Retview #17 – Tucker & Dale Vs Evil (2010)

Title: Tucker & Dale Vs Evil

Year of Release: 2010

Director: Eli Craig

Length: 89 minutes

Starring: Tyler Labine, Alan Tudyk, Katrina Bowden

There haven’t been many films made in the past decade which I’ve been able to watch repeatedly. In fact, Tucker & Dale Vs Evil is probably the only one. But even our happy co-existence didn’t get off to a great start. Some time in 2015 (I think), it came on the Horror Channel. As per usual, I had the Horror Channel on in the background while I did something else. Not being familiar with the film, I had it down as just A.N. Other low-budget gore fest. It is, of course. But it is much more than that. It wasn’t until about half way through that I actually stopped what I was doing and started paying attention. Even then, I was hit with a few “WTF?” moments before I was able to settle down enough to enjoy it. It was a lot funnier than I expected. Obviously, having missed the first half I made a point of catching it the next time it was on (which was probably about three days later) and then watched it another couple of times over the next two years or so just because it’s a fucking riot.

Tucker (Tudyk) and Dale (Labine) are two well-meaning redneck hillbilly types with a knack for getting it wrong. Awfully wrong. They also happen to be the unluckiest duo in movie history. Whilst on their way to their newly-acquired vacation cabin deep in the woods, Dale tries talking to a couple of girls at a truck stop but is hamstrung by crippling anxiety (“I hate my face!”). The group of college kids from the truck stop are camping nearby, and amuse each other by telling campfire stories about a psychotic hillbilly serial killer who slaughtered a bunch of college kids years previously and buried their bodies in the wilderness. This puts everyone on edge, and when one of the girls (Allison, played by Katrina Bowden from 30 Rock and the movies Sex Drive, Scary Movie 5 and Piranha 3DD) falls and knocks herself unconscious whilst skinny-dipping, she is rescued by Tucker and Dale who are out on a fishing trip, only for her friends to completely misread the situation and assume she was being held captive. They run away, leaving our calamitous duo to take her back to their vacation cabin. She awakes the next morning to Dale’s pancake breakfast and a slobbering dog. He persuades her to sit tight and play his favourite board game with him while they wait for her friends to come and pick her up. The friends, who prove to be even more of a liability than Rucker and Dale, then start accidentally dying. As Tucker notes, “There we were minding our own business, just doing chores around the house, when kids started killing themselves all over my property.”

Meanwhile, though her friends are convinced she is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, could romance be blossoming between Dale and Allison? “I should have known if a guy like me talked to a girl like you, somebody would end up dead.”

Written and directed by Canadian Eli Craig, who had a role in Carrie 2: The Rage (1999), Tucker & Dale Vs Evil was shelved before finally being unveiled at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2010 and enjoying a limited theater run the following year. Labelled as a horror-comedy, it is much more of a comedy than a horror, bucking the trend set down by offerings like Dog Soldiers, Severance or An American Werewolf in London, and is full of killer (boom!) one-liners (“He’s heavy for half a guy!”). Upon release, and since, Tucker and Dale Vs Evil has garnered generally favourable reviews. Writing for Empire, Adam Smith said it was, “Genuinely funny. A life lesson in prejudicing a man just because he is skinning a squirrel,” while the Guardian called the film, “Ingenious.” It also won a slew of industry awards including the prestigious ‘Audience Award’ at the SXSW Film Festival and the Fangoria Chainsaw award for best screenplay.

Trivia Corner:

Following the cult success of the first movie, a sequel was highly touted, However, this failed to materialize. Nobody was quite sure why, until someone asked Alan Tudyk in an interview. Apparently, the material just wasn’t strong enough. “I heard the synopsis,” Tudyk said, “And the general reaction from Eli was ‘No fucking way.’”