THESE `HILLS' ARE ALIVE WITH THE SOUND OF HORROR.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

A LITTLE RESPECT, a little imagination, scary suspense and some severed digits.

That's all we really ask from remakes of landmark horror films. Surprisingly, few recent examples have delivered the goods.

But ``The Hills Have Eyes,'' a Wes Craven-produced remake of his 1977 mutant cannibal bloodbath, gets the basics right. It's a well-made fright fest that boasts decent portrayals of adequately written characters, good makeup effects, an actual thought or two - and more than enough gross-out shocks to keep your little brother happy. If this doesn't sound like anything to rave about, well, it isn't. Such minimal elements of craftsmanship are so rare in the genre these days, however, that you feel kind of obligated to lavish praise when you see them.

Even more so when considering that this is the English-language debut of director Alexandre Aja and his scripting partner Gregory Levasseur. While their French hit ``High Tension'' proved Aja possessed the sado-cinematic chops nerd-boys and their excitement-starved girlfriends crave these days, it also had one of the most infuriating twist endings in the history of scary movies.

Perhaps producer Craven insisted on a little more narrative integrity. Whoever was responsible, ``Hills'' makes sense within its genre limits, has a few things to say about family dysfunction (both the everyday and extreme varieties) and emphasizes the original's anti-nukes message in powerful ways. It's nice for those of us who remember smarter movie slaughters of the '70s. Then it just up and turns into ``Straw Dogs'' after awhile.

Recently retired cop Big Bob Carter (``Silence of the Lambs' '' Ted Levine) is hauling his family and a renovated Airstream down the vacation road to California when the tires are blown in a remote stretch of New Mexico. Armed and fearless, Bob and his resourceful adolescent son Bobby (a very good Dan Byrd) figure they can protect their womenfolk - praying ex-hippie mom Ethel (Kathleen Quinlan), new mother Lynn (Vinessa Shaw), her infant daughter and pouty teen-sister-who'd-rather-be-partying-in-Cancun Brenda (``Lost's'' Emilie de Ravin). That goes double for Lynn's wimpy Democrat of a husband Doug (Aaron Stanford, who was doing kids' roles last time I checked).

What they don't count on is a family of deformed cretins descended from area miners who were irradiated by atomic bomb tests. When night falls, the demented monstrosities get into the Airstream, do terrible things to the females, kill some Carters and, in one incredibly weird bit of dress-up, one of them (fan favorite Robert Joy) appears to morph from Keith Richards to Bob Dylan to Ozzy Osbourne with just a few minor costume changes.

As if that wasn't scary enough, a survivor from the stranded party must venture into the mutants' home village of the damned, where the whole notion of nuclear family comes in for quite wicked and very painful-looking satire.

True to the title, the film's rocky, desolate terrain is an ominous presence in itself; it's Morocco standing in for the Land of Enchantment, by the way. The blasted landscape lends essential eeriness to the early, buildup stages of the film. This kind of atmospheric accretion used to be a horror-movie given but here comes off more like a lost art rediscovered.

Which is not to say that anything about ``The Hills Have Eyes'' should be mistaken for art. It indulges many of the cheap cliches modern horror movies are addicted to, especially near the end. The film is proficient entertainment, though, for the cannibal brain lurking deep inside us all.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

THE HILLS HAVE EYES - Two and one half stars

(R: violence, sex, language, children in jeopardy)

Starring: Aaron Stanford, Kathleen Quinlan, Vinessa Shaw, Emilie de Ravin, Dan Byrd, Ted Levine, Robert Joy, Billy Drago.

Director: Alexandre Aja.

Running time: 1 hr. 47 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: Well-made remake of the cretinous mutant cannibal classic. Unsettling, adequately acted, has an idea or two in its head, indulges the usual cliches.