By Daniel Robert Epstein

For the remake of The Hills Have Eyes, Craven selected High Tension horror auteur Alexandre Aja to direct. Aja has delivered a terrifying and very disturbing modern take on the desert mutants who rip apart, literally and figuratively, a normal American family.

I got a chance to talk with Wes Craven about his reasons for picking Aja and a possible remake of The Last House on the Left.

Wes Craven

Wes Craven: Is that good or bad?

RS: That’s good.

I spoke to Alexandre Aja the other day. He said The Hills Have Eyes is a film that could be remade because it's a cult movie as a result of the look of Michael Berryman and the dark humor. But that the movie doesn't have a cult following because it's the scariest movie ever made.

Craven: I think there are a lot of people that would differ with him. But his version has a lot more than just scares. It has things that make you think, which is good.

RS: How involved were you with the project?

Craven: I was very involved. Three of us, [producer] Peter Locke, [producer] Marianne [Maddalena] and myself were involved in every version of the script and gave him notes on every single one. We had a lot of in room discussions and then once they went off to shoot. I was finishing the second half of Red Eye so I couldn’t go over to the shoot, but Marianne did and I saw dailies everyday. We were in Paris for Red Eye when I saw the first cut. Then I was in the editing room whenever they would have a version.

RS: Did the remake happen because you wanted it to happen or was it going to happen and you got involved?

Craven: No, it happened because I and Peter Locke wanted it to happen. We had been interviewing people for the past couple years every once in a while to see if there was a story that would work. Frankly we didn’t find anyone that really had a hook on it. Then we were put together with Alex and [co-writer] Grégory [Levasseur] by our mutual agent. They said, “We represent the guy and he’s a huge fan of Hills and he’d love to talk to you about a sequel.” Their take on it was really interesting so we went to the script and that was good so went into pre-production very quickly. At that time it was with Dimension and then they dropped out and Fox Searchlight took over.

RS: What about Alexandre’s take impressed you?

Craven: First of all there was Alex’s enormous enthusiasm. There was his film High Tension and his knowledge of the genre. Then there was his twist on the scary people. The whole idea of them being miners and that the hills were interlaced with these tunnels that could take them anywhere they wanted to go. I thought it was very interesting to play up the atomic wasteland thing. It was a combination of a lot of things.

RS: Did you never put your foot down and said “Michael Berryman must be in the film”?

Craven: No, that didn’t occur to me. That’s not saying anything against Michael. It just felt like this should be a fresh start and also should be very much of Alex’s film. None of the guys would have felt comfortable with people from the original film. It felt right, proper and smart to deal with new people.

RS: What impressed you about High Tension?

Craven: Alex has a great sense of energy and pace. He can really build suspense. He handled characters very well. His visual style was extraordinary. His understanding of how sound could work for a film is extraordinary. All in all I felt that this guy is really very much a director’s director.

RS: There’s a very interesting phenomenon happening with genre films. Since Tarantino came on the scene, directors are making exploitation films but with higher budgets and higher quality actors. What strikes you about this phenomenon?

Craven: In some ways working on a horror film, no longer has the stigma. They’re recognized as legitimate films. We’re not going to show up at the Academy Awards yet, but certainly people don’t feel it’s going to hurt their career if they direct one or two. The whole phenomenon of horror films and genre films has gradually elevated by the fact that a lot of people did a lot of really good work. We got Neve Campbell and Drew Barrymore for Scream because I’ve been making films for a long time and they wanted to work with me. The films are getting better and better.

RS: Were you scared by this remake?

Craven: Oh yeah. The first time I saw it cut together it was overwhelming to me. It was brutally powerful. In a way it surprised me just how strong it was and really upsetting. It’s a very powerful film.

RS: There’s that old story about when you saw Reservoir Dogs and you walked out during the ear cutting scene. Are you getting as Danny Glover would say, “Too old for this shit”?

Craven: I don’t think it’s that. The reason I walked out of Reservoir Dogs was I felt like the filmmaker was enjoying the torture. Whether I was right or wrong is irrelevant. I felt that human suffering was being trivialized and I never felt that way with Alex’s film. There are moments of someone being tormented, but I didn’t feel there was a sadistic feel that I felt about Reservoir Dogs. I might totally be wrong but that was just my take on it.

RS: Are people going to start remaking all your films?

Craven: Sometimes the films I’ve made have been remade ad nauseum. Certainly all the Nightmare sequels were some form of a remake or spin-off on what I had done. I only have two films that I that I own or co-own. That’s The Hills Have Eyes and The Last House on the Left. I co-own Last House on the Left with Sean Cunningham [director of Friday the 13th] and The Hills I co-own with Peter Locke. So those are the only two films that I would be interested in because I can control them and make sure they’re done right. Otherwise, I’m working for a studio and I’m not interested in that.

RS: I just finished David Szulkin’s book on Last House. It struck me that you and Sean basically created modern horror in a lot of ways and then both your creations fought each other in a movie.

Craven: [laughs] It’s pretty amazing in a way. It was just a couple of guys in a little one room office in New York not knowing what the hell we were doing.

RS: [laughs] Did you see Freddy vs. Jason?

Craven: Yeah I saw it. I don’t think there’s that much to say about it. I understand the intrigue with doing that film because they had been working on the idea for years. But I didn’t think that what they came up with was that good of a film. I’m sure a lot of people worked very hard on it and feel very strongly about it; so I don’t want to be mister, “Oh, I don’t like your film but you should like mine.”

Craven: Quite possibly. It would be a matter of finding the right director. We certainly have the studios lined up already wanting it so we’ll just have to see.