Robert Joy further sees the film as cleverly revealing three different shadings of the American family. “You have the mannequin families in the atomic test village who are kind of the impossible, optimistic ideal of the American family, a sort of perfect 1950s Life Magazine version. Then you have the Carters who are much more recognizable as a typical, flawed family with lots of tension and dysfunction but also love among them. And then finally you get to the mutants, Papa Jupiter and his brood, who have degenerated and regressed to the point that they are simply about the hunger for food and sex and darker things,” he observes. “However, in the end, you see that heroes can come from strange places, because there’s the character of Ruby -- who might be the most heroic character in the entire film, yet is also one of the mutants.”
Having worked in horror films for years, Joy was also thrilled to work with Aja and Levasseur who he sees as part of a new breed. “They’re very original and, this might be a bad way to put it, but they definitely bring fresh blood to the genre,” he laughs.
Also impressed with Aja and Levasseur was Ezra Buzzington who portrays the feral mutant Goggle, and prepared in part for the role by studying a documentary about human cultures that have engaged in the taboo of cannibalism. Says Buzzington: “There was a real unusual depth in the script for HILLS and what really moved me to want to do the piece is that I think it’s about this idea that what we create in our lives and in our world can come back to destroy us if we’re not careful – and it does with a vengeance in the case of the desert mutants.”
Playing the head mutant, the literally twisted Papa Jupiter, is Billy Drago, who has also been seen in a number of horror films as well as in Brian De Palma’s classic THE UNTOUCHABLES. Drago had been a fan of the original film but, like his castmates, saw an opportunity to tell more of the story with this remake. “I really liked the idea of giving more perspective to the unique family dynamic of the mutants,” he says. “And I was interested in Papa Jupiter because he put himself in charge of taking care of them and making sure that even in the mayhem they follow certain rules.”
In taking on one of the most shocking scenes – when Papa Jupiter ravenously consumes a human heart – Drago had a little insight from his own life. “As a youth I worked in a mortuary and I learned there that human blood is said to taste very sweet so when I was eating the heart, which was very sweet and chewy, there was a certain realism to it,” he admits.
While Drago found himself intrigued by all of his mutant co-stars, there is one that truly moved him: Laura Ortiz as Ruby, who breaks the mutant mold. “The beauty of Ruby’s character is that she’s the lone remaining connection between this clan of mutants and civilization,” notes Drago. “She expresses the tenderness that they can’t express so that’s why she is the one Papa Jupiter loves and cares for the most.”
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