ridiculous rating

Please don't spend money on this.

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Lame follow up features several lengthy flashback sequences to pad out the film's run time to barely 90 minutes ( 85 minutes, without the opening narrative, and closing credits ) A group of dirt-bike racing morons (using some type of experimental gasoline created by survivor of the first film, for his obligatory cameo) take a shortcut through the desert, on their way to a motor-cross competition in the desert. When their bus breaks down, they end up in the same area where the first film took place, and are set upon by two survivors of the cannibal family from the earlier film. I do not believe this ever had any type of proper film score written and recorded for it. It genuinely sounds like they just simply bought the soundtrack albums to the first few Friday the 13th films, and dubbed that in. I don't mean that it sounds similar, or it sounds like someone re- recorded the score. No, I mean that it sounds identical, like we're watching this movie while the Friday the 13th soundtrack album is playing in the background. I don't have the same hatred for this film that a lot of fans of the original have. It isn't as great as the original, but it's also not quite as bad as some reviewers have said. It's just completely mediocre. The neolithic looking desert is still creepy as hell, a foot chase through the rocky cliffs between a couple of the bikers and Pluto is good also, and a couple of other good scenes are scattered throughout, but that can't hide the fact that, for all its explosions and chases, there's really just not a lot going on here, and there is surprisingly little tension or bloodshed. This film's naming The Reaper as the mutants' father contradicts the first film entirety, ( Papa Jupiter was their father in the original )

Years after the massacre of the Carter family by the cannibals in the Air Force gunnery range, Bobby Carter has now married Ruby, the cannibal girl who saved him. She now calls herself Rachel & together the couple run a Yamaha dirt bike dealership. Rachel decides to go along with a team of professional dirt bike riders to a competition, which takes them deep into the territory where Rachel's family used to roam. But what she doesn't know is that one of her brothers, Pluto, has survived & together with an uncle named Reaper are still active in the area. When their bus breaks down in the desert area, the team are picked off one by one by the cannibals. The Hills Have Eyes was Wes Craven's second film & his first real classic – a brutal survivalist tale where two families took on each other for survival in a brutal battle. In the same year as his greatest work, the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, Craven decided to mount a sequel to Hills. Not that it left the door open for one – Craven had to retcon some details in order to 'revive' Michael Berryman's character Pluto & create an entirely new character in the Reaper. The only other members to make a return are Robert Houston (who only appears in some early scenes) & Janus Blythe, the cannibal girl now civilised adult.While the original was a minor classic & an important part of Wes Craven's career (the director would later mount a remake & a further sequel to it), this sequel is a far cry from the brutal intensity of the original. This time out, Craven treats the setup in a more slasher-like fashion (slasher films were the rage then), without any of the intelligence that he demonstrated in the original. The film moves with the pace of your average Friday the 13th sequel & even with a similar score, courtesy of that franchise's musical hack Harry Manfredini. The killings are no longer brutally visceral but standard slasher stalk-&-slash. The addition of a blind girl as one of the good guys is interesting, her trip past the bodies of her friends having a slight suspense value to it, but the rest of the cast are given one-dimensional roles. As for Janus Blythe, she doesn't get to face off with her family, instead taken out before the climax (although it is not made clear whether she was killed or simply knocked out).

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!

Wow this was one terrible sequel. I don't even know where to start on how bad this movie was. It was just so low budget and so dang boring. Somehow Pluto (Michael Berryman) is still alive after the first movie. How I have no idea. Then there's one other cannibal The Reaper. His name sounds cool right? Too bad the character is so terrible it's not even funny. This entire movie is mostly flash backs from the first movie. Even the Dog has a flash back! This movie is pretty disappointing and really poorly made too. I don't know what Wes Craven was thinking when he made this one. Please avoid this movie at all cost; it's not worth your time. If you want to see a good Hills Have Eyes movie. Go see Hills Have Eyes (2006) (1977) The Hills Have Eyes II (2007) those movies are much better! I give The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 a 2/10