The Hills Have Eyes (1977) - Newspaper Ad [Oakland Tribune]

September 4, 1977

Ah, yes. Yet another ad that both fascinated and terrified me, back in the days of my childhood. Although I had no idea who Michael Berryman was at the time, his unique visage glaring out at me from this ad made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

On the lower left hand portion of this ad, you will see a listing for the Coliseum drive-in. This was our family's preferred drive-in, because of its proximity to home. I think we were seeing Star Wars, but this was playing on the neighboring screen and I kept looking over to see if anything scary and forbidden to my ten-year-old eyes might be glimpsed.

I do remember seeing the trailer attack scene and the film's ending, but the context and meaning of those silent scenes were incomprehensible to me, of course.

That would change in 1984, when The Hills Have Eyes was broadcast on one of the English language channels in Hong Kong. I recorded the broadcast and, for the next few years, that version of the film was the one I became familiar with.

Turns out that version had an alternate ending. In the domestic theatrical release the film ends with a shot looking up on the exhausted and exhilarated Doug (Martin Speer), after he has finished violently stabbing Mars (Lance Gordon) to death.

The televised version dissolves from that to a long shot of Bobby (Robert Houston) and Ruby (Janis Blythe) walking together toward a staggering Doug. Bobby is then shown introducing Ruby to Doug, it is here the film fades from this somewhat bucolic image of potential healing and the end credits begin.

I had no idea this was not how The Hills Have Eyes ended until I showed this version to a friend. Seeing it left him slack jawed and flabbergasted.

This alternate ending does help to explain how and why Bobby and Ruby are married in the shoddy misfire that was The Hills Have Eyes Part II.

It's Alive (1974) - Newspaper Ad [Oakland Tribune]

April 10, 1977

Larry Cohen's iconic monster baby opus It's Alive had a brief theatrical run in 1974, but was pulled and shelved by an unimpressed, or just plain embarrassed, distributor. 

Three years and a regime change later, the new boss had a far more favorable opinion of It's Alive than the old boss. So, in 1977, the movie was pulled off the shelf and re-released, with a snazzy new campaign that scared the living daylights out of nine-year-old me.

I was fascinated and petrified by the sight of that clawed hand draped over the side of an ever so slowly twirling basset, the thumping heartbeat that began as soon as it came into view, and the monstrous cry heard just after the narrator intones, "You see, there's only one thing wrong with the Davis baby... it's alive."

While not a huge hit by today's standards, the film did rake in a tidy profit for the studio. So a sequel was requested. More on that later.

I didn't see It's Alive until well into the 1980s. While it was not quite the traumatizing creature feature I had imagined as a child, it was nonetheless an intriguing and fascinating little nightmare scenario.