In the mid-’70s, Wes Craven was looking for his next feature. His first, The Last House on the Left, was a grindhouse success, but Craven wasn’t exactly a horrorphile and had little interest in being pigeonholed into the genre he would later be known as “master” of. Last House was supposed to be his directorial trial by fire, a check box that proved he could helm the camera, and move on from the horror genre to more meaningful fair. But his producer, Peter Locke, was insistent, and money was drying up fast, so Craven agreed to a “follow-up” of sorts. From there, The Hills Have Eyes, then called Blood Relations, was born.
Just as Last House was an updated reimagining of Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, Craven saw Hills as a take on the John Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath, but with a morbid and gruesome twist. That twist would come from 16th century Scotland. Familiar with old Scottish lore (as so many of us are…seriously, Craven was one smart cat), Craven recalled the story of Sawney Bean and his cannibalistic family and used it to shape Papa Jupiter’s clan and the plight of the Carter family.
“Craven realized that by updating the Sawney Bean story to 20th century California, he would have the opportunity not only to comment on a cult society dwelling inside modern civilization, but also the chance to comment on that civilization’s less-than-civilized retribution against the cannibals.” – John Kenneth Muir, Wes Craven: The Man and his Monsters.
Like I said, Craven = one smart cat.
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The Hills Have Eyes is the story of a suburban family, the Carters, traveling cross-country to Los Angeles. Somewhere in the desert between Nevada and California, the family stops at “Fred’s Oasis” for fuel where they have a disturbing encounter with owner Fred (John Steadman). Fred urges them to not take any detours and just stay on the road. Dismissing Fred as a crazed local, family patriarch Big Bob (Russ Grieve) convinces the family to take a short cut through the desert. Even if you haven’t seen The Hills Have Eyes, you can still bet what happens next…they skid off the road leaving them stranded and far away from any possible help. Chaos ensues as the Carters fight to survive against a family of cannibals led by Papa Jupiter (James Whitworth) who are set on torturing, raping, murdering, and eating baby Katy for supper.
But the true legend that inspired one of the great horror films of history is scarier than the celluloid.
The Legend of Sawney Bean
On the shores of Ayrshire, Scotland, sometime in the 16th century, a towering rock formation covers the entrance to a deep cave. The cave tunneled for miles under the well-traveled roadways of western Scotland, room enough for a family of forty-five cannibals to live undetected for twenty-five years. Their victims are supposedly in the thousands, travelers from Girvan to Glasgow, going mysteriously missing without much trace, with only some assorted limbs washing ashore.
Such is the story of Alexander “Sawney” Bean and his Cannibal Clan. Sawney was born in East Lothian, Scotland. Some report he was the son of a butcher, others a tanner, either way, the trade of working with meat and skin was passed down to Sawney in one form or another. But the boy was prone to idleness, aloof, and disinterested in civilized life. Like the story Fred shares with Big Bob about Papa Jupiter, Sawney ran away from home at a young age, taking with him a “woman of ill repute” to find a place away from the confines of traditional civilization to raise his family.
It started quietly enough, with towns adjacent to the shore cave noting their friends, neighbors, and loved ones going missing in increasing number. The traveling acquaintances never arrived at their destinations or returned home from trips. While the number wasn’t alarming for King James-era Scotland as a whole, it was concerning for those towns adjacent to the Ayrshire region.
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Then came the body parts, washing up onshore. Crudely severed arms and legs were found by locals, and spies were sent into the area to investigate the disappearances. This led to some innkeepers, who had records of the travelers staying with them, being falsely accused of robbing and murdering the missing persons. They were subsequently executed despite a lack of evidence. And some of the spies never returned from their investigations, adding to the increasing number of those missing.
Meanwhile, the Bean family was growing. Sawney’s wife had fourteen children of her own. Those fourteen children had grandchildren, by way of incest, and eventually, the family grew to around forty-five members. Pretty much, Sawney Bean had his own small, private army. The clan became incredibly efficient, attacking travelers with tactical precision and choosing their victims strategically to ensure no survivors. No one over six feet tall, no more than two travelers if they were on horseback.
WARNING: WHAT COMES NEXT GETS PRETTY GRISLY…
After robbing the victims for clothing and weaponry, they were dismembered, with vital fluids consumed usually on-site to prevent leaving a trail. The meat and skin were pickled or salted for preservation. Preserved limbs hung from the cave walls like dried beef (a note that particularly intrigued Craven). Bones were boiled for their marrow. Wealth and riches were tossed into piles, untouched and of no use to the uncivilized brood. Unwanted or inedible parts were thrown into the ocean at night, only to wash ashore miles from the cave itself.
On one fateful day, a couple, traveling home on horseback from a county fair, was attacked by a number of the clan. The husband, armed with a sword and pistol, kept the mob at bay, but his wife fell behind. The women of the Bean tribe knocked her off her mount and cut her throat immediately, gorging on the spilt blood. They gutted her while the husband watched and, steeling his resolve, continued to fight back. It was then a group of about thirty fair-goers came up the path. Bean’s raiding party scattered, taking what they could of the wife’s remains with them.
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After the husband recounted his story to the group, some of the travelers followed the trail the Bean clan took into the surrounding woods and soon came across the wife’s dismembered remains abandoned by the horde. With the evidence and witnesses in tow, the fair group rode to Glasgow to report the crime to the city provost. The report of the crime went all the way to King James, who sent a party of 400 soldiers to find Sawney Bean and his cannibals. With the help of bloodhounds, the cave was discovered, along with all the evidence of the Bean Clan’s crimes. After being taken to Leith, the Bean men where hanged, no trial deemed necessary, and the women and children were burned to death in several fires.
As miraculously horrendous as this story is, some say that’s all it ever was: a story. Dreamed up as anti-Scottish propaganda, it was designed to amplify the savagery Scots were allegedly capable of. But still, accounts are strong that cannibalism was not unaccounted for in Scotland, or pretty much any nation experiencing hard, prolonged famine. Predating Sawney Bean by a couple of centuries is the legend of Christie-Cleek, who may have himself inspired some of Sawney Bean’s (and therefore Wes Craven’s) story.
Andrew Christie was a Perth butcher who fell upon hard times during the 1340s Scottish famine. When the meat ran dry and his job became (nearly) obsolete, he joined a group of scavengers. One day, one of the men died of exposure, and Christie put his butchering skills to work to provide for his group. Seeing the opportunity to never go hungry again, the group began ambushing travelers, robbing them, eating them and their horses. Christie reportedly dismounted riders with a “cleek,” a wooden rod with a hook tied to the end (like a bad bit at a comedy show), and thus giving him his moniker “Christie-Cleek.” Christie supposedly took thirty lives before changing his name and integrating back into society.
While the truth of the Sawney Bean legend is lost to history, with equally as many historian believers as there are those who doubt, there’s no doubting that Wes Craven used the account of Sawney Bean and his Scottish Cannibal Clan to inspire his equally haunting, sun-soaked horror from 1977, The Hills Have Eyes.
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