Is ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ Based On A True Story?
Writer director Wes Craven was notorious for pulling his horror ideas from real life inspiration. He got the idea for A Nightmare on Elm Street from real life killer nightmares. But what about his 1977 horror classic The Hills Have Eyes? Surely there aren’t real deformed creeps hiding out in the dusty hills of the American West, right? It turns out there’s a real-life inspiration for this movie as well, and it’s just as gruesome.
In The Hills Have Eyes, the large Carter family is traveling through Nevada in their camper. Although they’re warned to stay on the main road by a gas station owner, they end up in an accident and stranded in the middle of nowhere. Rather than staying in the camper–like most of us would yell at the screen for them to do–they get out to get help. So starts a horrifying encounter with Papa Jupiter and his clan of hill-dwelling cannibals.
The family fights as best they can, but most are killed by the clan. They put up a good fight, though, and end up besting the clan with help from Papa Jupiter’s daughter Ruby.
Of course, there’d be a hope that this gruesome story would be entirely fictional, a story pulled straight from Wes Craven’s brain alone. Instead, the horror master got the idea from a potentially true tale of a 16th century Scottish cannibal family headed by the notorious Sawney Bean.
Alexander “Sawney” Bean was a Scottish lay-about who didn’t quite fit in with regular society. Rather than work as a ditch-digger like his father, he fell for local “witch” Black Agnes Douglas. They left to start their own life, but didn’t go far. Instead they moved into a cave in Bennane Head. Living in the cave, they would eventually have 14 kids who would then go on to create 22 grandchildren through incest.
How did Sawney Bean keep this incredibly large family fed, all while keeping out of the sight of local townspeople? If you guessed cannibalism, you’d be right. They’d only leave their cave under the cover of night, attacking nighttime travels to rob, kill, and eat them. Although locals were terrified at the disappearances, the family went undetected for decades.
The Bean clan’s eventual undoing would be thanks to a local fair. The roads were particularly busy that night, and when they were unable to subdue a man on his horse, passersby saw and came to his aid. They tracked Sawney Bean to the family cave where they were captured. Legend has it, they were arrested and sentenced to horrible torturous deaths by the king.
The Hills Have Eyes fans are probably seeing the parallels. A man goes off to live in a cave and sire a brood too animalistic for society, attacking random people who wander into their area. The cave-dwelling, the cannibalisms–it’s all there. There’s even a rumor that one of Sawney Bean’s daughters left the clan and lived as a regular member of the local town before her history was discovered and she was hanged. This mirrors Ruby’s betrayal of Papa Jupiter in the film. While it’s been hotly debated whether the tale of Sawney Bean is true or just a legend, it was still inspiration enough for Wes Craven.
The Hills Have Eyes isn’t the only story based off Sawney Bean either. Attack on Titan and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre also have this murderous Scottish clan to thank for their gruesome storylines as well.
You can watch The Hills Have Eyes for free right now on Tubi.