Trailer Park of Terror Movie Review
I think we should nominate a new genre for horror--"Redneck Horror." There are so many movies about rednecks committing atrocities that they qualify to be in a section all by themselves in the rental store. Of course, if you are in redneck territory and go to the only video rental store in town, your selections will be limited to porn and family movies. One leads to the other.
Trailer Park of Terror is intended to be humorous torture with a Southern drawl. The worst of the worst when it comes to stereotypes...which is of course why we will watch it. Every possible character you could fear meeting when you're out of gas on a road not found--the GPS keeps saying, "Where the hell are we? Where the hell are we?"--is in this movie.
Norma just wants to be happen, but her kinfolk won't allow it. TPOT opens with her trying to go on a romantic date with a nice boy in a pickup truck. Only he didn't count on having to introduce himself to Daddy and the boys. A little kidding turns into death and Norma's date is the one that needs flowers.
Poor Norma takes off barefoot in a huff, walking a dirt road until she meets a stranger by the road who must be the devil or closely associated with him, there's ghostly snakes hissing in the back of his truck (does everyone in The South have a truck--no VW Bugs?).
The devil character was played impressively by Trace Adkins who does evil well. He goads Norma into taking revenge on her little trailer park community with some sort of fancy boomstick. The fat lady doesn't sing because she has her brains blown out.
We then fast forward from 1981 to the present and join up with a youth pastor driving his load of ungodly troublemakers back from a Christian ministry camp. Fornicators, drug users, queers and goths--God has a lot of work to do to get them in line.
The good pastor, a handsome young man, takes a road not recommended by the locals and plows into an abandoned truck. A storm is a brewing and their only salvation from the rain is a friendly woman by the name of Norma...wait, isn't she dead. OMG! They're in The Trailer Park of Terror.
TPOT is more of a tribute to Redneck horror than a film that shows us anything new. It does have style and I was impressed with how vicious it was, but don't expect an engaging story. It's about bringing the lambs to the slaughter with the emphasis on slaughter.
In one scene a young man is turned into beef jerky. That scene, like others in the film, didn't frighten me so much as made my skin crawl with thoughts of what it would feel like to be prepped for a tasty treat. It brings to mind the classic Rory Calhoun horror movie "Motel Hell" in which Rory turns visitors into his famous smoked meats.
Norma, as played by Nichole Hiltz, comes off like Jaimie Pressly in her earlier days. The best example is when she played herself, or no, was it her? You know, in that Ringmaster movie based on the Jerry Springer show. The one where it was a fictionalized account of Jerry but then no one could tell it was fiction and no one understood why you would pay money for a ticket to see more of the same. Or is Jerry's show all fiction and the movie version was leftover show footage. ...I'm not sure, but Jerry Springer has made a sh*tload of money off of pure crap.
Anyways Norma is our main trailer trash villainess and it works. TPOT is party horror. Gather your friends together and laugh at the disgusting rednecks and the awful things they do. It claims to be no more than that and you will get what you paid for. I can't say that I enjoyed TPOT, but I was amused by all of the pointless violence and blood. It didn't hold back and it had fun with with the victims. That's about all we can expect from something with "Trailer Park" in the title.
The movie did depart from the usual straight-to-DVD type fare by having one of its rednecks play some crunchy rock and roll as background music to the evil deeds. You might think that would be out of place, but it fits nicely. Similar to a zombie Elvis playing for a full moon. And that rock 'n' roller provides most of the laughs within the film. The rest of the humor is so dark it may not evoke anything more than gasps or expressions of "ewww."
SIDENOTES: Surprisingly, there is no nudity in TPOT. What?! The closest we come to is Priscilla Barnes' aging ass in a thong.
I love Priscilla, I'm a fan of Three's Company when she appeared on it, but I don't want to see her naked any more. She did the same thing in The Devil's Rejects and while she has kept herself fit her face looks like The Joker and it's time to embrace the fact that she's coming into her late fifties. I feel the same way about Farrah Fawcett. Ladies! it's okay to cover up and still be sexy. We don't need to see you old and nude.
The one girl who should have been paid extra to be nude is Hayley Marie Norman. This girl is gorgeous. There's a sex scene where they play with her bra to make us think there's nudity but we're not fooled. Cleavage does not count!
She obviously told the producers she's not bearing her assets. What a shame. Maybe she can come back to life in Trailer Park of Terror 2 as the African American woman who seeks revenge on the last remaining KKK member retiring on a social security check that pays just enough to cover his drinking habits.
Comments
Redneck? So few people know anything about rednecks that they did not hear Jeff Foxworthy say, that it has escaped public interest that redneck simply put was the red streak across the back of man's neck that was left un-covered by the hat and the collar while he worked in the fields, on the railroad, or drove cattle. So I am not so terrified to live in redneck country.
I enjoyed the movie and my favorite parts were the ones with Hayley Marie Norman!
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