The Hills Run Red

Review By: Gene McCarthy
GeneMcCarthy@TheCinemaSource.com

Movie Grade: B-
DVD Features Grade: C
Overall Grade: B-

The Hills Run Red, which is actually a movie within a movie, begins with a young filmmaker and huge horror aficionado named Tyler (Tad Hilgenbrink, American Pie Presents Band Camp) who sets out to hunt down a mysterious lost film (shot 20 years earlier) called The Hills Run Red. He's also out to interview the films Howard Hughes like director, Wilson Wyler Concannon (played by character actor William Sadler), who shot the film then disappeared without a trace along with cast after the movie was shown once and then never seen again due to its horrifyingly violent content.

Tyler tracks down Alexa, (Sophie Monk, Spring Breakdown) the daughter of the reclusive filmmaker. Alexa is now a heroin-addicted stripper. Since she is his only lead to locating the director and his gory film, Tyler locks her in a motel room and forces her to go cold turkey to get her clean and sober so he can interview her. Once she's sober, she agrees to take him and his film crew which consists of his best friend Lalo and girlfriend Serena, to the woods where The Hills Run Red was shot. She also informs him that her father, died ten years earlier. However, that still leaves the missing film, so they forge ahead hoping to unearth it.

As with most horror films, Tyler and his crew get more than they bargained when they learn that the killer of the film, a freakish man-boy named Babyface, who sliced off his face piece by piece and replaced it with a broken doll's face, is actually real and the cast were not actors, but victims. What was once a cool adventure turns deadly and the young film crew find themselves in their own real live horror movie.

The Hills Run Red is a typical horror movie in many ways. Hot young teenagers head into the woods. A psycho killer chases them. A twist here, some boobs there. Your standard slasher flick stuff. But director Dave Parker injects a unique sense of style and vision into the story as well as some wit, where the victims actually get cell phone service and remember to pack a loaded gun. Sadler and Monk are the glue that holds this pretty silly plot together.

Baby face, our mass murdering psycho, happens to also be eerily reminiscent of the Chainsaw-wielding killer, in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, is actually quite scary and convincing. He also seems to have all his faculties, which is another way of saying he isn’t retarded or mentally impaired. Other than enjoying slaughtering and mutilating innocent people, he is actually quite bright. But let’s face it, it doesn’t matter how stupid the killer is, he is still smarter than his victims, who always get butchered in the end.

The Hills Run Red is a great direct-to-video horror film. The characters are good, plenty of torture, nudity and jolts to keep ...