Hills Have Eyes, Mandela Effect & Comic Books

Hades (right) leads of the cannibal mutant rebellion in The Hills
Have Eyes: The Beginning graphic novel published between
the two most recent franchise films.

I was wrong. Sort of. Like some sort of bizarre horror fan Mandela effect, I have long operated under the belief that the hillbillies in the original The Hills Have Eyes films have always been irradiated mutants. Not so, and either way none of it is suitable for overly sensitive souls or children under 17.

1977 movie poster.
By Source,Fair Use
https://en.wikipedia.org/
w/index.php?curid=
17959141. 

After a recent re-watch of Wes Craven's 1977 classic horror movie, I observed that the origin of the cannibal family was much simpler, though no less unfortunate: Papa Jupiter, the head of the family, is the depraved son of the gas station owner, Fred, that the family of protagonists meet early in the movie. Later, Fred reveals that Jupiter was a terrible (i.e. murderous) child and so was taken to the desert, attacked, and thought to have died. Being a Seventies horror movie, Jupiter instead grows up, has four freaky children with an alcoholic prostitute and thus is born the original The Hills Have Eyes clan. The inferior sequel, The Hills Have Eyes Part 2, further reveals an extended family led by previously unmentioned older brother of Papa Jupiter, The Reaper (yes, that's the character's credited name).

2006 Movie Poster.

While military testing sites are mentioned in the original, and even visited off-camera as a source of key supplies, any impact of nuclear testing on the "hill people" is never explicitly stated. Alexandre Aja's 2006 remake, however, lays into the "mutant" nature of the cannibal family and the role of radiation in their development from the opening credits via newspaper clippings interspersed with jarred deformities. Eventually, one mutant, Big Brain, offers exposition on the "family's" origins, much in the same way Fred did in the original, saying, "Your people asked our families to leave their town, and you destroyed our homes. We went into the mines, you set of your bombs, and turned everything to ashes. You made us what we've become." Following in the tradition of the original, a sequel was also produced titled The Hill Have Eyes 2 in 2007. (Note the exclusion "Part" in the titling... to avoid confusion maybe?) Here, the design of the antagonists become more "comic booky" as each has a specific identifying skill or mutation, for example Chameleon whose skin disorder permits him to--wait for it--"blend" into the rocky environment to avoid detection.

Graphic novel cover
by Greg Staples.

I recently became aware of a graphic novel tie-in for The Hills Have Eyes 2 released in 2007 by the now defunct Fox Atomic Publishing. Difficult to find, I did track down a gently used copy online (of course) and like the films it supports it is R-Rated for language, violence, and nudity. Written by the excellent tandem of Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray (their work on DC's Jonah Hex series was the bees knees), The Hills Have Eyes: The Beginning, attempts to fill-in the background of the cannibal mutant as "regular" people who ultimately mutate due to exposure to the radiation. While many of the familiar characters from the movie series are name dropped, the focus of the narrative is to "go back a ways , back to the beginnin' before the boot heel of  God stomped the desert and all the creatures big and small changed." (Page 2, Panel 1) Capably illustrated by John Higgins, "classic" characters are primarily recognizable due to their "superpower" as depicted in the films and visualized here. Though not really a fan of giving horror villains sympathetic backgrounds here the need to is more understandable given the real-world-ish (and tragic) origins of the family. 

While I did see the 1977 original on cable for the first time at the ripe old age 14, it was through a midnight movie lens. After repeated viewings the movie has grown on me and I eventually took in the recent series (the first one starred the actor who played Pyro in the second X-Men film so... had to) in theaters. It seems reasonable to infer that my misunderstanding over the nature of the cannibals was the result of seeing the mutant versions more recently. 

Next up: Secrets of the Berenstain versus Berenstein Bears conflict revealed!