Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Tucker & Dale vs. Evil'

This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is:

“Tucker & Dale vs. Evil”

While there has been no shortage of efforts to spoof slasher movies in recent years (“Scary Movie 5” will totter into theaters in 2012), “Tucker & Dale vs. Evil” – due out on DVD Tuesday – is a cut above the standard, sophomoric competition.

A surprise midnight hit at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, this amiable and smartly written blush on every horror cliché in the books is the work of first-time director and co-writer Eli Craig, who obviously understands the bloody-gory genre inside out and knows which buttons to push.

The jokey story focuses on Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine), two West Virginia bumpkin buddies who’ve set out to fix up their ramshackle backwoods cabin as a vacation retreat.

At a country store, they run into a gang of effete city kids on a camping trip, led by obnoxious preppie prig Chad (Jesse Moss), who has devious designs on pretty coed Allison (“30 Rock’s” Katrina Bowden). Naturally, Chad and his crowd sniff archly and view Tucker and Dale as a couple of dangerous hillbilly refuges from “Deliverance.”