Hills Have Eyes 2?s Daniella Alonso Talks Tongue with FEARnet
By Joseph McCabe
Photos by Sophia Quatch

There are some people we wish we could interview every day.

Take The Hills Have Eyes 2?s Daniella Alonso. Sure she?s drop-dead gorgeous?with deep dark eyes and skin so perfect you?d swear it was generated by a computer?but she?s also an awfully friendly person and a damn good sport, having subjected herself to all the depravity of last year?s hit remake?s sequel. Depravity, we hasten to add, that?s most evident in the film?s already notorious ?tongue? scene, in which Alonso?s character takes a lickin? from a massive mutant appendage. But the young stunner tells FEARnet she actually enjoyed the experience. Well, for a little while anyway.

?I was so excited!? she says. ?I was so looking forward to that scene. They had six different tongues on set, stunt tongues?rubber ones, thinner ones, thicker ones. Then there was a mechanical tongue, and I actually chipped my tooth biting the last one, because I had to bite it off. It was six hours of biting a tongue.?

Tongue wasn?t the only challenge Alonso faced during Hills 2?s two-and-half month shoot in Morocco.

?It was all fun, but there were some things that were a little more challenging, just the heat, stuff like that. I mean, they totally took care of us, but it?s a hundred and ten degrees in Morocco, and you?ve got thirty pounds on and you?re running around, up and down mountains and hills and stuff. So if you?re not used to that??

In the film, Alonso plays Private First Class ?Missy,? one of a pack of National Guard trainees who, on their last day of desert training, are ambushed by the mutant cannibals introduced in the first Hills.

?She?s definitely tough,? says Alonso of her character. ?She?s a badass. Basically, she?s there to do her job and get home to her son. That?s her thing. She?s not there to make friends. Some of the other characters are excited. They?re like, ?Yeah! We?re gonna go fight!? She listens?she pays attention to what?s going on, and she?s taking everything in. That?s kind of the scene.?

Though she plays a badass, Alonso claims there?s no outstanding hero in the film, and that it features a group of protagonists: ?It?s more of an ensemble I think. The good thing about this film is there?s so many characters that they all have a little story. So everyone really has their part in it.?

We tell Alonso the thought of a tough chick and her platoon taking on shadowy, bloodthirsty creatures reminds us of Aliens. She laughs, and tells us it?s one of her favorite horror films.

?I?ve always been a horror fan,? she says, ?Nightmare on Elm Street, that?s really one of my favorites, and The Exorcist of course. Aliens?oh my God! There?s actually a little homage to Aliens in this film. See if you can spot it!?

In some ways Hills 2 may resonate even more strongly with audiences than the classic to which it pays tribute?since the still-raging Iraq War influenced both script and production.

?It?s crazy. In Morocco, you only have three English stations: one plays old horrible movies, really bad movies, and the other ones are BBC and CNN. They would really give you the news?it?s world BBC and world CNN, so it?s not like what they show here. They really showed what was going on in Iraq, and the soldiers and stuff; so it was crazy. Because, after a month, you?re looking at it and you?re like, ?Oh my God! I know what they?re doing! I know what they?re wearing! I know what that is! I know?? And it starts to make sense. Then later on, when we had more of our fight sequences, it really helped.?

Despite constant reminders of the war, Alonso says cast and crew enjoyed making Hills 2.

?We had so much fun. The first week that we were there it was just military training, so we kind of all bonded. We almost passed out! It was that kind of thing. And we all stayed at the same hotel. We just totally hit it off, every single one of us.

?Martin Weiss, the director, his shots were so beautiful. Everyday I?d go around the monitor and see what he was shooting and it was out of this world. It was gorgeous, and so I knew that it was gonna be a great film. Then of course, Wes and Jonathan Craven, I think that they wrote a really great script? Wes didn?t show up ?til later on in shooting?I think we were a month and a half into shooting. But Jonathan was there the whole time, and it was great to have one of the writers on set the whole time? Everyone was really cool and just hung out. It was interesting, and it?s fun and it?s different?you?ll see when you see the film. I think it just meshed. It really did.?