While casting the Carters was essential to this reinterpretation of THE HILLS HAVE EYES, equally careful consideration was taken with the casting of their frightful nemeses: the mutant clan of irradiated miners. Once again, the filmmakers found themselves looking for actors who could meet a highly unusual set of criteria. “For the mutants, we needed to find actors who could not only perform the stunt work, handle the extensive makeup and perform in that makeup, but who truly could embody the fierce, primal nature of the mutants’ way of life,” explains associate producer Cody Zwieg; “That's a tall order.”
To play Pluto, perhaps the most horrifically voracious of the mutants, Aja began by going straight to one of the horror genre’s most veteran stars: Michael Bailey Smith, who also appeared in NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5: THE DREAM CHILD. Aja was thrilled with the results. “What Michael brings to the role is amazing. He is one of the very, very best bad guys there is,” says the director.
Smith knew well Wes Craven’s story of mutants in the hills, but he was impressed by Aja and Levasseur’s reworking – especially their deeper probing of the mutant family’s unusual history, which makes them almost as poignant as they are gruesomely depraved. “It really interested me to know that these malformed mutants are the descendants of people who wouldn’t leave during the atomic tests and that they are, in a sense, actually a really close-knit loving family,” he says. “But, of course, they’re always looking for their next meal in some unfortunate traveling family coming down the road!”
As for Pluto, Smith describes him as “incredibly vicious yet at the same time kind of childlike and innocent. At one moment he’s ripping off a leg and eating it like a drumstick and at another he’s got these very gentle, childlike movements and bouts of laughter. It was a joy to play him.”
For Smith, a large part of the inspiration for the role came from the innovative makeup that made the characters so visually ghastly. “My character is so deformed that it doesn’t even look like me,” he observes. “The guys from K.N.B. EFX did such a great job bringing the characters to life and making them real that I just loved being transformed. I love evoking any strong emotion in people, whether it’s laughter or terror – and this character definitely evokes some pretty powerful emotions.”
Joining Smith’s Pluto in the mutant family is the reptilian-minded Lizard, who is spurred into evil by the beauty of the Carter family’s women. Lizard is portrayed by another horror film veteran: Robert Joy who has appeared in such films as George Romero’s LAND OF THE DEAD and AMITYVILLE HORROR 3D.Joy saw bringing the beastly impulses of Lizard to life in a realistic way as a fantastic challenge. “I was immediately tempted by this character because he is so intense and so nightmarish, with such vivid colors – but at the same time he is part of a real family, a literally subterranean family that might be very dark but is still in some way a closely connected group,” he says. “What’s great about this new version of HILLS is that you realize that there is a reason behind not only the massive physical deformities of the mutants but also their equally grave psychological, mental and spiritual deformities. They might be disfigured, depraved and deformed, but they’re doing what they need to do to survive in a hellish world not of their making.”
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