Spider Baby a Drive-In 60s Precursor to Contemporary Hillbilly Horror

When it was released in 1967, Spider Baby (or the Maddest Story Ever Told) barely made a ripple. And that’s probably a generous assessment. Just about no one saw the Jack Hill-written and directed exploitation thriller. Even the presence of an older Lon Chaney Jr. (The Wolf Man) had little impact. Of course, Chaney was […]

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Cannibal Cabin Bites Off More Than It Can Chew in Derivative Hillbilly Horror

If you’re a fan of the kind of horror that defined The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Wrong Turn, the latest addition to rural or hillbilly horror has arrived on VOD platforms. Courtesy of Lionsgate Films, British hillbilly horror Cannibal Cabin looks to join the likes of Eden Lake as hip, young ‘city folk’ take a […]

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Wrong Turn 2 Dead End a Surprisingly Tasty Straight-to-Video Sequel

Early in the summer of 2003, rural slasher Wrong Turn became a modest box office hit. Like most horror movies from the late 90s and early 2000s, it boasted a young, attractive cast of up-and-comers. And it carried on a long-tradition of hillbilly horror dating back to the 1972 classic Deliverance. Critics didn’t really like […]

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Bury the Bride Puts a Spin on the Familiar Hillbilly Horror

If you’re not familiar with Tubi, it’s a free streaming platform featuring a pretty decent selection of movies and TV shows. While you’ll find some old big name movies, Tubi specializes in B-movies and cult classics – you just have to suffer through a few very short commercials while streaming. And Tubi has ramped up […]

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Rituals a Criminally-Underseen Canuxploitation Horror Movie

Today, deformed hillbillies terrorizing big-city folk deep in the woods is old hat. Since ‘Dueling Banjos’ played for the first time in Deliverance, horror movies have exploited urban fear of the rural. Call it hillbilly horror, redneck horror, or rural, it’s a subgenre that includes The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, and Wrong […]

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Wrong Turn 2021 -More Meat On The Bone Than Expected In This Remake

By all accounts, Wrong Turn is a minor entry in the horror genre. On its release in 2003, the cannibal hillbilly horror Wrong Turn impressed few critics. But the familiar story of hip, young urban folk running afoul of inbred backwoods maniacs did well enough at the box office to spawn a direct-to-video franchise. And […]

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The Wrong Turn Franchise: Ranking the Series from Inedible to Tasty

They can’t all be Friday the 13th, Halloween, or A Nightmare on Elm Street. To fill the void between A-list horror franchise releases, you need some B-list franchises – Child’s Play, Final Destination, or Resident Evil. Even Hellraiser had few decent theatrical sequels before churning out discount bin straight-to-video “hell” crap. And then there are […]

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