Live Tweet Alert – #MondayMuggers present TUCKER & DALE VS. EVIL (2010), starring Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk!

Posted on July 28, 2025 by Bradley Crain

Every Monday night at 9:00 Central Time, my wife Sierra and I host a “Live Movie Tweet” event on X using the hashtag #MondayMuggers. We rotate movie picks each week, and our tastes are quite different. Tonight, Monday, July 28th, we’ll be watching TUCKER & DALE VS. EVIL (2020), starring Tyler Labine, Alan Tudyk, Katrina Bowden, Jesse Moss, Philip Granger, Brandon Jay McLaren, Chelan Simmons, Travis Nelson, Adam Beauchesne, and Eli Craig.

The plot: Two lovable hillbillies are headed to their “fixer-upper” vacation cabin to drink some beer, do some fishin’, and have a good time. But when they run into a group of preppy college kids who assume from their looks that they must be in-bred, chainsaw-wielding killers, Tucker & Dale’s vacation takes a bloody and hilarious turn for the worse.

Sierra and I have been on vacation over the last week, and we truly appreciate Lisa hosting for us while we were gone! Today, we’re both trying to get going again at work and in regular life, so I thought this horror-comedy, that I haven’t watched in many years, might be some easygoing fun! If it sounds fun to you, join us for #MondayMuggers and watch TUCKER & DALE VS. EVIL. It’s on Amazon Prime! I’ve included the trailer below:

Love On The Lens: The Amy Fisher Story (dir by Andy Tennant)

Posted on February 14, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Poor Mary Jo Buttafuoco!

As seen in the 1993 made-for-tv movie, The Amy Fisher Story, Mary Jo (Laurie Paton) was just a normal Long Island housewife. She was married to an auto mechanic named Joey (Anthony John Denison). She had a family and a nice house and a seemingly perfect life. But, one day, a teenage girl named Amy Fisher (played by a young Drew Barrymoe) showed up at her front door and claimed that her younger sister was having an affair with Joey. When Mary Jo accused Amy of lying and then said she was going to call her husband, Amy pulled a gun and shot Mary Jo in the head. That Mary Jo survived, albeit with partial facial paralysis, was a miracle.

The Amy Fisher Story was the third of the movies to be based on the true story of Amy Fisher and her affair with Joey Buttafuoco. If Casualties of Love portrayed Amy as being an obsessed stalker who targeted a saintly man and if Amy Fisher: My Story portrayed Amy as a vulnerable teen who was groomed by a sleazy older man, The Amy Fisher Story suggests that perhaps the truth was somewhere in between. As played by Drew Barrymore, Amy Fisher is immature, unstable, and self-destructive even before she meets Joey Buttafuoco. As played by Anthony John Denison, Joey is a cocky and arrogant womanizer who grooms a teenage girl and leads her to believe that the only thing keeping them from being truly together is the fact that he has a wife. (If Casualties portrayed Joey as being a dumb, salt-of-the-Earth type of guy and Amy Fisher: My Story portrayed him as being coldly manipulative and cruel, The Amy Fisher Story portrays him as being a self-centered idiot who did whatever he felt like doing without thinking about any possible consequences.) Of all the performers who played Amy and Joey, Drew Barrymore and Anthony John Denison are the most convincing. On the one hand, that lends a credibility to this film’s version of the events that led to the shooting of Mary Jo. On the other hand, it also means that neither of the main characters is particularly likable.

The film instead tries to make a hero out of a reporter named Amy Pagnozzi (Harley Jane Kozak), who finds herself assigned to follow the Amy Fisher story when she would much rather be reporting on the upcoming presidential election. Pagnozzi pops up throughout the story, commenting on the media feeding frenzy and generally acting annoyed by the whole thing. The problem with this approach is that, for all of Pagnozzi’s condemnation of the country’s tabloid mentality, she’s still a part of the monster. It’s hard to have sympathy for someone complaining about how a story is covered when they’re the one doing the covering.

Interestingly, for a film that condemns that way the story was covered, The Amy Fisher Story is probably the most tabloid-y of the three films. Every sordid detail — from Amy and Joey’s motel meetings to Amy’s work as an escort to her subsequent dalliance with a gym owner — is provided in artfully filmed detail. The result is a film that can feel a bit over-the-top but that’s exactly the right approach to take when it comes to a story like this. When you’re making a movie about a suburban teenage escort who shoots her boyfriend’s wife, there’s really not much need or room for subtlety. The Amy Fisher Story works because it fully embraces the melodrama and it features a performance from Drew Barrymore that remind us that, back before she became a permanently cheerful talk show host, Drew was a force of pure chaos.

When it comes to the story of the Fishers and the Buttafuocos, this is the film to see.

Cleaning Out The DVR, Again #20: I Didn’t Kill My Sister (dir by Jason Bourque)

Posted on July 6, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Lisa is currently in the process of trying to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing all 40 of the movies that she recorded from the start of March to the end of June. She’s trying to get it all done by July 10th! Will she make it!? Keep visiting the site to find out!)

“And now, for tonight’s top story, we go to Lois Summer, on assignment in Richardson, Texas.”

“Thank you, Mason. For the past week and a half, one red-haired film critic has been attempting what some people would call the impossible. Lisa Marie Bowman is trying to clean out her DVR by watching the 40 movies that she recorded between March and June. She just finished rewatching the 20th film on her DVR, I Didn’t Kill My Sister.”

“Now, Lois, for our viewers who may not know, what exactly is a DVR?”

“Get with the times, Mason. According to Ms. Bowman, she watched I Didn’t Kill My Sister when it originally premiered on Lifetime. The date was May 14th and she says that she specifically watched the film with her sister, Erin. Ms. Bowman says that both she and her sister enjoyed the film the first that they watched it.”

“Did she say how she felt about the film the second time she saw it…?”

“Dammit, I’m getting there, Mason. Ms. Bowman says that I Didn’t Kill My Sister was just as enjoyable the second time that she watched it. In fact, she said that it is a very entertaining murder mystery, one that almost feels like an old-fashioned whodunit. She described the film as being stylish without being gaudy and melodramatic in the best possible way.”

“Is there really a good way to be melodramatic?”

“According to Ms. Bowman, there is. For the rest of her review, we now go directly to Lisa Marie Bowman…”

Hi, everyone! Lisa here. Anyway, as Lois was just saying, I enjoyed I Didn’t Kill My Sister both times that I watched it. It’s a fun Lifetime murder mystery, one of those things that works best when you just relax, sit back, and let yourself be entertained. If you like Lifetime movies, you’ll like this one!

The film tells the story of two sisters. Carmen Pearson (Gina Holden) is a publicly beloved and privately loathed local celebrity. She co-anchors City View with her husband, Mason (Chris William Martin). She has a beautiful house, a nice pool, and great hair. She also has a rebellious teenage daughter (Sarah Desjardins) and a sister named Heather (Nicholle Tom). Heather would love to have Carmen’s life but, instead, she’s stuck working as her sister’s private assistant.

(One of the best things about the film is the way that it contrasts Carmen’s mansion — complete with luxurious pool — with Heather’s cluttered, one-story house.)

However, Carmen’s life is not perfect. She’s in the middle of a nasty divorce and Mason even seems to be flirting with her sister. When her daughter screams, “I HATE YOU!!!,” she sounds like she actually means it. And, of course, there’s the ambitious reporter (Dominika Jullet) who wants her job and the lawyer (Ona Grauer) who may have an agenda of her own. When Carmen is discovered floating face down in her pool, everyone’s a suspect!

Including Heather!

Heather knows she’s innocent but the detective (Sharon Taylor) in charge of the case seems to feel otherwise. Can Heather solve her sister’s murder before she ends up getting arrested!?

I Didn’t Kill My Sister is a fun, little whodunit. Gina Holden has a lot of fun being bitchy during the first 15 minutes of the film and Chris William Martin is brilliantly sleazy in the role of Mason. Watch it the next time that it’s on and see if you can solve the mystery before Heather does!

Back to you, Lois.

“Back to you, Mason.”

“Thank you, Lois. How much fun is a barrel of monkeys? That’s what a truck driver discovered today while making a delivery to the San Diego Zoo. That story and Newy Scruggs with sports, next…”

Quickie Review: Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (dir. by Eli Craig)

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Arleigh

One thing I like about genre films is the fact that, whether they’re good or bad, they mostly accomplish the part about entertaining it’s audience. For the good to great ones they don’t just entertain but raise the genre to new heights. For the bad ones they seem to entertain in unexpected ways. How often have one watched a bad genre film, realize it’s bad and still just roll with it, laughing at it becoming part of it’s appeal. We wouldn’t have gotten years and years of Rifftrax and MST3K without enjoying the badness of awful genre films. Then there are genre films which takes the very well-worn tropes of the genre. The very things we as an audience groan and snicker at and manages to turn it into a love-letter to the very thing they’re making fun of.

The horror-comedy Tucker & Dale vs. Evil takes the backwoods horror which has been a major staple of the slasher subgenre for over a quarter-century and tips it on it’s head to create a horror comedy that never runs out of laughs and still manages to show cringe-inducing death scenes. It stars Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine in the roles of Tucker and Dale. We have two well-meaning “hillbillies” from the backwoods of West Virginia on their way to Tucker’s recently bought “fixer-upper” of a vacation home who come across a group of obnoxious college kids looking to spend the weekend on the shore of the very lake our two intrepid heroes’ vacation also sits off of. Through some misunderstanding between the very sweet-natured Dale who tries to befriend one of the pretty college girls in the group we see the beginning of events that will see death and mayhem visited upon both groups throughout the film.

We get the mandatory story telling us about how twenty years ago during Memorial Day a group of similar college kids were massacred by a couple of hillbillies on the very shores of the lake with only one survivor to tell the tale. This tale becomes the reason why the college kids start trying to “defend” themselves from Tucker and Dale who they thought kidnapped one of the girls in their group when in fact they had just rescued her from drowning. One by one each college kid dies in horrible fashion in their attempt to take on the oblivious Tucker and Dale who begin to think the group were on a suicide pact and means to take them down as well.

The film really does a great job of playing on the well-worn conventions of slasher films and making each such scenario play out in a way that if someone caught the scene a few seconds after it had already started they would think Tucker and Dale were trying to kill these kids. Each kill have just enough gore to satisfy horror fans so used to slasher films, but also funny enough every cringe was followed up by laughs.

One thing the film also had going for it was the chemistry between Tudyk and Labine as Tucker and Dale. They play off each other quite naturally that it’s not a stretch to believe these two were truly life-long friends who would brave the rush of misguided college kids to save each other. Even the college girl with the heart of gold, Allie (played by Katrina Bowden), adds to the film’s good-natured fun as she tries to explain to her friends that everything which has been going on (all the death and destruction) was all just a misunderstanding. Another thing which helps make the two leads in the film quite sympathetic has to be how obnoxious the kids really were who look down on the so-called “mountain folk” of the region because of their appearance thus their lack of education.

Eli Craig took three years to make Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, but the end result was all worth the wait. The film follows in the great traditions of horror-comedies of the past by never winking cynically at the audience at how smart it is, but letting the basic premise of the story play out as simply as possible. It helps to have a great duo in Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine in the roles of the Tucker and Dale. This film may not make many critics running to proclaim it as a milestone in the genre but it does succeed in entertaining it’s audience and just ending up being one hilarious 90 minutes of campy horror.