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Perhaps the most American of musical genre , hillbilly / back country repulsion motion picture seem to speak to our age - old fears of what lurks in the raving mad , untamed corners of our country , as well as our distrust of outsiders and those who exist beyond the fringes of what ’s look at " civilized " guild .
make full with cackling anthropophagite and bloodthirsty mutation , the ripe of the hillbilly repugnance subgenre examines where the dividing short letter between cruelty and compassion lie in in the human animal and shows that all of us has the capacity to enact great vehemence when campaign to our limitation . Below are ten of the best film in the subgenre .
Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964)
ThisBrigadoon - urge on ( yes , really ) Deep South gorefest was the second horror oblation from the inventor of the “ splatter ” genre , Herschell Gordon Lewis . After his breakthrough exploitation hit , line of descent Feast(1963 ) . Lewis up the ante with this fib of six people lured into a mysterious town for a Centennial celebration where the local continue to maim and torture them to avenge comprehend injustices committed during the Civil War .
Like most of Lewis ’ yield , the ludicrous secret plan is just an excuse for some mellow - construct bloodletting ( the most famous of which involves a barrelful with nail hammered into it roll down a pitcher’s mound with a lovely lady in spite of appearance ) , but the motion picture is far-famed as one of the early examples of a grindhouse film that paint Southerners as bloodthirsty lunatics who react to outsiders with suspiciousness and furiousness – a caricature that would scatter like a moonshine - fueled wildfire .
Deliverance (1972)
When Lewis Medlock plans a canoe trip with his chum to experience the grandeur of the Cahulawassee River before it ’s tamed forever by a dam , the four Man find themselves up to their necks in trouble when they ’re attacked , violate and hunted by some monstrous local .
An Oscar - propose adaptation of the novel by James Dickey , John Boorman’sDeliveranceis as iconic a piece of backwoods cinema as you ’re potential to find . Starring Jon Voight , Burt Reynolds , Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox , the film is a complex and disturb American classic that poke hole in notions of traditional maleness and explores the limit of heroism . So much more than the now notorious “ Squeal like a pig bed ” tantrum or its often - parodied " duel Banjos " dittyDeliverancemade hillbilly horror a bungalow industry and lead to many knockoffs and imitators .
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
An untouchable repulsion classic , Tobe Hooper’sThe Texas Chain Saw Massacrewas shot by a for the most part untested work party with an unknown mould one brutally hot summertime in Round Rock , Texas and would go on to change the genre ’s landscape painting .
A simple-minded level of a group of teens who are haunt and killed by a home of former slaughterhouse worker , The Texas Chain Saw Massacredistilled something about the post - Watergate , post - Vietnam American indistinguishability down to its essence in its depiction of the body politic as a soulless cannibalistic hellscape , and inadvertently gave parturition to the slasher subgenre that would be crystallized by John Carpenter inHalloweenfour year later .
The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
An All - American fellowship en route to California gets stranded in a outside strip of desert inhabited by a kindred of violent mountain - dwellers in Wes Craven ’s meditation on wildness , The Hills Have eye . No alien to this thematic territory , Craven stage inHillsan inverted variation of his breakout film , The Last House On The Left(1972 ) , in which , or else of savagery visit the average middle - course homestead , the middle - class finds itself in the habitation of the savage .
Both film , however , reach the same conclusion ( underlining whatDeliverancehad delivered with more subtlety ) that the line before politeness and savagery is razor thin , and that the protection of the familial group against " the other " will always throttle the supposed undecomposed angel of our nature . French New Extremity secureness Alexandre Aja remade the flick in 2006 with a atomic side effect slant that minimise these themes , but it ’s still a worthwhile watch for those who can stomach it .
Motel Hell (1980)
This worm tale about a seemingly benign James Leonard Farmer and his sister who kidnap travelers and convert them into scrumptious meat products is an other example of a horror flick that satirize what came before . Though director Kevin Connor reportedly set out to make a seriously scary feature of speech with here and now of grim humor , Motel Hellwas received more as a straight - up spoof of cannibal / hillbilly movies by critics and audiences alike .
Mean - spirited and over - the - top with some sincerely unforgettable imagery ( pig - headed take on a new , literal meaning ) and belly laugh , Motel Helloffers up the ickiness of the literary genre ’s good offerings with a heaping portion of wittiness on the side .
Mother’s Day (1980)
liberate by the always unadulterated and gleefully clique Troma Studios ( and directed by Charles , comrade of studio apartment founder , Lloyd Kaufman),Mother ’s Dayis a good stack darker and crueler than what ’s typically associated with the independent genre label . When three old college champion take their annual tenting trip , they ’re abducted by two bone - headed gentleman’s gentleman who do the bidding of their sadistic female parent , who has a especial taste for rape and murder .
Mother ’s Dayis an uncomfortable motion picture to watch , as it does n’t really shoot down as either a dark comedy or straightforward fright flick , allow the viewer in a sort of thematic limbo . bemused musical note aside , it ’s the trio of distaff leads that make the celluloid . Though Kaufman tends toward the exploitative , there ’s a delicate hired hand at work in his depiction of female friendship which gives this strange and monstrous plastic film a core of humanity and hope .
Just Before Dawn (1981)
The Texas Chain Saw Massacremay have unwittingly consecrate raise to the slasher , but Jeff Lieberman’sJust Before Dawnwas the first ( and best ) movie to consciously conflate hillbilly horror with the slasher templet , resulting in a movie with the prurient , mo - to - moment bang ofFriday the 13thand the thematic / emotional plangency ofDeliverance .
The frame-up is as intimate ( five young people go camping in the wild wilds of rural America only to be pick off one - by - one by a matchet - exert maniac ) but with multi - dimensional , live on - in characters , a deliberate step , alternately breathtaking / unsettling wilderness photography , a eddy that grabs you like a bear yap , and an unforgettable termination , Just Before Dawnis one of the hidden jewel of LXXX horror cinema and a perfect bridge between the slasher and backwoods repugnance subgenres .
Cabin Fever (2002)
Public view has greatly soured towardsEli Rothover the years , but catch his first feature plastic film , Cabin Fever , it ’s easy to see why he was briefly and prematurely hail as the savior of 21st - century revulsion cinema . With a wide-eyed apparatus that defy arithmetic mean at every turn , the picture sees a radical of collegiates consumed by a mysterious disease infect their isolated cabin .
Though Roth ’s brand of fratboy humor has grown progressively scrape , Cabin Feverdisplays the music director ’s genre - literacy as he determine up trope - heavy plotlines that resolve in unexpected ways to keep the audience guessing . His word-painting of rural residential district is also slenderly more multifaceted than other films on this list , and though the picture is just as wide as most of his later study , Cabin Feverhas weird vigour and endear oddness that makes it a must ascertain for fan of hillbilly revulsion . Avoid the 2016 remaking like an especially virulent infestation .
Eden Lake (2008)
Though the hillbilly horror subgenre is a largely American phenomenon , films about rural community tormenting outsider can be rule across the earth . acclaim from the U.K. ( a country synonymous with its own make of backwoods terror– " phratry horror " ) James Watkins ’ straining - porn - lite characteristic feel like a limey - ized forward-looking inheritor to the themes and trapping of the hillbilly revulsion films of old .
Starring Kelly Reilly and Michael Fassbender as an attractive , well - to - do , upwards mobile couple whose meshing weekend stop in bloody twisting courtesy of some destructive backwater youths . polemically , Eden Lake ’s antagonists are the children of racy collar doer , a fact that comes to a sickening head in the motion-picture show ’s final hour . In a certain ignitor , the film may demonize the underprivileged , but when study as a whole , it ’s easy to see that Watkins intend to lift his back country survivalist thriller into societal comment , makingEden Lakea boldly enervate bill of indictment of insularity , tribalism , and what he considers an increasing permissiveness towards fierceness in his country .
Jug Face (2013)
Just asEden Lakeseemed to take up from American backwoods horror tropes , so doesJug Facecrib supernatural elements from that country ’s own folk horror subgenre to order a tarradiddle of a pregnant teen stifled by her residential area – a community prostrate to sacrificing women to an unobserved creature in a menacing Inferno .
Small in scale and carried by strong performances , Jug Facepresents its mystical elements more plainly than expected , resulting in a powerful little shocker about sexuality roles and the dangers of groupthink .
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