While casting the National Guard soldiers was essential to the quality of THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2, equally careful consideration was taken with the hiring of their frightful nemeses: the mine dwelling mutants. 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 could truly embody the fierce, primal nature of the mutants’ way of life,” explains Cody Zwieg. “That’s a tall order.” Because of the physical and artistic demands placed on actors wearing prosthetic makeup in the desert heat of Morocco, the producers and the special effects makeup team at K.N.B. EFX Group, Inc. decided to rely on performers who had years of background specializing with the difficult process. Thus, the filmmakers went to great lengths getting experienced actors to play the mutants. “From what we had learned shooting in Morocco last time, we knew the stunt people who were available over there to do make-up on,” explains K.N.B.’s Gregory Nicotero. “We had Michael Bailey Smith (“Papa Hades”) and also Derek Mears, (“Chameleon”) so we had a good base of actors.

Your make-up is only as good as the actor wearing it so we were really fortunate. Those actors really know how to bring the make-up and characters to life.”

Horror veteran Michael Bailey Smith (Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child) has the distinction of being the only actor to appear in both The Hills Have Eyes and THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2, albeit in different roles. In the first film, Smith made horror history winning Fangoria’s Chainsaw Award for best fight with his gruesomely depraved portrayal of the mentally-challenged “Pluto.” Smith relished playing the deformed badman, describing him as “incredibly vicious yet at the same time kind of childlike and innocent. One moment he’s ripping off a leg and eating it like a drumstick and the next he’s got these very gentle, childlike movements and bouts of laughter. It was a joy to play him.” This time around, the actor plays “PapaHades,” the family patriarch of the clan, and perhaps the most sadistic of all the mutants.

Smith describes how the parts of “Papa Hades” and “Pluto” differ: “Hades is totally vicious and dominant, while Pluto had a childlike quality to him, he [Pluto] might have been a guy who turned out ok if it hadn’t been for Papa Jupe. He was taken down the wrong path. Hades is the Silver-Back, he is the big gorilla, its cool.”

Joining Papa Hades’ clan is “Chameleon,” the diabolically deformed mutant who seamlessly blends into the rocky desert terrain in wait for his hapless victims. Derek Mears, who played the werewolf in Wes Craven’s Cursed, takes on the role. He explains, “My character doesn’t have super powers…he has mutations that are dirty that look like rock, it looks fantastic! The blisters and boils are so bad, [they] are covered with dirt and mud and nastiness so it looks similar to rock so I can fool predators. Some of me is normal and some of me is covered with blisters.”

Undoubtedly, the renowned K.N.B. special effects makeup team performed at the height of their creative powers transforming Mears into this monstrous apparition. “We are very proud of “Chameleon”,” muses head K.N.B. prosthetic makeup artist Tami Lane. “The first day he stepped on set and actually hunched over into that rock, he just disappeared! And then all of the sudden, you just see something move. We were very pleased and everybody was ecstatic. And he’s so cool because he’s this big guy and he’s muscle-y;…he’s definitely my favorite character.”

Hansel, a grossly disfigured man/child who lives on the periphery of the bloodthirsty clan, is played by David Reynolds. Having appeared in such gore-fests as Rob Zombie’s House of 1,000 Corpses and Night of the Leben Tod, Reynolds jumped at the opportunity to work with Craven. “I’m in awe of him,” says Reynolds. “Wes is the one who pushed the envelope with Last House on the Left. The [1977 version of] The Hills Have Eyes has a directness I really liked a lot. A lot of his films are groundbreaking because people hadn’t gone to that dark place in their filmmaking.”

Reynolds portrays Hansel,. “When I think of the mutants, he’s the most sympathetic,” says Reynolds. “I’ve had to live by my own wits. I’ve made my cave separate from the other mutants, my cave is a considerable distance from Chameleon and Hades…There is something about Hansel that allows Hansel to consider other people’s pain. Hansel is emotionally eight or nine, but his biological age is around thirtyfive or forty.”

The actor/stunt men rounding out the mutant clan are Tyrell Kemlo as “Stabber”, Gasbar Szabo as “Grabber” and Jason Oettle as “Letch”.

next
MUTANT MAKE-UP: CREATING THE MUTANT CLAN
One of the primary reasons for the great success of 2006’s The Hills Have Eyes was the mind-blowing contribution of Academy Award® winning (Chronicles of Narnia) K.N.B. EFX Group, Inc. Consequently, there was never any question as to whether K.N.B. would design the special effects make-up for THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2.