The Hills Have Eyes 2

You could say Hills Have Eyes 2 starts as it means to go on. How all those nasty mutants mean it to go on. A naked, frightened and bedraggled woman tied down, giving birth to a monster, and then she has her head whacked off with a shovel. Not that an audience could be so depraved as to watch such things? Could you?

Let's cut to some spanking new National Guard recruits while you think about it. Being politically correct, we'll include some female soldiers. An exotic Asian girl and a long-haired blonde who whimpers and screams convincingly, please. Then the male troops can get picked off one at a time so mutants can 'mate' (ooops - rape) to spawn their progeny. While we wait for all that to happen, men can get their limbs hacked off and impaled, or the geeky one can play hero to save the chicks from the monsters.

Whether Hills Have Eyes 2 is a degenerate list of male fantasy-sequences or a parody of them, we leave to the artistic side of your nature to ruminate. (I needed it pointed out to me by a woman, the first time I saw Scorpion: Female Prisoner #701, that this Japanese lesbian exploitation movie is tongue-in-cheek.)

The basic premise, if you are unfamiliar with the Hills series and re-make series, is that the radiation from some early U.S. atom bomb testing in the New Mexico desert hills has mutated some human beings into grotesque but fleet-footed monsters. These cannibalise anything they can find. This particular incarnation includes plenty of potty humour that fans will love or hate. A peacenik recruit, Napoleon, is left to guard the Portakabin latrine. On one leg, and with his gun held in the air. When the officer is out of sight, Napoleon succumbs to temptation and goes for a dump. Only to be grabbed from below. Up in the hills, the soldiers guard each other - except for when 'Missy' goes for a pee. (Fill in the details.)

Soon they are all down mineshafts as mutants outwit them. Amber, when not busy looking glamorous in uniform, panics at spiders - and this makes her kick-ass antics later on so much more fun. Sexual assaults on her meanwhile justify violence of the more graphic kind, such as smashing a mutant's head with a rock (mutants' heads are pretty strong, so extended and bloody bashing is necessary). And why not? Papa Hades drools thick white mucus over his captive female as he starts to thrust into her, shouting and grunting "Give me a baby!" Special effects create ulcerous skin that is very tasty. Plus these creatures are dirty, sweaty and totally gross. Wanna rescue her? You should know things like, if your last bullet fails to blow a mutant's brains right out, put your fingers in its head-wound and wiggle them about a bit.

Cinematographer Sam McCurdy (The Descent) creates suitably claustrophobic, dimly-lit tunnels. We constantly try to guess where the mutants will leap from those shadows. This is no sophisticated thriller - it just does what it says on the packet.

As you leave the cinema, remember to look round and eyeball all the other sad souls who watch this kinda stuff.