Hillside Cannibals (2006)

What a disappointment.It said this was the story of Sawney Bean but as it was set in the present day with the usual excuse of kids on vacation there to discover all was not what it seemed just what was the point? Were you supposed to figure out the ones who actually spoke English were seeing a reenactment photographed into the ether? As if they were receivers? The story of the cannibal family led by a 17th century braindead lowlife was interesting enough for a movie especially as this family were well hidden from authority by conducting their business in a network of caves in Scotland and were only discovered after one person escaped their ambush. Bean was executed in Edinborough by hanging with both his hands and feet cut off so he bled to death and was put to death without trial because the caves were full of human bones. Surely that would have made a better movie than this excuse for horror and an easy enough job for the "actors" who were just required to grunt

Hillside Cannibals start as five teens arrive in a 'middle of nowhere' type desert location 50 miles from the nearest town to go cave spelunking, they set up camp for the night but are attacked by a group of vicious cannibals that live in the caves they intended to go spelunking in (isn't spelunking a great word? I think there should be more opportunities in the English language to use the word spelunking). Three are killed right off the bat, Bill (Tom Nagel) is taken captive while Linda (Heather Conforto) is torn between escaping herself & rescuing her boyfriend. Stupidly she decides to do the later which sort of ends in tears for everyone...Directed by Leigh Scott who also played the role of Sawney Bean/David in the film Hillside Cannibals has a terrible reputation & I can't find a single person who has said a good word about it & once you actually sit through it you'll fully understand why it's considered such a terrible film & why it has such a (deserved) low user rating on the IMDb. The script by Steve Bevilacqua is a straight forward & shameless The Hills Have Eyes (the original 1977 one & the 2006 remake) rip-off/cash-in which takes a pretty simplistic story & makes it even simpler, at least The Hills Have Eyes has a proper family, good character's & the cannibal killers themselves were given some personality but Hillside Cannibals gives us some bland faceless teens who aren't even given names in the film proper (the names in my ploy synopsis I got from the IMDb cast list & since Linda & Bill were at the top I assume they were the stars), they do stupid things, the plot revolves around & takes place in one dark cave which becomes repetitive, the predictable attempt at a plot twist will surprise no-one while it has an ending which will make you think 'what was the point in me watching that crap'. Also the cannibals themselves are a big problem, they don't ever speak & instead just grunt & make noises at each other which means there's not much dialogue & it's hard to tell them apart, it's hard to make out what their trying to do or why they are doing it & it's just not much fun to watch a film where a lot of the time people communicate using grunts & groans which mean absolutely nothing to the average human being. Oh, one more thing if the cannibals can't speak English how do they know what the Sheriff is saying to them?Director Scott turns in an intensely annoying film, the majority of it takes place at night in a cave where the only light source is a burning fire which leaves massive areas of the frame totally in darkness. The flickering low level orange colour scheme is horrible to sit through for 80 straight minutes & I don't know if it was just me but I found it almost impossible at times to see what was going on, I couldn't tell one stinking cannibal apart from another because they never spoke, they weren't given names & they all looked almost exactly the same in the horrible low level lighting & dark caves. Hillside Cannibals is one of the worst looking films I've seen in quite a while & in this day & age of high definition, DVD & digital cable TV there is no excuse to make a film which is so poorly lit it's difficult to understand what's happening on screen & be uncertain who character's are. Gore wise this is a big disappointment, again maybe the lighting had something to do with it but there's not much blood or violence here at all. Someone has a couple of fingers cut off with a pair of scissors, someone is sliced in half, someone has a machete stuck in their throat while someone else has a knife stuck in theirs, someone has both is legs cut off, one cannibal slices the skin off a couple of corpses faces which he then wears (in a The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) rip-off) & the cannibals eat some severed fingers. To be honest it's pretty unimpressive stuff, Cannibal Ferox (1981) this ain't!With a supposed budget of about $600,000 this obviously didn't have a lot of money spent on it but even so that's no excuse to turn in such bad film. Many filmmakers have turned in better films on less money than that I'm afraid. Apparently shot in Yermo in California in the Calico ghost town whatever that is. The acting sucks big time from nobody that will ever appear in anything worthwhile.Hillside Cannibals is crap, everyone who has seen it says so & it's very easy to understand why. No entertainment, poorly lit & shot, terrible character's, clichéd & predictable plot, virtually no dialogue, not enough gore & an awful ending. Not a film I would recommend seeing.

This is just a comment to the guy who flipped out and cried libel to this film: it says on the box that it's a rehash of the story that inspired The Hills Have Eyes. No libel there--the box says what it is; it's a movie about the inbred family that ate people in caves... the same family who inspired both Hills Have Eyes films. I just wanted to clear that up for everyone. I haven't seen this movie YET. I am going to rent it eventually because I think it looks like fun. I dig horror movies that a lot of people view as shoddy and uninspired. By the by, I was QUITE impressed with the remake of the Hills Have Eyes. I think the boys who did High Tension did a magnificent job with it. I've got to admit, though, that the animal violence made me cry not once, but twice. So, again: this movie isn't libel or a ripoff: it's another take on an actual story. Amazing how the same psychopaths can inspire more than one movie, isn't it?

I love loads of horror films, and a rather wide variety, my favorites are stylized with a creepy atmosphere, but I can enjoy a film on gore alone if well done with a decently creepy premise or killer. This film, I wanted so badly to enjoy, but it was garbage, and most of the time I can find something to enjoy in films most consider trash. There's sadly nothing here. Its supposed to be about the legend of Sawney Bean, the head of an incestuous cannibalistic clan who lived in caves along the shores of Scotland over 400 years ago. What we have is a badly acted film with gore effects I literally have done better for Halloween costumes, with no real story to speak of. The cannibals barely do more than grunt and act like cave men, which is wrong. No one has a Scottish accent, the caves seem to be in the desert, plus its set in modern day, but sawney bean is supposed to still be alive and no explanation is given as to why. The actual legend of Sawney Bean is very creepy and great fodder for a horror film so why they decided to make this film without using ANY of the legend outside of the name sawney bean and cannibals living in a cave is beyond me. Texas Chainsaw Massacre part FOUR was better than this. If any real effort was put into making this film by its crew, thats very very pathetic as to what they were able to create. Disjointed, badly made, no plot drivel. There's really nothing here for even the most lenient critic to enjoy.Someone should properly make the Sawney Bean story into a film as that would actually be something to see, if done well.