There are some films that don't get the attention or notoriety they really deserve. Maybe it's the subject of two "hillbillies" being the actual heroes of the film, maybe it's the fact that this film pokes fun at a lot of the foundations of the slasher genre, or maybe it's just because it has an actor from Firefly on it and that only carries an association with the more nerdy circles of movie fans... regardless, T&DvE really doesn't seem to get the love it deserves. That includes from the studio because they shelved it for three years before releasing it.
Tucker & Dale focuses around two groups of people. There are our title characters (there to fix up their new "summer cabin") and the other is a group of college kids that blatantly break every horror rule ever laid to celluloid. After one of the girls gets startled by Tucker and Dale she almost drowns but gets rescued by Dale. Her friends see the end and misunderstand the situation and think Tucker and Dale are kidnapping their friend for some hillbilly horror scene.
That right there is the crux of this film. Everything that really happens is because the college kids have these preconceived notions that the country folks in this West Virginia area must all be some sort of inbred rednecks. This is only bolstered by the story that one of them tells the others about a massacre that happened in those woods in the past and was blamed on country folk. We find this later to be untrue, but it's that mindset that leads to the actions of all of the college kids. It does help though that it seems like the person that owned the cabin Tucker and Dale bought seems to have been Ed Gein... but that's something else entirely.
This film is a lot of fun. The kills are gory but all believable accidents. Tucker and Dale are both charismatic and fun leading characters and you dislike the college kids from the start... especially Chad. Fuck Chad... Chad-ass fuckin' Chad! There is also a great nod to Texas Chainsaw Massacre where Tucker accidentally hits a bee's nest while chainsawing and this leads to him running through the woods like Leatherface. This makes much more sense than Leatherface just standing in the middle of the road swinging a chainsaw like an asshole. Was it that he was getting attacked by a bee trap the girl set before jumping in the back of the truck? Was it the dogs with the bees in their mouth that shoot bees at you when they bark?! I'm digging deep for that Simpson's reference...
I give Tucker & Dale vs. Evil 5 'Merica trucker hats out of 5:
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