Original subtitles

As far as what was going to come from the Hills of Ice Part 1 into the Hills

Ice Part 2, it was all pretty much locked into the script when I got it.

None of us knew those flashbacks were going to be in the picture. The script

didn't show that.

There was no money for the music, and there was no money for anything.

Is the dog having a flashback? I don't know.

There's some flaws in the storyline.

Some of the dialogue is silly.

It ain't natural to be in a place without a disco.

What can I say?

Disco, cocaine, whatever.

Say your prayers.

Stargrass! I just felt bad about the script.

I remember it was cold.

I remember the motel.

And I remember saying, good luck.

I met with at 56 West 47th Street.

And as I had seen his first film, and he couldn't get arrested after that film

for a reason I don't know, because it was a great film, great, great horror

film, Last House on the Left.

And he made a lot of money.

And I said, okay, you know, I made some money from some other thing I was doing,

some other film I was doing. I said, let's make one of those.

He took a family that came out of the hills, marauded, killed, ate the people.

They were cannibals also.

And that's the genesis of the film. It was a low -budget horror movie.

At that moment, I don't know what we were thinking, but we should have

been thinking, let's do a sequel to this at this moment. We didn't.

Big mistake.

The impact of Hills Have Eyes Original on my career was huge.

So of course there's always an explanation for people.

I was surprised.

Wes was a very special friend.

I could tell that he was struggling with, I guess, maybe not being

The guy was really smart.

He was very excited about Swamp Thing and I thought it was a good direction

to go.

But audiences can be fickle, and it just didn't take off.

Sometimes you just have to wait, but we have to pay the bills in between.

I really think that's where Wes was at.

You know, he had a bad experience on Swamp Thing, where we had finished the

movie, and everybody was pretty excited about it at the time, and EFCO Embassy

got sold the weekend of the release.

You know, like, good grief.

a terrible opportunity, because he was on the financial balls of his ass.

And he came in. There was a guy who worked for me named Barry Kahn, and he

handled the distribution.

And he and I were friends from the time we were 13 years old.

He was an accountant, and he was a hardworking guy.

And he said, let's make this movie, let's make this movie, let's make this

movie. And I said... Okay, okay, but where am I going to get the money for

movie? Here's what I can take out of my pocket.

$125 ,000, whatever the hell the number was.

It was a very, very low number.

And I said, I'll give it to you.

Make the movie.

And that's how it got going.

When I met Wes, I found him incredibly delightful, a gentleman, very inviting.

He wanted to work with me. He wanted to help me because I was going to be his

first AD and turned out to be unit production manager and second director

gopher and hamburger maker.

You know, it just never stopped.

And I just found him very easy to be with and non -threatening. He wasn't a

screamer. And we had a really good time together.

Wes is a professor.

What I remember is him going like this, nervous.

When he got nervous, he'd go like this.

bite his fingers like this, and then we'd giggle about whatever the scene was

that was coming up.

He was a very amusing and funny guy, and no pressure

from him.

I don't think he would pressure another human being.

I don't think he's the kind of person who would ever yell at somebody.

He'd get upset about something maybe, but he wouldn't, you know.

He wasn't a big personality like that.

When we did The Hills Have Eyes Part II, Wes was,

I don't want to use the term his career was waning, but Wes had leveled off,

and I got the impression that he wasn't that interested.

doing anything in particular, but they're kind of boasting him to get his

in there because it hadn't been in films in 18 months or two years. So he

knocked this little script together, and we did this sequel.

I was not the prime mover of that movie.

I was the reluctant financier who didn't want to see Wes Craven leave, and I

wanted to support it, but it was a terrible way to support it because it's

if you can't get enough money...

to make something decent, then you're kind of stuck in the middle of it.

We had zero dollars.

I had to put together a crew, rubbing nickels together. We're staying in a

at Joshua Tree up in 29 Palms.

Actually, the decision to shoot in Joshua Tree came from the location

all that kind of stuff. I wouldn't have picked it because it's too damn cold out

there and the conditions are really rough.

but it fit the look of the film that Wes wanted, so off we went.

The location was exotic.

It was a state monument, so we had to, you know, not tear things up. When we

the original Hills Have Eyes, we just went out and started rolling film.

You know, it was cold.

I think that picking any location, especially Joshua Tree, has its daytime

and nighttime lows.

During the day, it was fairly easy to work with the crew and everything, but

once the night hit, it got...

horrible conditions. It was really tough.

It was miserably cold.

And the crew, as much as we tried to keep them happy and everything, just

miserable.

Not that they were miserable at West or myself or any of the execs or anything.

It was just the conditions were very tough.

Well, Michael Berryman, for example.

He was a bit of a challenge because he didn't have sweat glands. So during the

day, we had to make sure we had special sea breeze and things to keep him cool,

and we had to keep him out of the sun as much as possible. But he was a trooper.

I mean, he never complained, never said, I can't do that, I'm getting too hot or

anything like that.

He knew he was hired for the face in the whole nine yards, but he's a pretty

articulate and pretty smart guy.

and had a lot more talent than a lot of people gave him credit for. But that's

not what he was hired for. He was hired to scare the hell out of you, and he did

it better than just about everybody.

It was the first time I'd worked with people that I'd worked with in the past.

I've got to kill you and get in good with Reaper.

Reaper.

Papa Coop's big brother's here.

Janet's wife was really a consummate pro.

I mean, she did bring a lot from the first, and so there was, I think, a

carryover for character.

So I don't think Wes had to work too hard with her because it was a

continuation.

I remember when The Hills Have Eyes 2, when I loved the part where I was having

a flashback and I was crying, telling a story to the girls about the past, and I

choked up and cried, and I said, I'm sorry, and he got very upset because

I don't know why I cut character.

And I didn't mean to, you know. And he goes, no, no, no.

You know, I never saw him get excited, you know. He wanted me to go on, you

know. So he picked up from there.

And I like what he wrote for my part. I wasn't really happy with all the

characters he put in there.

You know, the motorcycles and the blind girl.

And, you know, it just seemed too much.

And while we're on location, I said, you know, this is not my ego talking. I

said... But for the character, she doesn't die. You can't have Ruby die.

He had to hit her head on a rock and die, you know. And I said, she can't

And he went, okay, but I have a completion bond, and I'll do a rewrite.

Well, he never had time for it.

So when it came to me hitting my head on the rock, he said, gurgle and all that

stuff and die, I wouldn't do it.

Notice in the movie, I kind of just pass out.

I wouldn't die.

I was impressed with the stunt riders.

They were very safety -oriented, very accomplished.

On weekends, they would go out in the desert and go nuts.

We were pretty far. I mean, from the location to our hotel, just so you know,

was about 45 minutes.

So with the motocross, you know, if anyone did get hurt, we would have a lot

problems. So we did have an EMT, and I believe, if my memory serves me well,

because I've had so many shoots, I think we had an ambulance on site.

So I think there was a lot of safety concerns, because you're doing some

motocross, and it's dangerous.

They were riding up and around these bolters, getting pretty crazy. These

were pretty good, by the way. They were pretty good.

And that's all we had.

So they knew they had to be careful with them, because there were no doubles.

They couldn't afford it.

There was situations where dust would get in the carburetors and would have to

stop, you know what I mean? In the middle of a jump or something, the bike

stop and I'd go, oh dear.

You know, and it would land and luckily we had really good stunt people. But for

the most part, they kept the bikes really well tuned.

They would clean them every night, made sure all the dust was there. They had a

lot of dust off and occasionally they'd take the carburetor filters off and

clean those out.

You know, at times when they were doing the races, you'd kind of...

see somebody coming out of the dust, you'd think, oh, jeez, I hope they make

this turn.

We took as many precautions as possible.

Well, the good guys, the kids, were greener than this vegetation you see out

window. They were trying their best to act, and all Wes was

trying to tell them to do was to react.

I think he probably ended up making them all better actors by the time the

picture was over, but they had to learn their trade on his dime.

Maybe the only time I ever saw Wes roll his eyes and go, oh my God.

Well, there's a scene where I'm supposed to kick him in the head and push his

head out of frame.

And I'll never forget it. Wes knows how to do it. I knew how to do it. You take

your foot and you put it up flush against somebody, leave your knee bent,

then you just straighten your leg, and then the actor should follow the

and go out of frame.

And the kid, I forget his name, but he's really nice. And he says, Michael, I

have a thick skull. Just go ahead, just kick me and push my head as far as you

need it to be. And I go, well, let's do it the way that I described.

And he goes, oh, that's a great idea.

I like that idea better.

I never told anybody this, by the way. This is the first time I'm ever going to

say this to anybody.

I don't know why I had a day off, and I got into my car, and I was bored. I

wanted to go, and I drove into this little tiny town and went to a

I had them.

She cut my hair. In the middle of this movie, she cut my hair and put a

on it. I came back and Wes was mad.

It did match eventually.

I mean, it matched okay, but he was serious at me.

I don't know what drove me. I wasn't drunk or on drugs. I don't know what

me do this.

Maybe pure boredom. I don't know. It was just a day off, nothing to do. Let's go

change your hairdo in the middle of a movie. How stupid was that?

Rachel.

You say it was your brother who gave you that? She fell. It was my brother.

It was my dead brother.

because of the low -budget nature of it, an independent non -union, I took on

the role, agreeable with Peter Locke, that I would be the unit production

manager and the first AD.

So it was a double whammy for me because I had to work my butt off at night, and

then after the shoot ended, I was with either an accountant or somebody trying

to deal with the day's activities, and then I'd have to switch hats to the

AD and make sure that all of the shots were ready for the next day and

everything, all the props were going to be there and all that. So that got to

be... Quite tiring, shall we say. I was putting in 18, 19 -hour days

consistently.

Happy to do it. It's just, you know, you're a young filmmaker. You can do

anything.

As far as the second unit thing, well, that came out of nowhere.

We were getting behind one day, and Wes said, damn, I need a couple of shots. I

said, what do you need, Wes? He goes, take a camera.

Here's the part of the script I want you to do. And I looked up. I said, a doggy

flashback? Wes, really?

I was just kind of like, where'd that come from?

That must have been financial.

The flashbacks, if we used 40 % flashbacks, he must have known when we

of money that he could edit it together by taking, cannibalizing, ha ha ha,

cannibalizing the first movie about cannibals and putting it in the second

movie. One of the first pre -production meetings I had, The whole crew's there.

Wes wasn't there yet. And I walk into the room. I sit down. I look around. I

okay, what's up?

Because you could tell they were all talking.

They said, doggy flashback? I said, don't start with me. Shut up and just do

your job.

And we were all cracking up, laughing, of course. They said, well, how are we

going to handle that? I said, the director will handle that, not me.

And then I wound up having to handle it.

And that lends itself to the silliness of Peter Locke and the wittiness

of... of Wes Craven. I don't even know if I opined on the script.

I have no idea.

I can't recall getting into it. I know, obviously, I read it. But I can't recall

sitting down with Wes and saying, I don't like this, I love this, I love

and why don't you get rid of this and do more of this. Whatever it was, I'm

usually into those things up to here.

And this was like...

I was so nervous about the whole thing because I didn't see how they were going

to finish.

We had just been breaking our backs. The conditions were horrible. Everyone was

cranky. And we're sitting in the hotel dining area that they designated for us.

And Wes was sitting across the table from me, and I had the DP next to me.

Wes was just fiddling with his pee, and he shot one at my DP.

And I thought, oh.

deer. That was a mistake.

So he took some food and shot it back. Wes shot it back. I grabbed a bottle of

chocolate sauce and squirted it. And the place like Animal House erupted into

the animal.

Everyone's throwing food.

And it just broke the tension.

It really broke the tension.

I did a lot of westerns. So for me, this was as much as Star Wars as a western

in outer space. This was sort of a horror film in a western set.

We weren't allowed to go into this historical site at Joshua Tree, which

barn, an outhouse, and an old house.

We could do entrances in and out the door, but they didn't want the crew in

there, and I didn't know why, because you put more than three people in the

place, the whole floor would collapse. I mean, it's been there since the 1800s.

But we brought in our own pieces of set dressing.

This place is pretty weird.

And Wes loved the location, and he had difficulties trying to figure out how we

were going to transition the shot from Joshua Tree into a cave, because there's

no caves in Joshua Tree.

So I got to thinking, and the next day I went to him, and I said, you know what

we'll do? We'll buy a cheap trailer, and we'll put a refrigerator in it.

And we'll open up the refrigerator, and it'll be a ladder, and we'll go down the

ladder, and we'll cut, and we'll go to Bronson Canyon.

The interesting thing about it is it has a cave that has an entrance at both

sides. And I said, and then we'll go and then we'll put the highest, we'll find,

we'll put the ladder back up at the highest point we can in the cave. You

pick him up and the leg's coming down. He looked at me and he went, that works.

He said, and then we'll do the rest of it all in the cave.

I built a well box because they were eventually going to use that gag to pull

the engine through.

And I had to figure out a way to build a styrofoam engine.

go to Dominic, this thing has got to look like it's, you know, 100 foot deep.

Because there was two ways we can do this.

I said, I can build the box, you can shoot it, it'll look like it's straight

and down.

While we're at Bronson Canyon, I'll build this 20 foot suit.

And what I'll do is put the opening down below.

And we will taper it, put some lights in it, and we'll change the voltage of the

lights and put the real small ones down at the bottom, and we'll come up very

light all the way to the top.

You'll look down that thing until you won't even see the bottom.

And you do that, and I said, yeah, it's the cost of plywood. The guys will not

get together. We'll have it done in two days.

So when he saw the thing, he looked at it, and he went, wow, this is great.

Where did you, he goes, where did you come up with this idea? And I said, very

dear friend of mine, Peter Woolley, production designer on Blazing Saddles.

showed me that on pennies when he was doing Pennies from Heaven.

He goes, take a look at this, Dominic. And I go, wow, that thing looks like

really long. He goes, it's the simplest way to do stuff.

And it goes back to the 20s and 30s, but it still works today because the camera

has only one eye. We have two.

You believe what you see.

So we pulled the gag off, and Wes was very happy with it. And I

work with Taryn DeCelis.

She was a costume designer.

Taryn did a great job because they gave her two nickels and a quarter to do the

budget. I look back at the costumes that they had with all the gadgets and the

metals and the stuff, and I go all the way back to two pictures

that started it all.

Mad Max and The Hills Have Eyes were body armor, esoteric, bizarre shapes.

thought a lot of West last night and some of the innovative things that he

started with his own imagination.

It was great.

When West called me about Hill's Advice 2, I was living in California, and he

said, you know, I need you to help me on this. It's really going to be tough.

He goes, He goes, I only have half the money, and you only have half the time.

And I went, oh, man.

I says, well, don't worry, Wes.

We'll do it. The money is irrelevant, but I'll do it. Don't worry.

I actually never saw The Hills Have Ice Part I, so I didn't know what the music

sounded like.

Literally, I mean, I think I had been living here a very, very short amount of

time. So the only thing I could do was go back to New York and record there.

So one of my favorites, in fact, I was talking to my friend who was my copyist

at the time.

And I mean, this is back in the days when you wrote out every score,

So I'm like just writing and panicking. I got a red eye to New York and I'm

writing out parts.

So we're at this house, and he's sitting across the table from me, and I'm

writing.

And I said, John, I've got to put my head down. I've been up too long.

I'm just going to put my head down for a little while. He goes, okay, yeah, no

problem, man.

So anyway, so he starts poking me, and I go.

What's the matter? He goes, you're drooling on the score. I have to copy

stuff, man.

So don't drool on the score.

Oh, okay, all right. Anyway, so I finished and literally came

back with a finished score and a tape in my hand, flew back, landed, and went

right to the mix with the music. That's how under the gun we were.

And we just started dropping music in.

Oh yeah, this goes here. Okay.

We didn't even build music. We were building the music tracks literally as

were going through the film. I must have just bought a DX7 because there was so

much DX7 in that score that I was playing. I was using it as drums and I

using it at all these different things.

And I think there was also an alto flute theme. I had an alto flute, and I think

I played that.

Wes was pretty happy with what happened, I mean, all things considered.

And then at that point, this is why I know Nightmare on Elm Street had not

been done, he handed me the script to Nightmare on Elm Street and said, He

this is going to be my next movie. Take a look at this. Tell me what you think.

Okay.

I had gone home. I went that night, and I read Nightmare on Elm Street.

And I went, holy crap, this is really good.

This is a long way from Hilltale Eyes Part II.

Well,

we were at the San Golden Studios.

at the time it was Sam Goldman.

And as most cast and crew screenings are, it's not only just a screening,

reunion.

You know, you had the reception before, and we're all talking about this and

that, and, you know, we sat down, and the movie came up, and we watched it,

as I mentioned earlier, flashbacks started showing up, and we kind of

each other.

I don't remember that. I don't remember that either.

He goes, okay, so it's from the first picture, isn't it? And he goes, yeah, I

think so. I never saw the first picture.

And Tara's going, that's not my wardrobe.

He goes, that's not your scene.

It was not what he would have liked to have been doing. It was certainly not

what I would have liked to have been doing. I would have liked to have seen

had happened there and say, okay, here's another $150 ,000.

Let's get rid of half the movie and finish it.

in another way, rewrite this, rewrite that.

Not force him to do it, but to discuss with him what he thought we could change

to make it scarier and have some people he liked in the movie and generally

made a wonderful film.

Most of us are proud of all the work we do all the time.

We leave it up to the audience to decide because of those pictures that we

thought were going to be stinkers and never make it usually do. The ones we

think are going to be great in Academy Award nominations never are.

So we're the worst judge of our work than you can find.

It was never finished in my mind.

And so when it was thrown out there, I didn't have much of a chance.

Whatever process we went through, testing, and I can't remember if during

time there were still territories, if we got it out into one territory.

I don't even know.

I had divorced myself from it, not on

purpose, but because I was doing this over here, and this thing didn't look

good to me on paper. It didn't look good to me any which way.

And so I wasn't going to put my energy into it. I already put my money into it.

But I didn't see how I was going to affect it at that point.

If a fixture is 90 minutes, let's say, and you have 60 good minutes, okay, you

go after it. I didn't see it.

I mean, then you're betting another chunk of money against the first

chunk of money that's got you 60 good minutes.

Okay.

It's 50 % more. Okay, whatever.

We'll take a shot at it.

But it wasn't there for me.

Okay, let's be honest. It wasn't the greatest movie that's ever been made,

certainly I don't think Wes would say it was my best work.

But I think if you go back and look at it and start taking it apart, you'll see

some really interesting things that people can revisit now and think, yeah,

know what?

That is pretty clever.

And I think they'll start to see Wes's legacy and how it came out of that and

how things start to evolve for him as a director until he did Nightmare on Elm

Street. Wes is Wes. You know, he got that next at bat and hit the ball out of

the park.

And that was that.

I mean, we maintained our friendship. It wasn't like that was going to go away.

But, you know, I don't think that he would say to me over and over again,

you.

And I would say, I'm so sorry, because I wish I had something given you to thank

me. But what the thanks was for was staying in town.

He was in the game. He didn't have to uproot his family, go away, and try

something else in life.

It was a script that I think he wrote

in haste, and it was so plot -driven.

And then dialogue -driven, you could just see the dominoes

falling, you know, one at a time.

So it wasn't, you know, obviously, it is what it is.

It's Hills of Ice Part II.

When I saw the Hills of Ice II, I was real disappointed, you know.

If you would take, I mean, for me, take the parts with Michael and I and a dog,

and it worked.

I mean, especially going back to the desert and all the stuff coming back for

her. I mean, I love that.

It's silly enough.

It's got a good visual and a lot of action.

The whole idea of the daylight savings time and shortcut, great idea. That's

we get lost, and that's how we get them in a situation and circumstance.

The motorcycle stunts and footage really gave a lot of

action and a lot of color and a lot of ha ha ha you can't catch me kind of

and it worked very well.

He was a great guy.

We had done lots of little things in New York together.

He was terrific.

And The Hills Have Eyes was very good for me, very good for him.

And I'm sorry that that second one wasn't a real -life bat.

I think his legacy is well -earned and well -deserved.

I think he brought a lot of interesting things to the horror genre.

I wish I had a reputation like him. I'm going to work on it until I do.

And I think he was very well respected in that field, and I think that's why

legacy should be noted.

Look, the way things turned out for him, it's okay.

For the money I lost and for what else he made, it was fine.

All good.

I'm happy he became Wes Craven. He became the big Wes Craven.

I'll always love him.

He was a great partner and a great friend.