Reason Writers at the Movies: Peter Suderman Reviews Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil in The Washington Times
In today's Washington Times, Associate Editor Peter Suderman reviews the slasher-spoof Tucker & Dale vs. Evil:
"Tucker & Dale vs. Evil" may not actually be the goriest film of 2011, but it probably comes close. The movie features flayed faces, impaled bodies, bursts of gooey arterial spray and a scene in which two bloody rednecks wrest a torso-less half-corpse out of a woodchipper.
It's also one of the nicest films of the year.
Part grisly, low-budget horror spoof, part loopy, role-reversing comedy, the movie offers a sort of genre-film thought experiment: You know all those beady-eyed, chain-saw-wielding hillbillies who seem to be constantly menacing bands of teenagers in woodsy horror movies?
What if they weren't really backwoods sadists, but goofy, misunderstood hillbillies just as horrified by gruesome violence as the teens rapidly dying all around them? And what if the teenagers brought the true evil with them - and only the goodhearted hicks could stop it. Call it "The Hills Have … Surprise!"
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Is it as gory as Hobo with a Shotgun?
Couldn't say. I didn't see Hobo.
I didn't see Hobo.
Me neither.
Don't bother. I love gratuitous movie violence more than anyone, but that movie was a piece of shit. It's sad that Rutger Hauer chose to be a part of that.
He can't wait forever for Ridley Scott to get off his ass and finally make the Bladerunner prequel.
You know, it might make a good cable series. Not with the same characters, but with the same setting.
Your face might make a good cable series.
BURN!
What is this, the 80s?
Why a prequel? I say they go with the flow and do a remake instead. Penny Marshall directing, with Shia LeBeouf as Deckard. Not sure yet who'd make a good Roy Batty, but a little voice keeps saying Taylor Lautner.
Like, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes and stuff. Check out my abs.
Like, I've seen things you guys wouldn't believe ya know. Dude, Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate and that was awesome. All those moments will be lost in time dude... like tears in rain and stuff... Time to die bud.
nooo, Robert Pattinson could do Batty - he's got the creepy look down pat, now he just has to work on the whole enoting thing.
Lautner could maybe work as Leon though.
Then you could have Kristen Stewart to play Rachel.
I liked it alot for what it was. Then again I was at Alamo Drafthouse and my fiancee and I finished several pitchers by the end of it so that might have something to do with it.
For me, that movie had one redeming moment: The Drake, brandishing a baseball bat covered in razor blades, says, "When life gives you razor blades . . . you make a basebll bat covered in bazor blades," at which point be beats a guy to death with it. I lol'd at that, but the rest was almost unwatchable.
A better question is, is it as gory as Braindead?
I'd never heard of Braindead, so I Googled that shit. For those not in the know, according to wikipedia, it's ". . . universally regarded as being one of the goriest [films] of all time." That and the fact that it was directed by Peter Jackson make me want to see it. I have a feeling I'm not going to find it at my local Blockbuster . . .
I did see it as "Dead Alive," rented at my local Blockbuster, back in the '90s. It was indeed, gory to the point that it became absurdist.
Apparently according to that wiki entry, a lot of gore was taken out, but there was still plenty left.
It was so over-the-top that it cannot possibly be taken seriously and wasn't as squirm-inducing as any of our modern torture-porn movies.
Here's the big question Suder-man: Does the film do the trailer justice?
The trailer for D&TvE; was hilarious. Rarely is this truth in advertising.
It's at an 87% on the Tomatometer, so I'm optimistic.
The trailer did it justice. It's fucking hilarious. Alan Tudyk is such an underrated actor.
You do know this movie came out last December right?
You do know that today is the official theatrical release date, right? However it did get an On Demand pre-theatrical release.
http://www.magnetreleasing.com.....alevsevil/
I guess you're right. This is the first time it's been shown in the US.
SuperPrez and Perry the Platitudness trade barbs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?f.....hDhDRvHaGs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?f.....DhDRvHaGs#!
They both had cogent points, but I really think the gas jets need that pretzel.
Dude, it has fucking Alan Tudyk (Wash from Firefly, and the cult leader in Strangers With Candy) in it.
I'm sold.
He'll always be Steve the Pirate to me.
SPOILER ALERT
Oh, you didn't say anything specific about Wash.
Never mind folks, nothing happens to him suddenly.
God forbid the stars align and more Firefly can be made, because then Mal's going to have to have a dream sequence to bring back the dead.
The impact of Wash's death was ruined by the fact it was followed by the worse gun fight ever to hit the silver screen.
Seriously how fucking hard is it to put a shacky cam shot over the shoulder of Jayne?!?!?
There are better gun fights in the GI Joe cartoon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxQa8VL8bUg
When in doubt, don't kill your main characters. At the time, the possibility of more Firefly was still real. They did the same crap with the lesser Enterprise, killing off probably the most popular character on the last episode.
Killing off some of the cast can be okay. Just have a danged good reason for doing so.
SPOILER ALERT
I hear Vader may be Luke's father.
Unproven.
think "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" as told by Leatherface, if Leatherface were a guileless hick rather than a genuine slasher-movie maniac.
In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Leatherface is a guileless hick terrified into slasher-movie mania by hippies breaking into his house. His father and brother are regular slasher-movie maniacs. He's a weird retarded nerd they've...domesticated.
THAT'S WHY IT'S A GOOD MOVIE DAMMIT
We saw a bootlegged work print of this last year and loved it.
It's really more comedy than horror, IMO, but then we may have missed most of the gore, considering it was a work print. All we saw were markers for the CGI gore to be added.
The comedy is that it really skewers white liberal prejudices about southern rednecks. It can also be read, on another level, as an allegory for Western attitudes towards muslims.
We saw a bootlegged work print...
Stimulus 2: full sequence.