Episode 170: The Hills Have Metaphors

On this episode, we talk about the mean-spirited 2006 remake of THE HILLS HAVE EYES!

To read the full transcript, go to https://rankandvile.captivate.fm/episode/episode-170-the-hills-have-metaphors

Transcript:

Ryan 0:35

Hey guys, welcome to Rank and Vile podcast, where we are ranking every single horror movie ever made from best to worst. And this is Ryan.

Quincy 0:42

And this is Quincy

Ryan 0:43

How's it going? How's your week going?

Quincy 0:45

It's going pretty good. Um, I am living in that space where I spend a lot of my time with children. So all of a sudden, I know a whole lot about Among Us. And I'm kind of wrestling with that.

Ryan 1:02

Man among us. I just think of the fact that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, like did a charity stream of herself playing Among Us with people it looks, my understanding of it is that it's like sort of small, evil Teletubbies that want to betray each other.

Quincy 1:18

So it's enraging because it's an incredible game. It is a game where you're a little tiny astronaut without arms, and you're on a space station, and you're rushing to do little mundane tasks. And it's all touchscreen based. So it's literally stuff like you have to swipe your ID to get into the lab. But if you swipe your finger too fast, it doesn't work. And if you swipe your finger too slow, it doesn't work. So you literally have to just do it at the exact right way. Meanwhile, there is an imposter among everyone who's sneaking around killing all the other players. So you have to swipe a credit card at just the right speed so that you can go through a door and not be all alone and murdered.

Ryan 2:12

That sounds amazing.

Quincy 2:13

The thing that fucking sucks is I've been playing it just with people on the internet. And it is awful.

Ryan 2:23

Yeah, it seems like one of those games that if you're playing it with total-ass strangers, like that's way less fun than if it's just like you and your buds playing this.

Quincy 2:31

And you can play with a private server and I think we need to get some organized play done. But the worst thing is just the I have profanity filters off because I'm all on because I'm also 97. So like no one should say the F word to me. It just shows up as Asterix. But that still doesn't stop people from posting their Snapchat IDs and asking me because I choose purple as my player character, are you a girl. Will you add me on Snapchat? I'm a boy. Are you a girl? who is a girl? who wants to add me on Snapchat? I'm really bored.

Ryan 3:10

Yeah, and they're just like trying to find you on Snapchat like I sent you. I sent you my small suspicious looking teletubby please respond. For Rank and Vile, we absolutely need to at some point do like a twitch stream of us playing Among Us with people like we can. Like I don't know, like

Quincy 3:26

That would be amazing. I'd be very down with that. We could also do a twitch of just animal crossing.

Ryan 3:32

Just chill vibes only. It's just yeah, it's just us playing Animal Crossing, honestly. So the thing that I've been unbelievably buried in for the last couple of days is on Netflix, there is a show called tiny, pretty things are you very familiar with this?

Quincy 3:47

tiny, pretty things I haven't seen it sold me on title alone.

Ryan 3:52

I mean, kind of. It's about. So it's adapted from a book and it's about it's sort of like suspiria for kids, where it's about this elite ballet Academy in Chicago. And there's like, you know, young kids are like not young kids. They're like teenagers. And they're all played by actors who were like 30 but you know, there's like secrets and death and intrigue and all manner of stuff. And I've realized that like ballet is basically body horror, to me.

Quincy 4:20

Oh, like It's horrifying. The toes, google ballet dancers toes.

Ryan 4:26

Oh, there's Listen, there's a lot of pretty tasty gore on this show of just like people like peeling their toenails off and it's you know, you watch the human form, do those things. And it's like, it's like when you look at a pug and you're like that we did that to you like you. You are not supposed to evolve this respiratory system and this is against the will of God. So before we get into our movie, I wanted to point out that we have a bunch of new stuff up on our Patreon for so for $2 on our Patreon you get our show notes for $5 you get our bonus episodes. We just did one for Santa with Muscles.

Quincy 5:05

And this is probably coming out around the holiday season. Yeah definitely coming out before the epiphany. So you might wanna watch the worst Christmas movie or listen to us so you don't have to

Ryan 5:19

yeah yeah listen to us talk about this this fucking Hulk Hogan holiday vehicle, which by the way was funded by Jordan Belfort the literal last Wolf of Wall Street who definitely used it as a tax shelter. So yeah go go check out our Patreon if you haven't already. Let's all right let's jump into the movie we're doing for this week we okay so our movie this week is the Hills Have Eyes remake the The Hills Have Eyes remake from 2006

Quincy 5:46

Directed by Alexandra Aja,

Ryan 5:49

Right the guy who did High Tension. He's done a bunch of other movies right?

Quincy 5:52

I think but I cannot tell you anything besides High Tension and this

Ryan 5:57

Yeah. And I think he got the job for the Hills Have Eyes because like so much of now and I know that Quincy as on a previous episode when we did High Tension. You are not a fan of the movie High Tension.

Quincy 6:08

I'm also not a fan of the Hills Have Eyes remake, which we will talk about.

Ryan 6:14

Yeah, yeah.

Quincy 6:15

So Alexandra Aja has made actually quite a few movies. He's been very prolific, but some reason I cannot remember anything except for this one.

Ryan 6:28

Yeah, and this movie I feel like I there's so many things I like about this movie, but Well, yeah, let's Alright, so this movie, obviously is a remake of the original The Hills Have Eyes, directed by Wes Craven, who apparently executive produced this one. But as we know, executive producer doesn't actually mean anything necessarily.

Quincy 6:49

So we haven't ranked the original.

Ryan 6:53

Yeah, we haven't you Oh, that's right. We're doing this before we do the original. So at least, you know that that's that's a stay tuned for sure. Because also the original is pretty great.

Quincy 7:02

So I've been reading John Kenneth Muir. And one thing he talks about about horror film remakes is how it's a really damned if you do damned if you don't space for filmmakers. Because critics historically don't respect remakes, because that it seems like Hollywood chicanery, it's very much bereft of originality is just a quick cash grab. And for fans, you either run the risk of you know, introducing a new generation to a product, a franchise or IP, but alienating the old or failing to grab the new and failing to grab the old or failing to only grab the old so it's really tough. The other thing that Muir talks about is how this is buck wild. He says that in the recent years, society is more tolerant. So horror subtext doesn't work as well. His Case in point is the queer subtext in Fright Night had to be removed for the remake. I kind of call shenanigans on that. But also this book was published prior to 2020. So I'm not going to, to you know, shove him too hard into a locker. But in 2013, John Kenneth Muir says, you know, society so tolerant that a lot of the subtext about race and sexuality don't really work in remakes which,

Ryan 8:41

Yeah, which I don't know. And that's kind of my thing is I don't totally buy that because I feel like a popular take in I think horror is that remake bad that like anything that's a remake that isn't the original is by definition bad. And that's fucking silly, because like, The Thing was a remake of The Fly was a remake. Like, I think my favorite kind of a remake is the one that isn't just a do over of the original movie because like, for example, Fright Night 2011 it's about a different thing. Then the 80s Fright Night because like, the the mid 80s Fright Night, it was dealing with queer subtext, but kind of didn't know what it wanted to say about it. Because it's like, you've got this next door neighbor, he's a gay dude who might also want to cuck you I you know, like, it doesn't really know what it's trying to say. But it's trying to say, you know, it's important that it tried to say something where the remake which fucks by the way knows exactly what it's trying to say about like toxic masculinity and cycles of abuse and I don't know I feel like the the Hills Have Eyes remake to me. The thing that I don't know if I like it or not, is that it takes the subtext of the original because now the original The Hills Have Eyes. This was like a big yawp of rage from West Craven about like the Vietnam War and America's foreign policy, and kind have, you know dealing with the fallout of you know that at home where the Hills Have Eyes remake? It has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the teeth.

Quincy 10:10

Yeah, that's kind of the thing that and what's weird is and this is the thing that John Kenneth Muir is like building up to kind of missteps as he says, remakes are good when they recontextualize the ideas of the original. Yeah, which is what this is trying to do. But what's wild is in 2006, when I saw this in the theater, I did not leave and go, thank goodness Alexandra Aja is, you know, really sticking it to the Bush administration.

Ryan 10:40

Yeah.

Quincy 10:41

It does not feel like any sort of comment on red state versus blue state war on terror in the way that all of the critics who liked this movie say it's such a good thing now, reading criticism where Muir says, and you know, they literally stab a man with an American flag. Oh, okay. Yeah, you're right, that does that say

Ryan 11:07

I do kind of love that

Quincy 11:08

But what frustrates me is despite being so like having the opening credits in that very 2000s way of grainy stock footage of sideshow freaks and pickled punks

Ryan 11:21

Right.

Quincy 11:22

And like you know, nuclear nuclear test clips and like, we're gonna talk about how this was a Los Alamos, you know, town type thing. And trying to like add lore to why the mutants are mutants.

Ryan 11:37

Yeah

Quincy 11:38

It tries to do anything but what I found so frustrating about the remake is that it takes every set piece that makes the original great and does not innovate it simply does it with more of a budget.

Ryan 11:52

Yeah, well, and it's also you know

Quincy 11:53

Right down to Bob literally gets crucified and set on fire exactly like he does in Craven's original.

Ryan 12:01

Yeah

Quincy 12:02

The father kills the last moon in the exact same way as the father does in the original It is like almost shot for shot in some cases. The same movie.

Ryan 12:14

Yeah. Well, and the thing is now so yeah, so that that that opening thing, you know, we get the opening crawl that tells us that like the United States conducted atmospheric nuclear tests in the desert and that today, the government denies that there's genetic fallout from it now and the original I think was also kind of dealing with Agent Orange in Vietnam and the effect on on the Vietnamese population, which so the original did not have anything about radiation. It was just like, there's desert there's like tusken Raiders just living out in the desert. And that's just what it is. This one

Quincy 12:50

It really is the only thing in the original is it's it's implied that Pluto was a big baby. Like his dad in the original says like, Oh, that's that child would eat like whole chickens when he was three. So I just said fuck off and live in the desert.

Ryan 12:51

Yeah, now and now a thing that I will say about Alexander Aja. To say nothing about any of his ideas or politics or, you know, his narrative intent for this. He can shoot a really good horror action scene.

Quincy 13:22

He can he is a very talented cinematographer. The only thing about that, I'll give you that. I'll just give you that. If he if his shots don't have any original ideas behind them. It just leaves me feeling kind of meh. If the most innovative stuff is like, you know, the kid looking through the outhouse stall and like literally looking down at the shit that he just pooped and like, the gas station attendant who blows his head off and of course, Aja was like, but we're gonna show you his actual head being shot off with a very you know, expensive special effects shot.

Ryan 14:07

Yeah, it's an it's extreme. Yeah, it's it's very much that so we get an opening thing of dudes in hazmat suits with Geiger counters, sort of fucking around in the desert and then they they get killed and it's that that's how we open the thing. We the the the the credits of the thing. I cannot. I cannot deal with nuclear footage set to like old timey 50s music because it's just like, you're thinking of Fallout, like Fallout has the corner on the market for that kind of a thing. I feel like you can't do it.

Quincy 14:38

Now, is this a chicken or an egg situation? Ryan, which came first this movie came out in 2006. We have to remember that in the same period we had the Dawn of the Dead remake with Johnny Cash. This really does feel like that exact thing but done. less good.

Ryan 15:00

Yeah, yeah, it's it's less good. So we get the the the guy at the gas station who he is. He's just a leathery old fella and he's just like, yelling at an unseen force in the desert that he's like, I can't do this anymore. I'm out. And you know, it's sort of he's the entire interiority of the gas station looks like the fucking Museum of death. There's just like, Oh, yeah, just got newspaper clippings about disappearances tacked to the wall and jars full of weird shit. And this is just his, like, gas station? It's a lot

Quincy 15:34

It's Yeah. So basically, we find out in a departure from the original, that the the gas station attendant who is related to Pluto and the mutants, is selling out the very few people that come through and sending them to their doom.

Ryan 15:56

Yeah.

Quincy 15:57

Now here's the thing that strikes me is that that's a very bad business model.

Ryan 16:04

Yeah, and Oh, yeah. And also the fact that like, how was he getting the newspaper clippings for this? Like? Is somebody delivering newspapers out here? And why isn't he sending them to get eaten by the mutants?

Quincy 16:15

It is such a info dump very like ham fisted exposition because Bob discovers these in the dark in the middle of the night with a flashlight. And he goes, aha, like that makes everything makes sense.

Ryan 16:34

Yeah. Now let's get into big Bob. So this family shows up. And it is led by a guy called Big Bob, who is played by the guy who played Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, which I did not realize until halfway through his voice. His voice was really down low and he's just kind of talking like this? And like the entire time, I was like, I know he sounds familiar. I actually yelled out loud when I realized who he was. And this guy, he's an ex detective. And he's basically just archie bunker. Like, yeah, he's he's just like, conservative McGunface. He's got a big fucking mustache. He's got and because you know, we have to place this solidly in 2006 he's got the giant like American flag window hanger. On on his like camper. Yeah, God, you couldn't get away from those. And you know, you've got this like whole big family, you've got his son in law, who's a little Wiener with a floppy haircut. And big Bob, his name is Doug. And the big Bob just like busts this guy's balls constantly and he's got. Now the thing is, I feel like I'm supposed to relate to or like this guy. But he's such a petulant little shit.

Quincy 17:41

Yeah, it's funny because the son is the relatable character. And I think part of that might have been audience focus testing, because you have Doug, who in the original movie was the audience identifying character, the effete, you know, liberal arts educated guy who, you know, crosses a corner and becomes like a savage survivalist to save his family. But in this, he's just a literal cellphone salesman, whose main role in the first act of the movie is to hold up a phone and go, there's no signal, which might be my favorite trope of early 2000s. Where

Ryan 18:27

Oh, yeah

Quincy 18:27

So many of us crusty jerks made the joke of why don't you just call with your cell phone that they literally had to have a decade of movies where characters said, Hmm, I don't have any cell service here. We're in that 3% of America without cell service.

Ryan 18:44

Yeah, and this guy, like it's, I think the entire idea is meant to be like the one thing this guy is able to do with selling cell phones, they are now in a place where cell phones aren't going to do shit. Because it's like the land that God forgot to pay.

Quincy 18:58

So we're talking about 2006 and you know, as a person who lived part of my life without a phone and then got a phone 2006 was not the point where cell phones fixed everything.

Ryan 19:14

No, I didn't I honestly I don't think I had a cell phone until like 2008 maybe

Quincy 19:19

Now I will concede that probably about 2010 to 2010 to 2013. When GPS started getting added on phones, right? Then I was like, Oh, thank God I have a phone. I'm no I'm no longer lost in public because I refused to carry an atlas in my car. That's not what this movie is doing with it's just I can't call for help.

Ryan 19:46

Right. Side note here. Did you ever used to print up directions to places on MapQuest and then look at it while driving.

Quincy 19:54

100% had stacks of MapQuest directions to my favorite locations. In other towns and would just keep them handy for when I would hop in the car to go to the record store one town over

Ryan 20:08

I'm astounded that I didn't have more car crashes during this time because I definitely did have some car crashes around this time unrelated to like just glancing down at MapQuest it's you know what it's better now it's better now with like Waze and Google Maps I don't I don't want to go bag

Quincy 20:26

the one thing that's been improved upon

Ryan 20:29

goddamnit