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Left Of The Cutting Room Floor : The Hills Have Eyes

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It’s common knowledge that there is a lot cut out of some movies these days in order to get an R rating. It’s nothing new, even Hellraiser had to cut out hammer blows, and blood sucking in order to just get an R back in it’s day. With the popularity of unrated dvd these days, some time people don’t know the difference between the Unrated and Rated versions, that’s what this article is here to change. I want to show you just what differences the MPAA demands out of some movies just to scrape by with an R.

So let’s start with The Hills Have Eyes (2006)


Before we’re even two minutes into the movie we have our first cut. There is 15 frames missing of Pick Ax violence, and the audience hasn’t even had a chance to open their chips yet.
Thankfully the next cut isn’t for forty minutes , until we get the shotgun suicide. This cut is even shorter, but the aftermath of the blast is one of the most graphic scenes in the movie.

During the attack on the family at night, we lose almost thirty seconds of footage, due to a numerous amount of cuts. The unrated version feels so brutal in comparison to the R rated version, just in the scenes with the baby alone.

 Ten minutes later in the cave scene, we get one of the most useless cuts I’ve seen. We lose seventeen seconds of a man walking in a cave and discovering tombs, in the rated he finds the tombs much faster, and there’s a longer close up of them.

And we’re at the show down.

Here we have  fourteen seconds of cuts, as well as a few scenes the same length but completely different. All the cuts are to take out gore, but I feel they make the gore unrealistic, where in the unrated version the gore seems more real and painful, thus leaving a impact on the audience.

Finally, in the showdown, like I mentioned, there are scenes the same length. They take away the impact of the blood like so..

and instead shows us a close-up like….


In my opinion, this is a film that must be watched Unrated to get the full impact that the film makers were going for. It’s a shame for the MPAA to make cuts that take away from the realism in such a way. When a movies supposed to be brutal and hard to watch, let it.

The Hills Have Eyes II (2007)

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Let’s talk about The Hills Have Eyes, one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen, not the remake, but the original. It had such visceral gore, a level of tension that drove your nerves insane, and Michael Berryman. What more can you ask for from a movie about inbred cannibals.

But that’s not what we’re talking about today. Today it’s The Hills Have Eyes II, the unnecessary sequel to the remake. While I’m one of the people who really liked the remake, I can’t same the same about the sequel. It follows a group of terrible soldiers, having just failed combat training, going out to the hills for more training. They of course run across the inbreds, and we have an hour or more of military vs cannibal action.

The main problem with the story, at least for me, is simple. Their here for training, none of them except the sarge has been here before( and he doesn’t last long), so they have no idea where they are, and how to get out. Yet they keep pushing forward. I would of hiked my ass back the way I came the second the sarge was dead. But since we keep moving forward, what goal is there to head towards? We don’t know of anything ahead,  and we know of safety the other way, so why not pick the goal that makes sense. But again, that’s just me.

I hear a lot of people say the remake was only saved by it’s over the top gore, and of course if this is a sequel, that means it’s gotta be pushed to a further limit then the original. What better way to do that then start with a child of rape being born in a cave with an inbred doctor. Starting with something like that, really makes the rest of the movie seem like a cake walk. Even though we get to see quite a bit of gore through out, and it’s all quite graphic and well done, it just doesn’t come close to the same level.

So  even with the problems with the story taking away from the experience with me, and some of the characters seeming just so unlikable ( thankfully they don’t last too long), I still like this movie. It’s unnecessary, it’s nothing more then a reason for gore, but as long as you know that going in, you’ll still have fun.

Score – 78%
Gore – 10/10