TUCKER & DALE VS EVIL: This Weeks Best Released DVD! The Hughes Verdict!

“Ooh that has got to hurt!”

What’s it all about?

Tucker and Dale are two best friends on vacation at their dilapidated mountain house, who are mistaken for murderous backwoods hillbillies by a group of obnoxious, preppy college kids. When one of the students gets separated from her friends, the boys try to lend a hand, but as the misunderstanding grows, so does the body count.

The Hughes Verdict!

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFFh25DmPNU[/youtube]

WOW!

The quotes that come with this horror states that what we are about to watch is the all new Shaun Of The Dead but they are wrong! What we have here is the all new Evil Dead II, yes that is a big statement for this horror fan to say but damn, I have just met two characters that I really want to see more of.

Tucker & Dale is one joke concept that works brilliantly, it puts a whole new spin on the slash formula and is one of the most enjoyable horrors I have seen this year. I can not possibly compare it to the heavyweights of the division like Scre4m and I Spit On Your Grave for the simple reason is that the tone on offer here is different to what we are used to. Here we have a brief trip into camcorder horror, gore porn, slash, the old trait of the cabin in the woods, yet its all played out to such a slapstick effect that you will be smiling throughout. This is really good folks and I can not recommend it highly enough!

Alan Tudyk (FIREFLY) and Tyler Labine.(REAPER) play the two hillbillies who run into a bunch of college students on a camping trip. Having watched such films like Deliverance and numerous other horrors, the kids are afraid of the two and tell them to keep away but from the off the film establishes that despite their appearance (and the film says a lot about stereotyping) these two are nothing more than a friendly duo even though they only share one brain between them.

The students set off and build their camp while Tucker and Dale have got themselves an old abandoned cabin and set up their new home. Trouble starts when the kids decide to go skinny dipping while the duo are fishing in the same lake. One of the girls Ally (Katrina 30 Rock‘s Bowden) slips off a rock and bangs her head and the duo rush to rescue her. Seeing their friend being taken by these hillbillies is a cue for mayhem because the gang believe that Ally has been abducted and decide to go and rescue her, but what happens, well you be laughing finding out!

“The duo have just realised that Uwe Boll wants to do the Sequel”

First time writer and director Eli Craig has delivered a cult masterpiece that many will find so much love for! You could compare the style to the Final Destination franchise because the deaths are not by the hand of a masked fiend but from the cause of accidents which of course all make out to be at the hands of Tucker and Dale. These two bumbling fools only want to do the right thing but every time they try, someone else ends up dead.

The death scenes are hilarious and full of dark humour. The two that stand out brilliantly is when Tucker hits a wasp nest and starts running through the woods with a chainsaw in his hands like the figure of a certain Leatherface which results in one of the teens death because he was running while he is not looking and the other is a quite stunning wood chipper scene that recalls the black humour of Fargo.

But while I totally adored this, the trouble with such a film like Tucker and Dale is even for its short running time, the film falters towards the final quarter only because the plot changes from its initial concept to something else. The last half twist turns the duo into unexpected heroes and the horror loses the quality that it was delivering only because it stopped being funny. But that is just a minor grumble because make no mistake, after all the gore/torture porn and camcorder horror which is doing a slow death, Tucker and Dale hits the DVD market like a breath of fresh air and for that there will only be a few who will find no enjoyment out of this because make no mistake…

This is a birth of a whole new franchise…..

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