Back in the 1980s famous great horror aficionado Wilson Wyler Concannon (William Sadler) was renowned for no movies whatsoever apart from one that wasn't even released, as it went missing. That movie is "The Hills Run Red", a story about Baby-Face, a guy who cut off his own face and sewed on a dolls mask to replace it and soon afterwards goes on a horror rampage. Enticed by the story and hoping that it becomes his own claim to fame aspiring director Tyler (Tad Hilgenbrink) decides to track down the long lost picture and its infamous director. This leads him to Concannon's daughter Alexa (the beautiful and oft naked Sophie Monk),now working as a stripper in a biker's pub. After convincing her to partake in his endeavour he takes a camera and two filmmaker friends to retake that which had been forgotten.

Dark Castle Entertainment has an unrivaled gift of releasing crappy horror flicks in succession with the odd gem hidden behind a cascade of crappiness. This one unfortunately flows down straight to the gutter together with flicks such as "The Reaping" or "Thirteen Ghosts". The main flaw of all these seems to be exceptionally poor character development and script inadequacies substituted by extreme gore. This time around we actually have a lot of promise in the movie, which runs like a "Friday the Thirteen" ripoff for large parts of its runtime, only to counterpoint this with some "Scream" type movie references. Some scenes hilariously hit the spot, with Baby-Face's out-of-character response to one of the hapless victims a delightful highlight of this otherwise poor movie.

Despite some admirable qualities the twist introduced two-thirds into the movie largely fails. In a big part due to the incapability of William Sadler and Sophie Monk to carry their roles. Their bickering about the art of horror films is irritating and badly written, which doesn't help in the plot resolution, as this was the issue that would either carry or drown the movie (especially the poorly scripted debate between old-fashioned slashers and modern gorno).

It isn't entirely a waste of time and those fans of over-the-top gore (occasionally going into gorno territory),but given the limited emotional involvement and the sub-par payoff it seems like a wasted opportunity for a decent horror. As it is I would suggest passing and seeking out the Rob Zombie "House of 1000 Corpses".

OK, the opening of "the hills run red" is pretty good but from there on I was constantly wondering what the hell the director was trying to do. Honestly with a title like this you can only expect a spoof movie and the whole stupid idea of a horror fan following the legend of a 20 year old horror movie that never aired because its so sick and the director got lost while filming... well, kind of reminded me of CigaretteBurns meets Chainsaw Massacre meets DarkRide (because the killer Babyface looked exactly like the killer in that movie). Funny thing is that there is no real reference to "the hills have eyes" and the spoof I was expecting is kind of there because there are many hints to horror clichés like the non-functioning mobile phones and a whole monologue about the stupidity of horror movie victims. Anyway this is a pretty ordinary backwoods horror movie with a evil masked killer, a house in the woods and the plot of the director and the movie... and his daughter. You can smell the plot twist from miles away and there is not even much gore except for some scenes that keep repeating. There's regularly strange scenes which are intended to be funny like when the killer just uses a gun instead of wielding a chainsaw or machete. Particularly one scene was so stupid but nevertheless shown so normal I was wondering if that was a joke or just incredibly ridiculous (considering this is a horror movie that sure can be considered possible). A girl flees from the killer and ends up in the shed where the corpses of previous murders are stored. She hides in a barrel full of blood and guts until the murder leaves and then cleans herself off and takes a new shirt from one of the corpses to walk back into action barely showing any blood. What the hell... if these scenes were supposed to be funny they made a hell of a job not to have the viewer laugh. I have seen worse movies for sure but if a movie jumps the wagon of a dead repetitive genre with overused clichés and fails like this to be any smart or new (like I said there obviously are dozens of stolen ideas from other movies) you can just watch the opening and the cool trailer of the movie in the movie and spare yourself 90 more minutes of a horror clip show and a lame ending that sums up another annoying thing about "the hills run red". Ridiculously overacted screaming girls... again not quite funny, maybe they were supposed to be. I don't care.

Although the title and box cover openly copies THE HILLS HAVE EYES, THE HILLS RUN RED is much more of a traditional slasher flick with a masked weirdo in the woods dispatching numerous nubile victims. There's a little more plotting to it than that, involving a mystical old slasher flick from the 1980s that our protagonists are searching for, but it all boils down to a familiar, overworked storyline.

Sad to say, it's not very good either. The execution is shoddy, with a dirt cheap look and unworkable editing. The most surprising thing for me is that David Schow, a respected horror author, had a hand in writing this thing - his talent must have deserted him for this one. THE HILLS RUN RED is an entirely derivative work, with poor effects, CGI augmentation, and needlessly nasty kills and torture scenes. The characters are as wooden as the trees surrounding them.

Poor old William Sadler (THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION) makes a crucial appearance in this mess of a film, and it's sad to see that his fortunes have sunk so low. Also present is ROME's Alex Wyndham, playing another of his patented weaselly type characters, so if like me you were disappointed that he didn't get his overdue comeuppance in ROME then you can enjoy seeing it here.