Craven took producer-only status and left the directing up to French director Alexandre Aja. Aja caught Craven’s attention with his 2005 “High Tension,” an intense and gory horror/thriller Aja wrote and directed. Craven liked Aja's vision for a remake of “The Hills Have Eyes” and gave him his blessing, handing over the reins but opting to stay involved and lend his support in the role of producer.
Speaking in front of the crowd of comic book and movie fans gathered in San Francisco’s Moscone Center for the 20th anniversary of WonderCon, Craven wanted to make sure his audience knew who was really responsible for this new version of “The Hills Have Eyes.” “The person that’s not here that we should mention immediately is Alexandre Aja who directed this wonderful picture. He wasn’t able to be with us today, but this is the man who did this and directed these wonderful actors. And I’m the producer. He’s French but…(laughing). I just want to mention his name because he’s the genius behind all of this.”
Craven took questions from WonderCon attendees who packed the hall to check out Fox Searchlight’s upcoming horror release. Inquiring minds wanted to know why he was inspired to remake one of his classic horror films. Craven joked in response, “I was in the desert there for 40 days and 40 nights and suddenly this beam of light came out of the sky...”
Craven was joined at the Northern California convention by three of the young stars of “The Hills Have Eyes.” Vinessa Shaw, who plays one of the innocent victims terrorized by psychotic killers in the film, said it was important for her to study Craven’s version before stepping in front of the camera for the remake. “I researched it thoroughly. I did watch the original and I remember being so scared by the part of Brenda [played by Susan Lanier in the first film]. She’s like the best horror film actress ever. I really believe that. She’s so scary in that one scene where she gets the gun pulled in her mouth," said Shaw. "It was important for me to see the first one in order for me to know where Alex was going to go with the second one. You know, obviously modernizing it and making it a little more current. It was good to see.”
“The Hills Have Eyes” co-star Aaron Stanford (who also has “X-Men: The Last Stand” set for release soon) said he also checked out the first movie before beginning work on Aja’s version. “Yes I did indeed see the first ‘Hills Have Eyes’ before starting this one. It influenced a lot of my choices for the look of the character. I really tried to convince the costumer to give me a pair of shorty-shorts – 1976 shorty shorts. She said that just wasn’t going to work with the look of the film. But I thought it was a classic, classic horror film.”
Dan Byrd plays Bobby Carter in “The Hills Have Eyes” and admits to never having seen the 1977 film. “I tried to rent it several times and failed each time so I never actually did get to see the original. But I heard about it from lots of people and in a way I really didn’t want to have this preconceived notion going into it. I kind of just wanted to have a fresh start and a fresh outlook. I guess now that it’s done it would be a good thing for me to go ahead and try and track that down,” said Byrd.
Their characters may go through hell in the movie however the actors managed to walk away from filming "The Hills Have Eyes" relatively unscathed. Shaw recalled a time when she had to ask the director to wrap up one particularly physically painful scene. “We had to run through the shaliest rocks and I had like the thinnest shoes on and we almost ate it a million times – Kathleen Quinlan and I. It was kind of ruthless after a while. We’re like, ‘Alex, we think you’ve got the shot. We’ve run through this a million times!’ That was the closest. Fortunately no one else got hurt.”
Shaw’s story sounded like a walk through a field of daisies compared to a scene Stanford recalled filming. “It’s amazing that we got off scot free. One of the houses that we had to do a fight sequence in, the set designer had thrown a whole bunch of garbage throughout the house to make it look run down. It was Morocco and people didn’t realize that actually breaking glass bottles and strewing them around the floor of a house specifically designed for a fight was not a good idea. So we went to do the fight where people’s faces were going to be dragged across the floor and you were crawling on your hands and everything else, and there were giant, jagged shards of glass of every description that [indicating 3 or 4 inches with his fingers] big. But we got out unscathed.”
Page 2: Wes Craven's Opinion of Remakes
