Main cast: Nichole Hiltz (Norma), Matthew Del Negro (Pastor Lewis), Jeanette Brox (Bridget), Stefanie Black (Tiffany), Trisha Rae Stahl (Larlene), Michelle Lee (Miss China), Priscilla Barnes (Jean), Myk Watford (Roach), Ricky Mabe (Michael), Hayley Marie Norman (Amber), Cody McMains (Jason), JP Manoux (Cigrit), Lew Temple (Marv), Ryan Carnes (Alex), and Trace Adkins (The Man)
Director: Steven Goldmann
Norma was born to a whore in a trailer park. It’s arguably the worst trailer park in the world, a collection of all the white trash stereotypes you can imagine, with a Chinese prostitute thrown in on top. She knows that she has to work hard to get out of there, and she almost succeeded when she found a well-heeled young man who will take her out of there… only to have that man killed in an accident when Norma and her beau were taunted by the local thugs when they tried to leave. Norma, in numbed despair and fury, ends up making a deal with the Man. You know, the Man. He hands her a gun and she proceeds to happily slaughter every single resident in the trailer park before killing herself.
But a deal is a deal, and Norma finds herself a zombie-like creature every night, leading the undead versions of the trailer park residents as they proceed to kill anyone who happens to stumble upon their trailer park.
One day, Pastor Lewis and his entourage of reluctant and not exactly reformed juvenile delinquents are on their way to the usual Bible and Jesus camp thingy when they crash into a truck and find themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere. Oh look! There is a trailer park nearby…
Trailer Park of Terror is the perfect antidote to brainless gore movies based on horrific hillbillies out there, because this one simultaneously pokes fun at the conventions of this kind of movies while delivering the goods. What other movie will cheerfully cast a country music singer as the devil, after all? And while this movie is filled with stereotypes, most of them nothing more than meat or villains, it also delivers zany and over-the-top humor with style.
Not that this movie is not gory, because it is. From tamer acts like decapitation and spinal cord readjustment to the truly disgusting scene that is the crowning glory of gore late in the movie, this one makes even me, a veteran of too many gore movies to count, feel a little squeamish. Also watch out for a gruesome scene that drives home why you shouldn’t do drugs. It is pretty impressive how good these scenes are, considering the low budget of the movie.
And I absolutely love Norma. In a way, she is a sympathetic villain because her past is pretty horrific and a part of me actually cheers her on when she massacres those people who made her life a living hell. Still, she delivers her lines with style and panache.
If you are fed up of unimaginative gore movies, watch this one to have your faith restored. You haven’t experienced fun until you see a zombie Roach cranking the guitar and having fun as his, er, compatriots hunt their victims down.
