Tucker n Dale Vs Evil

Comedy Horror

Icon Film Distribution

R4 DVD

At first I thought that this was going to be yet another of those “bunch of students versus homicidal hillbillies” films. I was really pleasantly surprised. Obviously the writers, Morgan Jurgensen and Eli Craig, have had enough of the genre as well. In this film they have reversed the roles of hillbillies and students and in the process lampooned every cliché that this genre is usually loaded with.

Tucker and his big, amiable, socially retarded mate Dale are heading up into the woods to do some renovation work on a holiday cabin Tucker has bought. They stop at a remote backwoods service station where they are noticed by a group of students also headed into the woods for a holiday. Naturally, having seen too many hillbilly movies, they find Tucker and Dale intimidating. Tucker urges Dale to go and try to speak to one of the girls who has caught his eye. Dale is shy around women and makes a complete mess if it – or perhaps it’s the scythe he is carrying at the time that scares them. The students go skinnydipping in the lake, as they always do in this sort of film, and one girl hits her head and is knocked unconscious. She is a distance from her friends who don’t notice, so Dale, who is out on the lake fishing with Tucker, rescues her and they take her back to their cabin to sleep off her concussion. They leave a message at the kids’ campsite ‘We have got ur friend”. This, of course is open to misinterpretation and the students decide they will have to rescue their friend.

The rescue is a series of stuffups. Student after student dies horribly in accidents of their own making, but in such a way that it will look bad for Tucker and Dale. One student tries to attack Tucker and dives headfirst into a woodchipper when Tucker reaches down to pick up the next load for the chipper. Another impales himself on a sharp branch. The girl they are trying to rescue is getting on with Dale and they are digging a pit for a new toilet. The students read this as Dale is making her dig her own grave. One student attacks with a spear and impales himself. The girl is once again knocked unconscious. Tucker surmises that the kids must be members of some sort of suicide pact. It’s the only reason the two baffled hillbillies can think of to explain the number of students who are gruesomely killing themselves. It’s only looking worse for Tucker and Dale as the body count mounts.

As usual for these films there are guns, axes, chainsaws and nubile girls. We don’t get much nudity or even bikinis, unfortunately.

The situation worsens when the local policeman dies in an accident in the almost-derelict cabin. One student snaps and grabs the officer’s gun and starts shooting at the two men. From then on it’s homicidal students versus likable, innocent rednecks.

It’s a wonderful black comedy. Tyler Labine plays Dale with just the right amount of shyness, but it is Alan Tudyk (remember him as Wash, the pilot in the Firefly series?) who carries the story. Jesse Moss also does a good job as the obsessed and unstable student who wilfully misinterprets every event and has a dark secret in his past. Just as zombie films really ended with the Shaun of the Dead parody, hopefully this will finish the killer hillbilly genre.

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