Wes Craven's 1977 film "The Hills Have Eyes," like Tobe Hooper's "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" before it, features a vanload of city folks who find themselves waylaid in a forgotten corner of the American wasteland. In Craven's film, the wasteland is not rural Texas, but the irradiated deserts of Nevada. The protagonists (Dee Wallace is among them) are beset by the brood of the sadistic Papa Jupiter (James Whitworth), including Mars (Lance Gordon), Mercury (Arthur King), and Pluto (Michael Berryman). Years ago, Jupiter moved into the hills with his wife (Cordy Clark) and raised their children to attack and cannibalize passers-through in order to survive. "The Hills Have Eyes" is raw and brutal, but possessed of a winking sense of humor that horror fans will appreciate.

The original film only cost about $700,000 to make (although the actual budget isn't very well recorded), yet it went on to make over $25 million,...