The Hill Haves Eye Part 2 -- 1985 -- R

Wow, oh wow. And I don't mean that in a good way. Mr. Craven, what were you thinking? You're so much better than this. How, after something like this film's predecessor and then A Nightmare on Elm Street, did he think something like this was any good at all?

Basically, this film occurs eight years after the original and involves a group of motorcycle racers cutting across the desert in their bus to make up an hour because (and yeah, this is the reason) they read in the paper on the bus that daylight savings time ended last night, and nobody set their clocks forward so they have to make up the hour or they'll be disqualified. No, seriously, that's the reason.

As luck would have it, they failed to put enough gas in the bus to reach their destination and so they run out near a compound of some kind in the middle of the desert. The leader of this group was the brother from the first movie, and as such, he didn't want to go near the desert, even though the race was not on the bomb range itself. So he had a few flashbacks to remind us of who he was, and stayed home. Smart guy.

Also returning from the first movie is Beast, the dog, who has his own flashback. Hey, stop laughing. I'm not making this up. We also get Ruby, the wild girl from the first movie, who is now civilized and hanging with these motorcycle kids. How coincidental that she finds herself back in the desert she grew up in, eh?

Anyway, the biggest problem this movie has is inconsistency in its characters. They have certain skills when they need to have them, and don't when it would hinder the plot; kind of like some superhero movies. Phenomenal cosmic powers...when convenient. Take Ruby, for example. She grew up in the desert, and it is stated at one point that she knows every inch of it. Then why doesn't she know about this ranch compound? Why didn't she stop them from going in to begin with?

Take our blind girl who has sharp hearing and a strong sense of smell. She senses things when convenient, and completely fails to when it's not. She walks into one room with the carcass of an animal hanging from the ceiling and doesn't react at all. So that wouldn't smell pretty funky? And even more so to someone with an overdeveloped sense?

Beyond that, you have your normal range of horror movie actions. Characters do really, really stupid things to get themselves killed. We had one pair take a wide open path through the desert to chase one of the baddies who swiped one of their bikes, and then took a completely different path back through claustrophobic canyons. What was wrong with the wide open spaces? Why chase the freak who stole the bike? What will that accomplish?

Overall, it was a bit silly beginning to end with every action over serving to service the plot or get someone killed. And while in most cases that's a good thing (i.e. no extraneous stuff), in this case, most of them made no logical sense. This one guy's girl runs off, so he chases her...in the bus. WHAAAAT???

It's not as bad as Scary Movie 2, however. I mean, if there's one redeeming factor here, it's that there were no extraneous actions. Everything that happened served some kind of purpose, but it all still amounted to a movie that was a waste of time. Some films are good ideas that were poorly executed. This one is a bad idea that only got worse.

Surely Wes Craven didn't write and direct this movie. Surely not. Surely not.