Because a large part of The Hills Have Eyes’s success stemmed from its vast and gorgeous desert location, the production team decided to return to Morocco for THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2. Morocco, with its miles of endless desert and striking mountain vistas made for a beautiful and eerie stand-in for the New Mexican locale of the film. The crew returned to the movie capital of Morocco—the city of Ouarzazate-- which has become a Mecca for such esteemed filmmakers as David Lean, Ridley Scott, Bernardo Bertolucci, Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone. “Ouarzazate, it’s a film town, its extraordinary,” says Wes Craven. “Everybody in town is either an extra or is building sets, or costumes, so they all get drawn in, they are all connected with it in some way. We again used the de Laurentiis studio a few miles outside of town.”

As much of the film takes place in the hills of the desert, a production designer with a thorough knowledge of the area seemed imperative. Producer Marianne Maddalena reveals, “We found Keith Wilson because he had done a lot of movies in Ouarzazate, [Morocco]. Then we went to his website, and we knew he was twisted enough for our movie. He definitely is out there with his imagination which is exactly what we needed. As you will see from the film, his sets are fantastic.”

Wilson (Emmy Award® winner for “Stalin”), who had been busy designing family friendly films for the Hallmark Channel such as “Mary, Mother of Jesus,” “Oliver Twist,” and “A Christmas Carol” longed to sink his teeth into something more edgy. “I’ve always been a fan of horror films,” reveals Wilson. “If you look at my personal drawings, you can see that. Years ago, I did one [The Revenge of Dr. Death] which starred Vincent Price and Peter Cushing—the great horror stars of the period. I also designed for the science fiction show “Space 1999“ which still has a huge cult following.”

Key to Wilson’s success has been the talented team he works with. “My art director Alistair Kay (Emmy Award® for “Stalin”) is fabulous, we have worked together for twenty years,” reveals Wilson. “He makes all my ideas work. I give him a design and he takes over. He is the link between me and the actual sets being built. He also tolerates all my bad behavior, my tantrums—he handles me very well.”

Another key member of Wilson’s crew is set decorator Luca Tranchino (Oscar® winner for The Aviator). “I’ve done three films with him and he fits into our family very well,” tells Wilson. “Luca knows a lot about history and is very particular about period and stylistic details. He has a good eye about a few key items that really set a period or style. He can interpret my drawings, he can take my lead and then grow on it. We work together every step of the way.”

Trying to make Morocco look like New Mexico presented its own set of challenges. Although the film is set in the present, the mine sets must span from the turn of the century to the 1950s. Ten crates of props were shipped from America consisting of old television sets, sofas, shoes, etc. in order to achieve an authentic look.

Cinematographer Sam McCurdy reveals, “The production design is beautiful. [It has] a real feel of old world fifties and sixties Americana and that sort of thing. You get a feeling that these mutants have been around for eons.”

Because so much of the film takes place in various sections of the mine, much research went into it’s design. Alistair Kay reveals, “[According to the screenplay], the mine was last a working mine pre-World War II, although some of the elements date back to the turn of the century. Then the military—the government came in and adapted the mine for their own use testing atomic bombs.”

The production team scrutinized thousands of pictures of mines from all over the world and then collated the best ideas for their design. “We wanted the tunnels to look manmade, we wanted a hand hewn look, where you could see the indentations from the pickaxes,” says Alistair. The production team achieved this by utilizing a revolutionary building material called Armadillo Foam core which was also used in the film The Descent. The walls of the mine are polyurethane foam, which are sprayed out of pressurized containers and virtually self-supporting. The rigid foam material can then be shaped and painted into any form desired. “You can create fantastic shapes,” Alistair reveals. “You can give it depth, angles and structure. The battle tunnel has recesses you can hide behind and throw shadow through. That tunnel almost has a cathedral quality to it.”

Technically, the most challenging sets were the upper and lower wet tunnels which had to support up to four tons of water on two levels. Large amounts of water had to be able to swiftly flood the tunnels as well as exit them. “We were limited in the space we had to utilize,” tells Alistair. “We had to maximize the space we had. It all had to fit inside a thirty-by-sixty foot tank that was just ten feet deep. Fortunately, the tunnels turned out really well, really scary.”

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COSTUMES
A crucial aspect to the eerie look of THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2 are the inspired costumes of Emmy Award winning (“Deadwood”) designer Janie Bryant. It takes a vivid imagination as well as technical skill to concoct appropriate creature attire that can actually hold up well to the demands of movie