Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

I am always really hesitant to take movie suggestions from people I do not really know. I’m always scared when someone tells me “this is the greatest movie I’ve ever seen” and I get geared up for a great flick only to find out the person’s second favorite movie is Ishtar. I am also not the biggest fan of mixing genres of movies. I prefer my horror to be either gory or scary and my comedy to be raunchy or clever. So it was great hesitance that I watched Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, but I’m glad I did because this movie rocked.

As someone who lives in the south and loves Pabst Blue Ribbon I’m often viewed as a redneck, however if I lived just little bit more north I would be considered a hillbilly and if horror movies have taught us nothing it’s that Rednecks and Hillbillies want to kill you after making you squeal like a pig. It is this stereotype that is the premise of Tucker and Dale vs. Evil: two good ole boys that a group of college kids fear are trying to kill them and end up killing themselves trying to escape.

Our duo of half-wits rescue Allison who upon seeing the guys fishing in the pond while skinny dipping falls onto some rocks and hit her head. When she awakes Dale is trying to bring her some breakfast, but she assumes he means to hurt her. Once she sees that he isn’t going to hurt her, the two start to warm up to one another. The rest of the college friends mistake Tucker and Dale having her in their “summer home” as a form of kidnapping and formulate a plot to rescue their friend.

I should point out that Tucker and Dale are oblivious to the fact that the college kids are scared of them because once the kids come near the cabin a series of misfortunate events will always occur which causes one of the kids to kill themselves. One such example occurs when Tucker is using a chainsaw and cuts through a hornets’ nest inside a log which then makes him run with the chainsaw. The college kids do not see the hornets only Tucker and his chainsaw and run away causing one of the kids to accidently impale himself, later another kid runs at Tucker while he is feeding logs into a wood chipper and trips and falls into the chipper.

Tucker and Dale are convinced that the college kids are part of a suicide pact and want to help Allison. Allison tries to sit down Chad the group leader and Dale. We learn that Chad's mother was attacked by Hillbillies while pregnant with him. Some of the other kids who were separated from the group form a plan to rush the house during the meeting to save Chad and Allison because of all of the dead bodies all over the place.In the end Allison chooses Tucker (who is hurt by an earlier failed capture by Chad and the kids) and Dale over Chad. All of this leads to a final show down between Dale and Chad, not going to ruin the ending for you but it is well worth the watch. All this scene needed was Bruce Campbell and it would have made this a 5 out of 5 movie for me.

Seems to me the directors of this movie have watched just about every stalker/slasher style horror movie ever made and really paid a lot of attention to Evil Dead 2. A lot of the camera shots are similar and when Dale makes his “Hillbilly Nightmare” suit it is pretty much the same scene of Ash making his hand in Army of Darkness. This movie while not exactly “horror” or “independent” is right up my alley. I’ve never been a huge fan of the comedy-horror movies such as Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland but this works mostly because it tries to stay a comedy the whole time with adding some sick gore to it.

The only real problem with the movie was music. The soundtrack to this movie also was very lacking, there just was no real stand out music. If you're going to do a movie with gory deaths or partying kids you've got to at least have some type of music playing. Not saying you have to have a huge soundtrack that causes your movie budget to double or triple but you can at least put something in there.