. It's no wonder Craven later disowned this film.After the opening credit scroll informs us that "The following film is based on fact" (lol, please), we briefly catch up with original "Hills" survivor Bobby Carter (Robert Houston). Still traumatized by the events of the first movie, Bobby finds himself unable to accompany his buddies across the desert to a motocross competition to test out their new "Super Formula Racing Fuel." Going in his place is his friend Rachel (Janus Blythe), who, as "Ruby," was a member of the desert-dwelling family of the first film but is now a reformed ex-cannibal after having helped the Carter family put an end to her brood's murderous ways. Or so she thinks. Along with three racers, a mechanic, a few girlfriends and "Beast," the same German Shepherd from the first movie (don't ask), Rachel / Ruby soon finds herself back in familiar territory. Running short on time, the crew decide to venture off the main road and take a shortcut, their bus breaks down near an abandoned mine and then the rest plays out like business as usual as Pluto (Michael Berryman) and Papa Jupiter's hereunto unmentioned big brother "The Reaper" (John Bloom) start picking them off one by one.Gone is the original film's intelligent subtext centered around two vastly different families clashing over harsh terrain and an ordinary, mild-mannered middle-class family forced to turn as vicious as their attackers in order to protect themselves. In its place we get a handful of obnoxious, ill-defined cardboard teenagers no one could possibly give two hoots about. While the first film was a tense, bleak survival film, this one is presented just like any number of other poorly-made slasher flicks with characters who continually do senseless and idiotic things, pitiful attempts at comedy and terrible dialogue ("You're not feeling psychic again are you like you sometimes do?"). The slasher feel is reinforced further by Harry Manfredini's rehashed music, which is nothing more than recycled bits and pieces from the Friday THE 13TH series. I could even live with all that, but this film is genuinely inept and filled with continuity errors and lapses in basic logic. It's almost mind-numbingly stupid... and the absurd moment the dog has his own flashback is really just the tip of the iceberg!Early on, Rachel has a run-in with Pluto and uses karate (!) to defend herself. Immediately afterward she's shown laughing and joking along with the rest of the cast and accusing two guys who have disappeared of "playing pranks too hard" instead of, you know, putting two and two together they may have been killed by the psycho cannibal who'd just attacked her moments earlier. After she leaves the teens in her charge to go look around, they proceed to joke, play pranks on each other and and idiotically wander off by themselves so they can get killed. The movie probably reaches its low point when one of the cannibals steals a motorcycle, slaps on a helmet and starts driving around the rock cliffs while laughing maniacally. I wasn't even sure if this was supposed to be funny or not.The murders themselves are rather tame. Someone's crushed by rocks and there are a couple of booby traps but most are just yanked off-screen and then found dead later on. The only gory moment is when one of the girls gets her throat cut and even that's not much. For what it's worth, our heroine (Tamara Stafford) ends up being a blind girl who has some kind of extrasensory perception, though the script doesn't really make novel use of that idea. The only thing this really has going for it are some nice-looking outdoor shooting locations and the underground lair the last few scenes take place in. Other than that, it's terrible.

atinder The Hills Have Eye II (1985)I was not fan of the first movie, at all, i just thought remake was so much better and scarier but still was watchableI thought it was good idea to bring back cast from first movie and dog, i do like that connection to first movie. Then they show a lot of flashback to first movie, which i thought were not bad at all but they just kept on bringing even more flashback, then they go overboard by giving dog a flashback. I love dogs but come on!I did expect really bad movie but it was really poor but I did not expected to be laughing throughout the whole movie.Any action scene this movie that were meant to scare just felt so bad that were funny and then at the end with dogs who push Mutant from cliff.3/10 really poor movie but it made laugh so much.

Boba_Fett1138 Wes Craven's 1977 movie "The Hills Have Eyes" was a surprisingly great genre movie. When Craven needed cash he decided to make "The Hills Have Eyes Part II" in 1985. It's a rush job that is sloppy and lazy written and often feels and looks like a B-movie, with some bad pacing, ineffective build-up and lame characters and acting performance, also due to its writing.What this sequel mostly does wrong is relies too much on its first movie. It needlessly features same characters and actors from the first movie and the movie is filled with countless flashbacks of events that happened in the first movie. This is a real cheap way of film-making of course and quite annoying if you have already seen the first movie.It's not being very original on its own and it most importantly is ineffective as an horror movie. The way the overall story progresses just isn't that interesting and often too predictable. There is also too little happening and when there is something happening it isn't being very effective, due to its build-up and overall story.The movie has lots of characters in it, which you never really get to care about and you are just waiting for them to die. The movie is also basically the one killing after the other but none of them are really original or surprising enough to leave a lasting impression on the fans of the genre.No tension, no excitement, no originality. No reason to ever watch this movie really.4/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

MARIO GAUCI I recently acquired this via the full-frame Image DVD in anticipation of the HTF Halloween challenge; I knew the film was nowhere near as well regarded as the 1977 original – but I wasn't aware that Craven only made it because he was hard-up for cash, that he later disowned the result and that the picture was even shelved for two years (by which time he had re-acquired his stature with A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET [1984] which itself developed into a franchise and, ironically, the director would also return to much later after another lean period in his career)!Anyway, this sequel is really quite lame as these things go (especially given that the original director is involved): apparently, there was so little plot to work with that the makers felt the need to pad out the running-time with gratuitous recollections of some of the highlights from the first entry – including an outrageous (hence, justly infamous) dream sequence by Beast, the heroic Alsatian! Similarly, the mutant cannibals this time around are relegated to just two – Michael Berryman's Pluto, who's shown to have somehow survived two separate vicious attacks by the dog(!), and yet another relative (brother to Jupiter from the first film and, thus, Pluto's uncle), dubbed "The Reaper", and who appears out of nowhere.The motocross-enthusiast protagonists are among the most obnoxious heroes to feature in this type of film – the kind that you don't care whether they live or die. In fact, just about the only characters to engage our interest are a blind girl and Janus Blythe's Ruby herself – who has been domesticated in the interim (at the end of the original, she had saved a baby from a fate worse than death and, as seen in an alternate ending on Anchor Bay's SE of the first film, had even joined the surviving members of the cannibals' victims). Though Robert Houston (Bobby) is also on hand, his character is conveniently put out of the way at the very beginning: he freaks out when a motor race is set to take place in the desert near where his family was attacked all those years ago and opts to stay behind – Ruby (who's even changed her name) and Beast, however, go along and, though the former's confession about her past isn't taken very seriously by her companions, both of course prove instrumental in the new victims' safe-keeping.Incidentally, Craven knew when he had a good thing going and, so, reproduced here two death methods from the original – Berryman himself, in fact, expires yet again at the hands of Beast (though he's met with the fate that had previously befallen his brother Mercury), while The Reaper's come-uppance is an even more elaborate and protracted stunt than Jupiter's demise in the 1977 film and which would have been more appropriate for a Road Runner cartoon! By the way, Ruby herself inexplicably vanishes from the proceedings during the last third or so!