You could say Hills Have Eyes II starts as it means to go on. How all those nasty mutants mean it to go on. A naked, frightened and bedraggled woman tied down, giving birth to a monster, and then she has her head whacked off with a shovel. Not that an audience could be so depraved as to watch such things? Could you?

Let's cut to some spanking new National Guard recruits while you think about it. Being politically correct, we'll include some female soldiers. An exotic Asian girl and a long-haired blonde that whimpers and screams convincingly, please. Then the male troops can get picked off one at a time so mutants can 'mate' (ooops - rape) to spawn their progeny. While we wait for all that to happen, men can get their limbs hacked off and impaled, or the geeky one can play hero to save the chicks from the monsters.

Whether Hills Have Eyes II is a degenerate list of male fantasy-sequences or a parody of them, we leave to the artistic side of your nature to ruminate. (I needed it pointed out to me by a woman, the first time I saw Scorpion: Female Prisoner #701, that this Japanese lesbian exploitation movie is tongue-in-cheek.)

The basic premise, if you are unfamiliar with the 'Hills' series, and re-make series, is that the radiation from some early U.S. atom bomb testing in the New Mexico desert hills has mutated some human beings into grotesque but fleet-footed monsters. These cannibalise anything they can find. This particular incarnation includes plenty of potty humour that fans will love or hate. A peacenik recruit, Napoleon, is left to guard the Portakabin latrine. On one leg, and with his gun held in the air. When the officer is out of sight, Napoleon succumbs to temptation and goes for a dump. Only to be grabbed from below. Up in the hills, the soldiers guard each other - except for when 'Missy' goes for a pee. (Fill in the details.)

Soon they are all down mineshafts as mutants outwit them. Amber, when not busy looking glamorous in uniform, panics at spiders - and this makes her kick-ass antics later on so much more fun. Sexual assaults on her meanwhile justify violence of the more graphic kind, such as smashing a mutant's head with a rock (mutants' heads are pretty strong, so extended and bloody bashing is necessary). And why not? Papa Hades drools thick white mucus over his captive female as he starts to thrust into her, shouting and grunting, "Give me a baby!" Special effects create ulcerous skin that is very tasty. Plus these creatures are dirty, sweaty and totally gross. Wanna rescue her? You should know things like, if your last bullet fails to blow a mutants brains right out, put your fingers in its head-wound and wiggle them about a bit.

Cinematographer Sam McCurdy (The Descent) creates suitably claustrophobic, dimly-lit tunnels. We constantly try to guess where the mutants will leap from those shadows. This is no sophisticated thriller - it just does what it says on the packet.

As you leave the cinema, remember to look round and eyeball all the other sad souls who watch this kinda stuff.

The first "The Hills Have Eyes" creeped me out so of course I had to see the second. This time the good guys have guns (in my best southern accent).

A military unit was sent out to the New Mexico desert to bring aid and supplies. Of course, when they get to the seemingly abandoned outpost they run into the rejects of The Toxic Avengers.

I was thinking, "OK now. Now we got some bad mofos with guns, it's about to be on. These circus side show freaks are about to get dealt with military style!" Oh yeah, I was hyped.

Of course there wouldn't be much of a movie then if that happened. After all, these missing links did survive nuclear testing, so what're a few dudes with guns? Prepare for some serious casualties in horrific fashion and more mutant on human violence.

My opinion on the HILLS HAVE EYES films varies. The first one I saw was the modern remake, which blew me away; sure, it told a familiar story of humans battling mutants, but the direction was strong, the violence visceral, and the pacing remarkable. It was a powerful, shocking film. Next up I saw the Craven original and, like a lot of Craven films, it disappointed me. I found it dated, flawed, and a film that paled in comparison next to the remake, which is unusual. My third exposure is the sequel to the remake, which takes the general premise and utterly wastes it on another ALIENS-inspired storyline of a squad of soldiers entering enemy territory and finding themselves getting picked off one by one by the villains.

My biggest beef is that this film has so much wasted potential. Sure, there are outrageous gore effects occurring frequently in the film, but when they happen to uninteresting, uninspired characters, you feel like you're playing a computer game rather than getting involved in a real movie. The biggest disappointment is the script, which is obviously a rush job designed to cash in on the first film's success. Each and every soldier is depicted as either an idiot, a bully, or a thug, and they don't seem to have more than a couple of brain cells between them. Remember, these are the guys we're supposed to root for. Even the victims in a nameless Friday the 13th sequel of the '80s had more characterisation than this!

We end up with a load of people scurrying around in some nondescript cave system, and even that's ripping off THE DESCENT. The acting's poor across the board, and the mutants are laughable rather than the fear-inducing creatures of the first film. I mean, the guy who's got that stony skin...is he really supposed to be menacing? They also die far too easily as well. I suppose one bonus is the short running time, but even that seems padded out to the max, throwing in lots of pointless sequences and leaving genuine sub-plots unfocused and hanging (the friendly mutant, for instance – what's the deal with him? He's like that guy in THE GOONIES, but I want to find out more about him!). This means that the only reason to watch THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2 is to see an extended sequence of somebody beating someone else's head in with a rock.