Frightday Night Film Recommendations: Redneck Nightmare

It’s Friday…

Ahem…I mean Frightday…

And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…

Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…

Redneck Nightmare.

Aaahhh…Rednecks.

They come in all shapes and sizes…

From little, squirrelly, creepy, cross-eyed ones…

To giant, misshapen, malformed, mutated ones…

From different parts of, not only our country, but the entire world. Don’t let anyone fool you, there are French rednecks, British rednecks, Australian rednecks, Hell, every single state in our union has a redneck population.

But rednecks are universally similar…

You see, they all have common traits that link them together…

Like…

 

1. Hygiene: The hygiene of a redneck is pretty deplorable…Their teeth don’t get a lot of brushy-brushy…And their ass don’t get a lot of washy-washy.

2. A Creepy Home Life: There’s some piss-poor housekeeping going on…You’ll usually find a gaggle of dead animal wind chimes hanging from the ceiling…Way too many rusty garden tools…And someone in a back bedroom will probably be having sex with a close relative.

3. Xenophobia: They don’t take kindly to outsiders…If you happen to enter their domain, then you are fair game…No seriously, I mean you’re game, you know, like big game?…So be aware, they will hunt you…And probably rape you…There will most likely be some torture…And they will definitely kill you…Maybe a wee bit more raping…And that ain’t the end of it…There’s still a damn good chance that they’re going to eat you.

4. Durability: It’s hard to kill a redneck…They’re just made of sterner stuff. Huh…I guess it must be all that possum-eating and sister-humping.

 

 

Rednecks…

Bringing the world closer together…

One smelly, toothless, inbred, bloodthirsty cannibal at a time.

 

Let’s take a chronological look at the best, most underrated, and possibly even unknown to you, Redneck Nightmare Movies that you may not have seen…But should.

 

X-Files: Season Four, Episode Two – Home (1996) – Okay, I know it’s not a movie…But it is very cinematic…Very terrifying…And very much a Redneck Nightmare. Do me a favor, just go to Netflix, and select this episode…Trust me, Glen Morgan and James Wong, the boys who brought you the Final Destination franchise, know their horror…And whoa lemme tell ya…The Peacock Family are pretty damned horrifying.

 

Joy Ride (2001) – Rusty Nail’s the name…Tormentin’ young’uns is his game…This trucker, paternity test results notwithstanding, is the son of the trucker in Steven Spielberg’s Duel…This is the same kind of cat and mouse that we saw in Duel, but this time, the prank-happy college students seem a bit more deserving of the unbridled rage, than Dennis Weaver did in the 1971 telefilm. The script was co-written by J.J. Abrams, who gave several nods to the Spielberg classic…like the gas station scene. It’s a taut, intense little thriller that spawned two direct to video sequels that veer off the road into a more Hitcher-style series of slasher films.

 

High Tension (2003) – There are two films on this list by director Alexandre Aja…This, his sophomore effort, is the first film of his that I had the chance to watch…I was immediately impressed. I was going through a French Horror phase, at the time, and this one was right up there with Inside…I watched something new and different, while thinking the whole time, that I was watching something I had seen so many times before…This film was an intense, gory, gripping, disgusting, disturbing, and ultimately mind-blowing experience.

 

Wrong Turn (2003) – I love Wrong Turn. This film came out at a time when horror was starting to make a comeback…Films like May, and Cabin Fever had been released the previous year, and marked a welcomed return to the exploration of the many tendrils of the horror genre…This film harkened back to the seventies, when rednecks were the scary monsters that filled those big drive-in screens…Even movies like Deliverance, and Southern Comfort, which are not classified as horror films had rednecks as their main villains. This film pays more homage to the original 1977 Wes Craven film, The Hills Have Eyes, then any other, showcasing a band of inbred mutants as the antagonists. Eliza Dushku is a bad-ass of epic proportions, and in my opinion became one of the greatest horror movie heroines, with this performance.

 

Wolf Creek (2005) – Mick Taylor is the king of all redneck serial killers…In this film, he captures and tortures a group of twentysomethings who go hiking where they shouldn’t…Critics were their typical cry-baby selves as they whined that Wolf Creek was too graphic and too disturbing…You guys are familiar with horror films, aren’t you? Graphic and Disturbing are right there at the top of my Horror Movie Must Have Checklist…Idiots…I hear they’re working on a live action reboot of The Aristocats…That should be more up your alley. For the rest of you…If you haven’t already seen this Australian Grindhouse Classic…You must.

 

Masters of Horror: Season One, Episode One – Incident On and Off a Mountain Road (2005) – Okay, I know already…I did it again…Yes, it’s a TV show, but the pilot episode of Masters of Horror was not only directed by horror film guru Don Coscarelli (Phantasm, Bubba Ho-Tep), but it was also based on a short story by horror fiction guru, Joe R. Lansdale (Who also wrote Bubba Ho-Tep). It’s the story of a woman who, after losing control of her car on a hairpin turn on a mountain road, then stumbles into the lair of a mutated redneck serial killer…Where the story goes from there though, will blow your freakin’ mind.

 

Severance (2006) – In this one, the rednecks are Hungarian…Or was it Romanian…Possibly Bosnian, depending on where the borders are…But, these rednecks are out for blood, and it’s the employees of Palisade Defence who are their intended victims…It’s a mix of comedy and horror, which when done right, is a delightful dance of give and take…You laugh…Then you scream…In this one, employees have gathered for a company outing at a rural Hungarian mountain lodge, and are ritualistically hunted by mysterious woods-dwellers. This place may look like the Forest Moon of Endor, but lemme tell ya, the residents are by no means Ewoks…These creepy rednecks were wronged by the Palisade Defence company and are seeking their revenge on anyone connected to them..

 

Hatchet (2006) – Right away, from the opening scene…You kind of feel like you’re attending Horror Movie Old Home Week…The movie opens with a father and son who are out gator-killin’. The dad is played by Freddy himself, Robert Englund…And Joshua Leonard from The Blair Witch Project, as his son…As soon as the credits roll, and you see names like Tony Todd (Candyman) and Kane Hodder (Every Freakin’ Horror Movie Ever Made), and you know you’re going home…Home to a place where the 80’s slasher movie still reigns supreme…Home to a giant, lumbering menace of a distant redneck cousin to the Voorhees family, named Victor Crowley…Home to the non-stop cavalcade of great, and memorable kills…

Welcome home.

 

The Hills Have Eyes (2006) – The second Alexandre Aja film on this list, is a remake of the Wes Craven 1977 cult classic…OMG…How could you put a re-boot on the list? Simple. It was awesome…And I don’t mind saying…I actually liked it better than the original…Okay that unnecessary blasphemy aside…This, and Zack Snyder’s 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, are the two films that grabbed on to the core of what made their original source material great, and then expounded on it. They don’t do the shot for shot remake that never works (sorry Gus Van Sant…But your 1998 remake of Psycho was a flaming pile of platypus shit), instead, their own film is revivified from the ashes of a long-dead Phoenix, and we get to watch, as it takes flight.

 

Wolf Creek 2 (2013) – A sequel? Really? Ugh, you just did a remake, and now this? Why would you put a sequel on this list? Um…Let me see…Oh yeah…Because it was awesome, that’s why. Mick Taylor is the ultimate redneck…He hits all the marks…Dirty, check…Scary home, check…Doesn’t like outsiders, check…Hard as hell to kill, check…

He’s like Uber-Redneck…

It’s been announced that John Jarratt will be returning to play Mick in Wolf Creek 3…

And guess what, folks?

You can sign me up.

 

Jug Face (2013) – Okay…This film is a weird little ditty, played by a moonshine-drunk hillbilly, on a banjo with one-string…It is a freaky, creepy, and original story about some simple, superstitious rubes who live life a bit differently than you or me…Lauren Ashley Carter (The Woman) is outstanding as the angst ridden main character Ada…Horror film regular Larry Fessenden stars as Ada’s Pa, Sustin…And the kooky Sean Young plays Loriss, her Ma, and for one disturbing scene, the worst gynecologist since John de Lancie in The Hand That Rocks The Cradle. I adored the relationship between Ada and the town potter, Dawai, played by Sean Bridgers (Also from The Woman), because it unfolded in such a sweet and understated way. These two characters are more connected than any other, with the exception of the very one-sided relationship Ada has with her perpetually reticent grandfather, a man whose once-travelled path resembles her own…

But with her and Dawai…That level of caring…That level of tenderness…It ends up being the true heart of this film.

If Jug Face…The dark and subtle first film of Chad Crawford Kinkle is any indication of what type of horror director this guy is…And where he might be going…I recommend that you keep an eye on him.