Search - Hillside Cannibals on DVD

Jefferson N. from BLAIRSVILLE, GA
Reviewed on 12/10/2012...

Hillside Cannibals treats you to a description of the legend of Sawney Bean on the back of the box...an old Scottish legend of a family of cannibals that lived in the hills and preyed on travellers...for their money and for their flesh. That being said, this film has absolutely NOTHING to do with that legend. It's set in the modern day in the Mojave Desert. A group of teens are out camping and run afoul of a group of cannibals living in the hills. The cannibals kill and eat three of them and capture another for later. One young woman gets away, but gets no help from the local police. Her only hope is a survivalist who wants revenge on the cannibals for killing his daughters.

At face value, this was obviously made to capitalize off of the popularity at the time of the remakes of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, and the movie Wrong Turn. The problem being, Chainsaw and Wrong Turn had the nubile Jessica Beils and Eliza Dushku, respectively, driving their films. This movie stars a group of relative unknowns and even though they do a decent job, they're just trying to push a genre film in an overcrowded market.

All of this being said, I wouldn't say it's a totally worthless movie. Genre fans will probably like the cannibal action. It's gory, but dark, so while you can see they're trying, the dark, firelit atmosphere keeps you from seeing how effective the f/x might or might not be. If I had to say what the saving grace of this film is, I would say it's the fact that the story focuses more on the cannibals than on the teens. They're extremely savage...They're not the Leatherface family one generation removed from normalcy. They more resemble cavemen of prehistory. They have their own language made up mostly of grunts and growls...and the only real tie to the Sawney Bean story which is their leader running around shouting "Sawney Bean" constantly. The main story is more about a struggle for leadership between their young, barbaric alpha male and another young man who is not so thrilled with the killing. This part actually brought a slight change to an otherwise formulaic genre bomb.

If you're a fan of the remake of Hills Have Eyes and the Wrong Turn flicks, you'll probably get some enjoyment out of this movie. It's got it's share of gore, cannibalism, and a pretty twisted ending. If you don't like this genre, this isn't going to win you over to it.

1 of 1 member(s) found this review helpful.

Chad B. (abrnt1) from CABERY, IL
Reviewed on 4/15/2011...

Asylum does nothing it seem but make grade z carbon copy versions of whatever the current horror/sci-fi hit is. This film is a pathetic attempt to copy The 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes (a well made horror film worth checking out) that fails badly. Pointless beyond belief is the only way to describe this piece of cinematic trash.

1 of 1 member(s) found this review helpful.

Im sure guestar57 will love it.

Dach Nednil | Slidell, La USA | 03/28/2006

(1 out of 5 stars)

"A word of advice to all potential buyers. Asylum hasnt made a good movie yet. Read the reviews on here, click on the names and notice what other movies they have reviewed. If you have one guy raving about Asylum movies maybe he doesnt have your best interest at heart because he works for Asylum!"

The Hills Have... Stupidity.

Robert P. Beveridge | Cleveland, OH | 08/19/2008

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Hillside Cannibals (Leigh Scott, 2006)

As good as The Dark Knight was (see above), Hillside Cannibals is bad. I'm always in the mood for a good Hills Have Eyes ripoff. I love the original as much as I hate the remake. I hated this more than I hate the remake. And that's saying a lot.

If you've seen, or read about, or even heard of, The Hills Have Eyes, you have the basic idea here-- a bunch of young-and-beautifuls, an isolated place, some inbred cave-dwellers, and a confrontation that ends in a great deal of bloodshed. Where Scott tried to take a right turn into originality land was that instead of the focus here being on the young-and-beautifuls, after the initial confrontation, he puts the focus on the cave-dwellers. And I admit that, if such a thing were actually done correctly, this would have been the most brilliant film of its type since Wes Craven's original. The problem is that it's not pulled off correctly. No, not at all.

It's pretty obvious that screenwriter Steve Bevilacqua (responsible for the similarly painful Supercroc) had some very good ideas of where to go here; a language of grunts and gestures that never comes close to being fully realized, internal warfare, that sort of thing. On a theoretical level, it's a fascinating concept, and one I'd really like to see taken to its natural conclusion. Instead, it seems to have been used for cheap thrills. Problem is, it doesn't provide many of those, either. The scenes where the cave-dwellers hunt, torture, or otherwise interact with the "normal" humans are at least kind of halfway watchable, but there are too few of those to carry the whole movie, as short as it is (eighty-two minutes). So much possibility, and none of it realized. (half)

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