Access Atlanta > Movies > Blog > Archives > 2007 > March > 29 > Entry
Can flesh-eating mutants trigger a midlife crisis?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I went to see “The Hills Have Eyes 2,” and I can’t tell you exactly what went wrong. But I just wasn’t feeling it. And halfway through I up and walked out.
I don’t think it was the movie’s fault. I think maybe it was me.
“Eyes” starts off in the super-gross way you want it to.
See, there’s this kidnapped human lady tied up to a filthy mattress. And she’s as filthy as the mattress, and her toenails are three inches long, on account of she’s been tied up for months. Because she’s been knocked up. And now she’s in labor. And that sucker’s ready to pop out - like, NOW!
And when it does, one of those lovable, radiated cannibal mutants we met in the first movie clubs her head in. Because it’s HIS lovable, radiated cannibal mutant baby!
So that part was excellent.
But then the movie cuts to Iraq, where soldiers are in a firefight. And one of them throws two grenades in a house, then this lady in a burka (sp???) stumbles out the door going, “You killed my babies!”
Only, she’s totally got her whole body strapped with bombs to blow up the troops.
And just when I’m wondering, “Is it kinda cool or kinda gross to use the war in Iraq as a background for a radiated-cannibal-mutants-in-the-desert movie,” everything stops.
Turns out the soldiers aren’t in Iraq. It’s a training exercise. The burka lady is a National Guard like the rest of them. And their drill sergeant (who is doing this whole junior Louis Gossett thing) tells them that they’d all be dead if this was the real deal.
Yeah, just like that training scene in “Silence of the Lambs.”
Maybe I’m wrong, but if you’re a quick-and-dirty sequel to a remake, you maybe don’t wanta remind people in the audience about a movie that was really and truly and for-all-time awesome, like “Lambs” was.
Anyway, I kept watching. And — back in the desert — the mutants shish-kebabbed one Army scientist, dug a blade in the skull of another, and ripped a third in half and started snacking on his chitlins.
But I just wasn’t into it. I couldn’t really concentrate on the movie. All of a sudden, I just felt like time was passing me by, and I thought that maybe I’d watched too many mutant-cannibal movies over the years. You know? And I just started wondering what the future holds for yours truly.
Don’t ask me why. Maybe it’s because my new lady friend, LaTrea, didn’t call me back after that accident with her area rug.
Maybe it’s because the dancers’ implants at the Pony seem to be getting harder while everything on me is starting to get softer.
Maybe it’s because somebody asked me how old my boy Cal is, and I said 6, and then realized he’s pushing 10. (10!!!)
Or maybe it’s because spring break starts today, and it seems like I’m the only one who’s NOT going to Florida and doesn’t have “teen” at the end of his age.
Maybe it’s those low-balling illegals and the way they’ve been poaching good freelance construction gigs I totally should have gotten instead.
Or maybe I’m just having one of those moments like Peter Fonda did at the end of “Easy Rider,” where he goes, “We blew it.” And nobody really knew what he meant, but you FELT it. Right?
And … maybe it’s because I’m old enough to know about that scene in “Easy Rider” that I’m feeling like this today.
Maybe I just oughta buy a convertible and get it over with. Or maybe it’s time for some real changes.
It might just be that I’ve had my fill of B-movies this spring, what with crummy stuff like “The Messengers” and “Dead Silence” and other [bodily waste] the studios have been dumping at the multiplex. Maybe I ought to do what the snoots call a “palette cleanser” and go see more serious stuff — the kind that wins the awards.
Don’t worry, I’m not saying I’m all of a sudden gonna want to write about British movies, like “Notes From a Scandal,” where I heard Judi Dench gets all stalkerish over Cate Blanchett. I don’t know about you, but if there’s a lesbian in a movie, she needs to be hot, and not 100 years old.
Anyway, check back in next week. Maybe I just need a boatload of vitamins or some antidepressants or a kegger.
Or maybe all I need to feel better about so-bad-they’re-good movies is to get a load of Tarantino and Rodriguez’s double-whammy blast of B-flick love, aka “Grindhouse” — am I right?
‘THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2’
• Naked breasts: Yeah, but they’re on a filthy pregnant lady who gets clubbed to death.
• Dirty words: There’s soldiers in it, so get ready for some f-bombs.
• Best lines: I can’t remember, I was too busy thinking about dying alone and stuff like that.
• The rest: Directed by Martin Weisz. Rated R for prolonged sequences of strong, gruesome horror violence and gore, a rape and language. At metro theaters. 1 hour, 29 minutes.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: The 'B' Movie King
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By michael Durham
March 30, 2007 6:53 PM | Link to this
Nothing brightens my day like a dose of Jordy “Ray” Purlky. And, yeah, I rmember that line from “Easy Rider”, too, and I remember how I “got” it. We’re gettin’ old, dude!