HILLS HAVE EYES MOVIE
HILLS HAVE EYES TV
HILLS HAVE EYES WINDOWS

I’d lived out in that area so it didn’t bother me, but they were kinda not happy about it. They didn’t really like it that much… “Oh, I’ve gotta go out of the city, way out in the middle of the desert… Victorville, California? Where’s that?”.

HILLS HAVE EYES TV

A lot of the actors – we called them the ‘Whitebread Family’, then there was the ‘Hills Family’ – they were TV actors, soap actors, that kind of stuff.

HILLS HAVE EYES MOVIE

We didn’t think the movie would really go anywhere. It was very hot at daytime and cold at night, very limited, we had one motorhome that was everything – that was wardrobe, that was where you’d sit and relax, where you’d wait to do your next scene. Well we never thought that the movie would go anywhere. When you were on set, was there a moment during the production that you realised you had something really special, or was it only when you were being chased at a drive-in that you realised that? We all looked at each other and realised that we had a hit on our hands. He reached his hand out, I jumped and got in the van, the guy is still chasing us, and we peel off and head to a diner, sit down and have a cup of coffee and a dessert. I see the headlights, the van pulls out, Wes Craven is on the side of the van opening the door, shouting to me “Run! Run! Run!”. In the movie, we’re attacking the trailer, and I’m looking to find where the van was as I had lost track. He’s chasing me! I’m running for my life while on screen everyone’s being terrified. And I did so, and the last thing I remember was a girl screaming and this big guy with a baseball bat just yelling at me for scaring his girlfriend.

HILLS HAVE EYES WINDOWS

Halfway through the movie, they all thought it would be funny – and I agreed – to go around and bang on car windows and scare people. They talked me in to wearing my Pluto outfit. Tony Timpone from Fangoria Magazine was moderating the panel – great questions, great stories – and we actually at one point, when the movie was out, it was playing in a drive-in in Los Angeles, in the San Fernando valley, Peter, Wes and I all got in a van and drove up to see the movie. It was a wonderful reunion, we watched clips from the movie. I got a phone call one day asking me to come down and meet Milos couldn’t make it, Wes couldn’t make it, of course, because he’s passed on. That little movie was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. At the time, Warner Brothers had a casting agent that helped him, and they were doing another movie they were casting. I worked two days and it got me a $1,000 or something. I really want you to be in my movie.” I figured that’d be a good way to maybe save a little money to go to Alaska. Think about it.” So I did, and I met him and his director, and he said, “Look, it’s a two-day job and you’ll have a Screen Actor’s Guild card. I think you would fit for the role of the coroner in Doc Savage.” And I go, “Oh, I read those books, they were kind of neat, but I’m not an actor.” I studied Art History, but I wasn’t really an actor. We had a lovely conversation, and he said, “By the way, you have an interesting look. And George, of course, produced War of the Worlds. It was a little tiny store, and a gentleman walked into my store one day – his name was George Pal. I moved back to Santa Monica and to Venice Beach, California, to a little gift shop. I left college and was going to homestead in Alaska working on reservation animals and conservation. Michael Berryman: Well, way back when, I got my start in film by accident. STARBURST: Firstly, how did you end up as a part of The Hills Have Eyes originally? With Arrow Video now releasing an impressive, crammed Blu-ray of The Hills Have Eyes as the movie comes up for its 40th anniversary, we caught up with the hugely engaging actor to discuss his memories of the film, working with Wes Craven, his thoughts on the sequel and subsequent remake, his time working with Rob Zombie in more recent years, and his opinion on what makes the horror genre so special. Since then, Berryman has had a multiple-decade-spanning career that’s taken in a whole host of projects and he remains one of the most recognizable figures in the business. Michael Berryman is a true icon of the horror industry, with him making a huge splash in the genre as Pluto in Wes Craven’s legendary The Hills Have Eyes.

Hills have eyes