The Hills Run Red (2009)

In the age of DVD and high speed broadband, it's easy to forget the days when horror films had to be actively hunted down, through attendance at film fairs, scanning classifieds in video mags, or searching out of the way mum n' dad video stores for treasure gathering dust on the bottom (or top) shelf.

The Hills Run Red wants to bring that halcyon period into the digital age, via film nerd Tyler (Hildenbrinck) and his search for the titular movie.  A notorious, long lost slice of 80s slasher, The Hills Run Red lives on only by reputation, and Tyler ropes in his girlfriend (Montgomery) and best mate (Wyndham) to help him hunt down a legendary surviving copy of the horrorshow.

He catches a break when discovering Alexa, daughter of the film's director, stripping in a sleazy bar.  Alexa (the pouty Monk) reluctantly takes the teens into the woods to revisit original locations, but hadn't counted on the film's star, the disfigured Babyface, still being in character!

Indebted to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Friday the 13th, The Burning, and many others, The Hills Run Red joins Hatchet and Wrong Turn as an affectionate, bloody homage to the forbidden fruit of a hundred 80s video shelves.

Clever-clever dialogue about horror film theory and slasher movies vs. torture porn are placed a little too self-consciously centre-stage, but shocks, surprises, and a ripe turn from William Sadler as the crazed director are enough to forgive the indulgence.

Credit also for the chutzpah of basically forcing a fully-formed horror icon onto the word: Babyface comes with his own screwed-up backstory (witnessed in a nasty face vs. scissors opening) and ironic mask.

The splatter is served up red and dripping, with all involved testing their creativity when it comes to employing barbed wire, and the final mid-credits scene is genuinely creepy.

All this, plus a healthy ration of sex and drug abuse, squeezed into 80 swift minutes.  No wonder we're not groaning about a possible sequel.

Rob Daniel