See cannibal mutants run amok in the California desert! See an American family on a camping trip brutalized by these deformed victims of atomic testing! See mom (Kathleen Quinlan) and dad (Ted Levine) try to protect their daughters — teen sexpot Brenda (Emilie De Ravin) and new mom Lynn (Vinessa Shaw) — from rape and worse while kid brother Bobby (Dan Byrd) and Lynn's tadpole husband, Doug (Aaron Stanford), watch in horror until they become killers themselves! See the family's two dogs, Beauty and Beast, do their part to kick mutant ass! Guess which pooch survives!

Back in 1977, director Wes Craven (Scream) gave this tale a primitive pow on a shoestring budget of $325,000. The remake, directed and co-written by Alexandre Aja (High Tension), pours more money and gore into the mix. But Aja has a serious streak, drawing dysfunction parallels between the mutant family and the allegedly normal one. Aja also comes out squarely against nuclear testing. How brave. What good is a wallow in sicko sadism if you take all the fun out of it?

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.