The Occasional Mutant Bounty Hunter
One curious aspect of the 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes is that Northern Africa obviously contains a geography that is to the untrained eye very similar to the parts of the United States where we have done much of our nuclear testing. I did not think the scenery was exactly right for New Mexico or Nevada but did not until the closing credits realize that the movie was actually shot somewhere in a Morocco pretending to be the southwestern United States. The craggy, sometimes undulating hills did remind me of less spectacular parts of southern Utah, a place I have recently visited and after watching this movie's mutant freaks eat human flesh am transported back to in a way that puts me in touch with the uneasiness I felt when Bernadette suggested that next time perhaps we could rent a four-wheel drive vehicle and venture out deep into the desert. I could not at the time properly get in touch with my base feelings which were that venturing deep out into a desert in a piece of rented machinery that with a statistical certainty spends at least part of its time being broke down, was not only ill-advised but almost, I don't know (I think that's a dumb idea), incautious. Now though, thanks to this movie, I realize that I wasn't just being a hum drum fuddy-duddy for having these feelings but rather perhaps, prescient, and that protecting yourself and those in your party from being fondled, drooled on, executed and ultimately left to slowly rot and be picked apart like some delicacy, some rarebit for slobbering mutants, is an action possibly bordering on heroism.
Sure you can argue what's the point of living safely a life that ends anyway with you as worm-bait and I have to admit that I am currently not able to step to the dais and argue with any vehemence the benefits of life pursued safely, but I daresay that avoiding mutants in the desert is a course I think few would disagree with, excluding perhaps the occasional mutant bounty hunter.
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