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15 Famous Movie Hicks

Whether hailing from the sticks or the trailer park, these hayseeds might even make Jerry Springer blush.

Hick
Photo: Phase 4 Films

Chloë Moretz and Blake Lively get their hillbilly on in Hick, one of this weekend’s Dark Shadows alternatives and, quite possibly, one of the year’s worst. It is indeed good for something, though, as it’s inspired this 15-wide roster of cinema’s unforgettable rednecks. While far more prevalent in recent movies, characters who don’t quite hail from the upper crust have long been giving fuel to the likes of Jeff Foxworthy, who might have made the list himself if not out-hicked by a slew of fictional kinfolk. Whether hailing from the sticks or the trailer park, these hayseeds might even make Jerry Springer blush.


Sling Blade

Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade (1996). In the role that made him a star and netted him a Best Actor Oscar nod, Billy Bob Thornton pilots Sling Blade, a rural Arkansas drama he also penned and directed. Thornton’s disabled character, Karl Childers, is fresh from a mental hospital he hasn’t left since killing his mom as a child, and his new activities include working in an engine-repair shop and befriending a young Lucas Black. Sling Blade is packed with rednecks played by the likes of Dwight Yoakam, Robert Duvall, and J.T. Walsh, but its Thornton’s benevolent hick who steals the show.


Drop Dead Gorgeous

Ellen Barkin in Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999). Before she was shocking readers with her profane tweets, Ellen Barkin was playing mom to Kirsten Dunst’s pageant princess, blowing up her trailer in the process, and winding up in a hospital with a beer can melted to her hand. Undaunted, Barkin’s character, Annette, is simply glad she managed to save her daughter’s tap shoes by shoving them down her pants, and she’s jonesing for a cigarette so bad that she’d “kill someone for the nicotine under their fingernails.” Classy.


All the King’s Men

Broderick Crawford in All the King’s Men (1949). Not to be confused with Steven Zaillian’s ill-received remake, Robert Rossen’s All the King’s Men boasts Broderick Crawford’s definitive performance as Willie Stark, a zero-to-hero politician who trades his rural digs for the governor’s mansion. As well-spoken as he is corruptible, Willie has quite a knack for preaching to the little people, and he opens at least one speech with, “Friends, rednecks, suckers, and fellow hicks!”


Raising Arizona

Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona (1991). The second feature film from the ever-beloved Coen Brothers, Raising Arizona is home to one of Nicolas Cage’s best roles, crook-turned-cop’s-husband Herbert I. “Hi” McDunnough. A tried and true redneck, Hi has all the fixin’s: machine shop job, mobile home in the desert, ultra-bushy mustache, and a baby kidnapped from a furniture bigwig. Did we mention his wife’s name is Ed?

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Monster

Charlize Theron in Monster (2003). A real-life hick, Aileen Wuornos proved the ultimate inspiration for Charlize Theron, who gives the performance of her life as the serial-killing prostitute. Prone to washing her hair at rest stops and wearing shirts with wolves howling at the moon, Theron’s Wuornos is a picture of redneck-ery, despite the fact that her Florida stomping grounds aren’t often associated with banjo-strumming types. As they say, you can take the girl out of the trailer…


Ruggles of Red Gap

Charles Ruggles and Mary Boland in Ruggles of Red Gap (1935). Charlie Ruggles and Mary Boland made careers out of their comic partnership, starring in a string of hits together and laughing all the way to the bank. In Ruggles of Red Gap, they play the new-money American couple who acquire Charles Laughton’s Marmaduke Ruggles (no relation), an English butler who refers to America as the “land of slavery.” Also sporting a priceless mustache, Ruggles’s Egbert Floud is rustic through and through, and Boland’s Effie Floud, a Molly Brown-like social climber, sees Marmaduke as the perfect socioeconomic beard. Alas, money can’t buy you class, and neither can a manservant.


Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Dylan Baker in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987). With a lip full of chewing tobacco and a nasty need to clear his throat, Dylan Baker’s Owen in Planes, Trains and Automobiles comes fully stocked with gross habits, which you might call redneck necessities. Opting to help John Candy and Steve Martin get to Wichita for Thanksgiving, this motel owner’s son has his diminutive wife (Lulie Newcomb) load his pick-up with the lead pair’s luggage, deeming her tough because she didn’t scream when her first baby “came out sideways.” A gentleman, indeed.


The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

R. Lee Ermey in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003). No one would place the Michael Bay-produced remake above the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but the new film does boast a family of redneck creeps led by the great R. Lee Ermey, who happens to be the sheriff of Leatherface’s hunting grounds. Picking up after the killer and and luring Jessica Biel and company into his trap, Ermey’s psycho cop speaks for his whole demented hick clan when he says, “There’s nothin’ wrong with us!”

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The Devil’s Rejects

Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, and Sheri Moon Zombie in The Devil’s Rejects (2005). Back from 2003’s House of 1000 Corpses, the Rob Zombie trio of Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, and Sheri Moon Zombie hits the road in The Devil’s Rejects, a western-cum-grindhouse freakout that sees the three hick killers go on a traveling rampage. Keen on unspeakably torturing their victims, the twisted family (Haig is Daddy to Moseley and Moon Zombie) nearly escapes pursuers in a sweet, stolen Cadillac, but one last hail of bullets sends their plans—and them—straight to hell.


Winter’s Bone

Dale Dickey in Winter’s Bone (2010). Robbed of an Oscar nomination, Dale Dickey is a true terror as a backwoods bigwig’s devoted wife, putting fear into Jennifer Lawrence’s Ree Dolly before finally, in her character’s words, “putting the hurt on her.” The Carmela Soprano of the Ozarks, Dickey’s Merab is even more fearsome than the husband she protects, handing out threats to anyone who comes asking, and standing as the face of Ree’s nasty extended family. And what a face!


Joe Dirt

David Spade in Joe Dirt (2001). David Spade’s signature creation may just be the title character of this 2001 comedy, which, like so many others, makes a hero out of someone most would avoid like the plague. Rocking a mullet that puts most others to shame, Joe is primo white trash, living in the boiler room of the radio station whose floors he cleans, and still reeling from being abandoned by his parents in the Grand Canyon. With a main squeeze played by ’90s hottie Brittany Daniel (who, incidentally, was more or less never heard from again), Joe Dirt also includes a redneck cameo to beat all, from the one and only Kid Rock.


In the Heat of the Night

Rod Steiger in In the Heat of the Night (1967). As Bill Gillespie, a character that Carroll O’Connor would make even more famous on TV, Rod Steiger is a racist redneck bound for a little redemption, which comes thanks to Sidney Poitier’s immortal Mr. Tibbs, a Philly cop wrongfully nabbed for a Mississippi murder. An old-school bigot with long-ingrained hick values, Gillespie requires some work in the tolerance department, but a forced partnership helps matters along. For his efforts, Steiger nabbed an Oscar, one of five the movie claimed in 1967.

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National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

Randy Quaid in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989). Source of such classic lines as, “Merry Christmas; shitter was full!” Randy Quaid’s cousin Eddie is a pillar of redneck royalty, classless from the plate in his head to the bottom of his blue leisure suit. Eddie is the bane of poor Clark Griswold’s (Chevy Chase) existence, parking his dirty double-wide in the family man’s driveway, and unleashing Snots, his dog with a sinus condition, to ransack the obsessively decorated house. Eddie’s a wellspring of priceless moments, but few beat that dumping of his trailer’s toilet contents into a residential sewer, which later blows sky-high thanks to flammable gas.


Kalifornia

Brad Pitt in Kalifornia (1993). Brad Pitt actually had one of his teeth chipped to portray Early Grayce, the killer at the center of Dominic Sena’s Kalifornia, and the bearer of the redneck-iest name on this list. Broke, out of work, and on parole, Kentucky native Early hitches a ride with David Duchovny’s traveling journalist, who doesn’t know his serial-killer book project is getting a major dose of hands-on insight. Early brings along the girlfriend (Juliette Lewis) he likes to whip, and he doesn’t even make the trip until after burning down his trailer—and burying his landlord in a ditch.


Deliverance

Bill McKinney and Herbert Coward in Deliverance (1972). Billy Redden’s dueling banjo player is a good candidate, but the chosen hicks from John Boorman’s Deliverance could only be the forest dwellers played by Bill McKinney and Herbert Coward, who forever struck fear into the hearts of male campers everywhere when their attack on Jon Voight and Ned Beatty resulted in the rape of the latter. With smiles only a redneck mother could love, these moonshine-loving sodomites immortalized the phrase “Squeal like a pig,” and would have got all up in Voight’s business too if not for Burt Reynold’s archery skills.

R. Kurt Osenlund

R. Kurt Osenlund is a creative director and account supervisor at Mark Allen & Co. He is the former editor of Out magazine.

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