Hillbilly Horror Rules

Films like Deliverance and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre have given us all a healthy fear of hillbillies. Truthfully though the same principle applies in any country of the world, it doesn't have to be the deep south of the US, anywhere remote with inbred locals is liable to be hazardous to your health. There are loads of horror films that use the same basic format, from Wolf Creek to Eden Lake. I call them hillbilly movies but you can call them survival flicks if you prefer. In this article we take a look at some of the classic hillbilly horror rules.

The Rules

Someone always decides to poke fun at the slack jawed locals and sparks off their murderous rage.

Someone will always ask one of the hillbillies for directions so he can guide them to a deserted murder spot. Usually the person they ask for directions looks evil and often they will actually leer, these are good cues that you don't want to follow their directions. The people in the film will always follow their directions.

Someone always goes into a house uninvited and snoops around. They ignore obvious signs of danger or insanity like animal carcasses and blood encrusted hammers.

Someone always tries to reason with the axe wielding hillbilly when things have already obviously gone beyond the point of no return. It never works.

Someone always seems to get rescued by running onto a road in front of a pick up truck or van (it's rarely a car). The driver is always the vaguely respectable member of the murderous hillbilly clan who takes them straight back to the hillbilly family home.

Someone always tries to appeal to one of the hillbillies to help them, usually a child, woman or extremely retarded hillbilly. It never works.

Someone always runs to a car and then can't find the keys or can't start the car before being impaled. If they do start the car a hillbilly will always bang on the side window as they drive past. They will always crash into a tree within five seconds.

Someone always hides in a stupid hiding place instead of running away. They always get caught unless they hide under a human corpse or an animal carcass.

Someone always gets caught in a trap of some kind, usually a big rusty man trap. The others always waste time trying to save them but the person who gets caught in the trap never survives the film.

One of the male victims will always try to fist fight the biggest, most psychotic hillbilly. This will only earn him a bigger death scene.

One of the female victims always forgets how to run, falls up or down a muddy hill, gets their T-shirt wet or a combination of all three. There will always be a scene where they fall into a dead body pit or have a body fall on top of them.

When the psychotic killer, who ripped the man apart with his bare hands earlier, catches the woman scrambling back pathetically in the mud to try and escape him he will be sucker punched by a big branch and allow her to get away again.

There will always be a scene where the woman is forced to watch as her husband or boyfriend is tortured, murdered and sometimes skinned alive. She will always make a whimper sound or scream and give herself away.

There will always be a scene where the hiding victim is about to be discovered when the hillbilly gets called away for dinner. Even although it would only take them a second to look behind the tree stump, the barrel or in the cupboard the person calling them will be so insistent that they'll leave immediately.

Police are not capable of saving you in the event of a hillbilly attack. If you find a policeman he will always either be part of the hillbilly family or be killed because he is pointing the gun at you while the hillbilly sneaks up behind him with a crossbow.

Mobile phones can never get a signal and only appear in hillbilly movies to get people killed. Either they finally get a signal which means they are due to be stabbed in the back or the phone goes off when they are hiding.

The only way to successfully survive a hillbilly movie is to embrace insanity and embark on a murderous rampage of your own. If you aren't covered in blood, limping down a highway and muttering to yourself by the end of the film then you're in a shallow grave or hanging in the hillbilly walk in freezer.

You can find other horror rules in our Horror Movie Clichés article.

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