Hillside Cannibals (2006 Video)
3/10
Gore, but not much else...
1 April 2006
This movie was made to cash in on the success of the 2006 remake of "the Hills Have Eyes".

Not since Kurt Russell portrayed a jungle boy on Gilligan's Island has someone done such an amazing job of not looking like a primitive. The Cannibals in this movie are pathetic. They engage in what can only be described as "Ooga Booga" acting. It takes more to be threatening in a performance that simply slipping on a leather coat which was bought from a Salvation Army used clothing store, rolling in the mud, and yelling, while waving your hands in the air. The nylon wigs, and halloween makeup show more of an effort than many of the "movies" produced by this production company / video mill, but all in all there is very little meat on the bones of this cannibal film. The violence and gore will satisfy those that are purely into graphic scenes, but if you need plot or logic in order to suspend your disbelief forget it. Issues like why there are cannibal, how they got there, and why their victims arrive in the desert in the first place are not addressed. What the director obviously didn't realise is that when it comes to horror less is more. This is especially true when you have actors that are so over the top in their depictions that the cave man in the Pauly Shore film "Encino Man" seems like something put together by anthropologists in a documentary. We almost see more interaction of the cannibals relating to each other than we do the victims to whom we are meant to relate. The post-nuclear valley girl-looking cannibals brutally kill their victims and than daintily eat the body parts off a licence plate like canapays. At one point you can even hear the director tell two of the cannibals "Ok, now lick your fingers" as they gently nibble away on the flesh as if Miss Manners herself was standing off screen as a technical adviser instructing on etiquette. If you can look past the fact that the cave in which they live is lite up like a Macy's Christmas tree, you are left to wonder where the cannibals got the vanilla candles that burn in the knooks and cranies of the cave from time to time (Peir One?). Basically, what you have is a film that contains scenes of violence and brutality which are rendered ineffective by all the rest of the films content.
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