Not Shaun Of The Dead. Still Looks Funny.

If I really had to pick my favorite genre of film it would be horror-comedy even though there aren't that many of them and the good ones are rare. That's why I'm a little bit Richard-Pryor-in-Brewster's Millions-when-he-finds-out-he-has-inherited-all-that-money-but-before-he-realizes-the-catch about Tucker & Dale vs. Evil which just released a trailer and looks like it might be the most amazing thing ever since hyperbole was invented. Or at least pretty good.

The premise is simple. Two hillbillies scare some kids into thinking they are mass murderers and then through a series of misunderstandings, the teenagers start to die. I think we can all agree that as adults, teens are incredibly scary and alien and they have sex too early and all have genital warts and that is terrifying so maybe it's okay that they start dying. In this movie, it is totally okay that they start dying because it's like watching an old Laurel and Hardy bit, only instead of Ollie gripping his hat humorously and flexing his eyebrows in a threatening fashion, a teenager falls into a wood chipper. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

The movie stars Alan Tudyk, who played Wash on Firefly and I think we all know any post on the internet that mentions a Joss Whedon project is pretty much unimpeachable in terms of awesomeness. If Joss Whedon had carried the Ten Commandments down to the Israelites we would probably already have hover-cars and talking dogs by now. I know that sentence may seem confusing but check out how much I can bench-press. It's not all looks with me, is my point.

Tudyk plays the titular Tucker, and if that doesn't sound dirty than I don't even know how to write anything anymore and I might as well just give it up and go join the Shriners and ride around in parades in those little cars wearing a fez and a blazer and put on that creepy little circus they have, with just the four ponies who can't see right and the elephant with a cough.

The cool thing here is most horror-comedies try to rip off Shaun of the Dead and then POW!, zombies. It's not enough to go for cheap laughs about shooting people in the head...you have to go and reanimate the soulless undead so that they must rise from the grave to consume the flesh of the living. Yawn. We've seen THAT before. What we haven't seen too much of is a clever movie premise like Tucker & Dale, and the reason we haven't seen it is because they haven't made it yet. But they're totally working on it. Here's the trailer. Oh yeah...heads up..it's a red band trailer and that's Hollywood talk for "may contain gross shit and boobies" but in this case it's just gross shit. Sorry boobies. You'll have your day in court...I promise.