| Mind Ripper | |
| Director: | Joe Gayton |
| Producer: | Jonathan Craven Wes Craven Peter Sheperd |
| Starring: | Lance Henriksen Giovanni Ribisi Natasha Wagner Claire Stansfield John Diehl |
| Cinematography: | Fernando Argüelles |
| Editing: | Harry Hitner |
| Music: | J. Peter Robinson |
| Studio: | Outpost Productions The Kushner-Locke Company |
| Runtime: | 108 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Budget: | US$8,000,000 (est.) |
Mind Ripper (also known as The Hills Have Eyes III, The Outpost or Wes Craven Presents Mind Ripper)[1] [2] [3] is a 1995 American horror film released on HBO. It stars Lance Henriksen and Giovanni Ribisi.
Although it is marketed in some areas as a sequel to the original The Hills Have Eyes and The Hills Have Eyes Part II,[4] no actors, characters, or scenarios link it to those films. Its only connection is producer Wes Craven, who wrote and directed the other two films, and his son Jonathan Craven, who is credited as a writer.[5]
Set in a remote desert location, government scientists Alex, Joanne, Frank, Larry and Rob perform reanimation experiments in an underground nuclear facility. The goal is to create a superhuman. Their subject, "Thor", is a specimen from a suicide found in the desert. In the attempts to bring Thor back, an uncontrollable creature is unleashed. The next morning, Alex calls Stockton, one of the overseers of the project, at his home and after an argument, Stockton eventually decides to visit the facility by plane. His son Scott, his daughter Wendy, and Wendy's boyfriend Mark join him.[6]
After Thor is reanimated, he kills Frank and Larry in the test room, leaving Alex, Joanne and Rob to attempt to escape, but Alex erases his handprint for the exit, intending to keep Thor alive, before he is pulled into the vents. Joanne and Rob attempt to find another exit based from old blueprints of the facility, but Rob is killed trying to rewire the power, leaving Joanne by herself. Meanwhile, Stockton arrives at the facility, with the others in tow, and enters the facility. While this is going on, Thor is revealed to be undergoing a form of genetic mutation and needs the sterols from the brainstem to stay alive, to which he sprouts a pincer from his mouth and uses it to take the bound Alex's sterol, killing him.
Stockton and the others split up after Wendy sees the facility's experiments and becomes upset with her father's involvement and she storms off; Mark goes off to find her while Stockton goes to find the scientists and Scott stays in the rec room. Stockton finds Larry's body and heads back to get the others out of the facility. Thor sneaks into the rec room and almost kills Scott, but the microwave timer goes off, the loud noise incapacitating Thor and Stockton is able to save Scott. They eventually come across Joanne and she explains the situation. They attempt to escape, but Thor catches up to them and captures Stockton, taking him into the vent shafts, where he recognizes Stockton from the earlier stages of the experiment and begins to further mutate. Later, Thor attacks the others and kills Joanne, Mark and Scott, before moving on to Wendy, who sprouts a pincer from her mouth; this is revealed to be a dream.
Meanwhile, Joanne and the others try to devise a way to kill Thor by leaving a trail of sterols to lead him into a freezer room and trap him there. The plan goes awry when Thor comes up behind them and kills Mark. Joanne is able to knock him into the freezer, but with the hand codes unavailable, they are still locked into the facility. However, they find Stockton still alive and use his handprint to escape. They drive away, but Thor has stowed away and attacks them again. Scott uses a piece of glass to cut off Thor's pincer before he can use it. When they get to the plane, Thor attacks them again. Joanne shoots him with a shotgun and he falls off. The survivors fly to safety and Thor is shown motionless where he has fallen, until his hand twitches, indicating he is still alive.
The film was written by Jonathan Craven and intended by his father to be a third The Hills Have Eyes film,[7] but along the development Craven decided to rewrite the script and remove any overt references to the previous films.[8] [9]
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