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Instant Classic B Movie Alert

The Hills Have Eyes is weirdly fabulous -- a parody/homage to the slasher genre with deep psycho/political resonances -- well maybe not deep, but definite. It is one big projected neurosis, in the tradition of cold-war horror/monster flicks -- with a subtext all about how we manufacture "others" and then find "solutions" for them, about exercises in double-projection, "mirroring" I've seen it termed, hallucinations which have a nasty tendency to come true. Some truly bad baddies and truly hot hotties to whom bad things happen quite graphically. By a hotsnot French director apparently, who clearly means it all as a statement on the Amercian soul. Extremely violent, extremely funny, although my date and I seemed to be the only people in the Saturday audience who got the brilliant, mordant jokes. Up there with Verhoven's Robocop and Starship Trooper, with Carpenter's The Thing.

Shot in Morocco, by the way. Morocco for New Mexico. Excellent.

posted by Kalkaino @ 11:18 AM