Despite owning Anchor Bay's 2-Disc Set for close to two years, it's only now that I managed to catch up with this horror 'classic' which had been the missing link for me from among all those seminal releases that the genre spawned throughout the 1970s; consequently, I also hadn't watched the 2006 remake even if I mildly liked its director Alexander Aja's SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE (2003).
Anyway, while I concede that the original is perhaps genre exponent Craven's best work, I can't deny being slightly let down by the film: the desert setting is notable and the action of its latter stages effectively handled but, despite a plethora of mutant cannibals for villains (in itself, a neat concept), what we see is never really scary or even very disturbing! This is all the more baffling when considering that Craven's preceding film had been the notorious THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972); that said, some of the death scenes here are remarkably vicious (such as that of the old man at the derelict service-station) while others are just plain bizarre (the one devised for the head of the city-folk, a retired cop crippled by a heart condition, and Mars' own at the very end).
The premise of having a group of stranded travelers at the mercy of a family of maniacs is obviously reminiscent of Tobe Hooper's THE Texas CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974), another influential (with numerous sequels, prequels and remakes to its name) genre outing from this same creative era which, ironically, also didn't quite impress me as much as I had anticipated though, cumulatively, it's an altogether more intense experience than Craven's film. While the cannibal family (many of whom are named after planets!) and especially Michael Berryman's lanky and odd-looking Pluto have acquired iconic status, their characterization is rather sketchy; John Steadman as the old man and Janus Blythe's Ruby, then, appear as the human members of the clan who are resented and eventually attacked by their own kin for being 'soft-hearted'.
Still, the victims don't fare much better (the impossibly naïve mother being a liability above all) and their final dehumanization, not to mention resourcefulness in the face of crisis, isn't exactly believable if inevitable so as to generate the requisite crowd-pleasing heroics. One of the latter folk is played by Dee Wallace, soon to tackle the lead role in Joe Dante's THE HOWLING (1981) curiously enough, yet another popular horror title which doesn't do much for me! Incidentally, Craven states that his intention with the film was to blur the line between Civilization and the wilderness: symbolizing this is the fact that the travelers' Alsatian dogs which play a major role in the proceedings are called Beauty and Beast and, while the former quickly (and gruesomely) expires at the villains' hands, the latter repeatedly triumphs over them! By the way, I followed the film with its much inferior (and partly recycled) sequel made by Craven himself and featuring three cast members (four, if you include Beast) from the original; see my comments about it elsewhere.
Anyway, while I concede that the original is perhaps genre exponent Craven's best work, I can't deny being slightly let down by the film: the desert setting is notable and the action of its latter stages effectively handled but, despite a plethora of mutant cannibals for villains (in itself, a neat concept), what we see is never really scary or even very disturbing! This is all the more baffling when considering that Craven's preceding film had been the notorious THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972); that said, some of the death scenes here are remarkably vicious (such as that of the old man at the derelict service-station) while others are just plain bizarre (the one devised for the head of the city-folk, a retired cop crippled by a heart condition, and Mars' own at the very end).
The premise of having a group of stranded travelers at the mercy of a family of maniacs is obviously reminiscent of Tobe Hooper's THE Texas CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974), another influential (with numerous sequels, prequels and remakes to its name) genre outing from this same creative era which, ironically, also didn't quite impress me as much as I had anticipated though, cumulatively, it's an altogether more intense experience than Craven's film. While the cannibal family (many of whom are named after planets!) and especially Michael Berryman's lanky and odd-looking Pluto have acquired iconic status, their characterization is rather sketchy; John Steadman as the old man and Janus Blythe's Ruby, then, appear as the human members of the clan who are resented and eventually attacked by their own kin for being 'soft-hearted'.
Still, the victims don't fare much better (the impossibly naïve mother being a liability above all) and their final dehumanization, not to mention resourcefulness in the face of crisis, isn't exactly believable if inevitable so as to generate the requisite crowd-pleasing heroics. One of the latter folk is played by Dee Wallace, soon to tackle the lead role in Joe Dante's THE HOWLING (1981) curiously enough, yet another popular horror title which doesn't do much for me! Incidentally, Craven states that his intention with the film was to blur the line between Civilization and the wilderness: symbolizing this is the fact that the travelers' Alsatian dogs which play a major role in the proceedings are called Beauty and Beast and, while the former quickly (and gruesomely) expires at the villains' hands, the latter repeatedly triumphs over them! By the way, I followed the film with its much inferior (and partly recycled) sequel made by Craven himself and featuring three cast members (four, if you include Beast) from the original; see my comments about it elsewhere.