Gardening and Horticulture - Taming Laurels

I have a house that is situated on a hill. On the uphill side of the lot is a bank of Laurel Trees. They have gotten a little out of hand - very tall and bushy, which is blocking light to the rest of the yard and smothering other trees. Also, they are so heavy now that their roots are starting to slide down the hill. I need to prune them down quite a bit, but when I did that with one of of them, I basically ended up with a bunch of twigs (the leaves were all higher up on the tree)

Will these trees grow their leaves back on lower branches? Or should I just plan on ripping them out and replacing them with something else? I hate to do that, because they are nice trees, but they are also sort of bullies to the other vegetation ;-)