The 25 Scariest Rednecks in Movie History

Redneck characters in film have a tough job. Whether they pop up in comedy, drama, horror, or psychological thrillers, they're required to be equal parts hilarious and menacing. They have to tell you that you have a "purty mouth" and then shove a shotgun in.

Playing a convincing blue collar Southern stereotype is no easy task: It takes more than donning cut-off flannel and a trucker hat to make a believable hillbilly. It's high time that the ol' boys and ol' gals of the silver screen got a little love, and not only from their cousins. It's time to celebrate the back-country bad boys who haunt our dreams with Lynyrd Skynyrd as the score.

These are the 25 Scariest Rednecks in Movie History.

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Written by Brenden Gallagher (@muddycreekU)

Played By: John Goodman

There aren't many scary characters in the Coens' Southern reimagining of The Odyssey. Everett McGill (George Clooney) and company generally get in their own way just as much as anyone else does. Big Dan Teague is the major exception. The smooth talking Bible salesman is the film's Cyclops, a one-eyed brute. He predictably resorts to violence not long after meeting our hapless heroes.

Viewers quickly learn that his violent outburst is only the tip of the iceberg, when Teague trades his seersucker suit for a Klan hood.

Played By: David C. Billodeau, Johnny David

It doesn't take long for a redneck to do something scary on film. If you see even the most unassuming blue collar Southerner roll up in a pick-up truck with a shotgun in tow, you know there's bound to be trouble.

But in Easy Rider, these aren't just any hillbillies mind you: These guys symbolize the status quo in America, the conservative resistance to change and freedom. When metaphors like that show up, one thing's for certain: They're gonna mess things up real good. BLAM BLAM.

Played By: Keanu Reeves

Things were working out pretty well for Donnie Barksdale until the town psychic got involved. Technically, things started going bad for him when his mistress got killed, but then got really bad when the psychic found about it.

It's shocking that a film that allowed Keanu to play an abusive drunk opposite Cate Blanchett's town psychic didn't strike box office gold. The character deserves at least some props for saying, "She said I was the only man in town who knew how to fuck," on the witness stand.

Played By: John Brumpton, David Lyons, Mathew Wilkinson

Do not fuck with a hillbilly's weed. For city folk, the sticky icky is a way to unwind after a long day. For the back-country farmer, it's a way to keep the family business going after corporate agriculture renders more conventional crops unprofitable.

After yuppie couple Robert and Pia get lost on a boating trip, they learn this lesson the hard way. Respect the relationship between rednecks and weed: My Morning Jacket didn't just appear out of thin air, people.

Played By: Peter Greeene

Anybody who's been hard up for cash knows that you get screwed at the pawn shop, but this is ridiculous. Tarantino's film has long been viewed as a watershed moment in modern filmmaking. Because of the film's myriad achievements, Pulp Fiction's execution of the most excruciating game of "Eenie Meenie Miney Mo" ever staged is often overlooked.

It's unclear when Zed starts the game who is going to lose, but by time Marcellus prepares to "Get Medieval" on Zed's ass, it's pretty clear it's Zed that's lost.

Sidenote: Where do rednecks in Los Angeles come from? What swamp breeds them?

Played By: Dwight Yoakum

Mentally challenged murderer Karl (Billy Bob Thornton) seems like he's going to play the villain in Sling Blade. But expectations are reversed in short order, and Doyle Hargraves emerges as the film's abusive antagonist. Dwight Yoakum plays the best hillbilly jerks in the business, and Sling Blade is no exception. He's a homophobic and violent drunk. Fortunately, he gets what's coming to him.

Yoakum's also a legendary country musician. If you're one of those who likes "everything but country," give his songs a shot before you swear off CMT for good.

Played By: Brion James, Sonny Landham, Allan Graf, Ned Dowd, Rob Ryder

Rednecks are known to support our troops unconditionally—just look at the bumper stickers. If the troops mess with the rednecks, however, all that goes out the window.

The hard lesson that Lousiana National Guardsmen learn in the underrated Southern Comfort is a valuable one: Never mess with a man's boat. In this case the men are Cajun settlers and the boats are their canoes. Still, this is a universal truth.

Sit back and relax with Ry Cooder's phenomenal soundtrack as you watch the guardsmen learn a lesson they will never forget.

Played By: Rory Calhoun

If a redneck smokes delicious meat in real life, the secret is usually venison. If they smoke delicious meat on film, the secret is usually human flesh. Though many cinematic rednecks have considered human flesh a delicacy, Motel Hell's Vincent practices the most meticulous preparation methods this side of Soylent Green.

He has a great thing going when the film kicks off, with his own human garden out back of the motel, but of course, it all gets messed up when he falls in love. Unfortunately, it seems running a successful people-processing business requires undivided attention.

Played By: Timothy Carhart

We'd have had a very different movie on our hands if Louise hadn't had that gun in the parking lot. Harlan Puckett is just one of a rogue's gallery of male scumbags that meddle with Thelma and Louise in this beloved feminist road movie.

Some critics initially accused the film of "man-hating," but we side with the majority who have heralded the film as a modern classic. Besides, we aren't sure how else you're supposed to respond to attempted rape than by "hating" the perp.

Played By: Brad Pitt

Vocational irony is one our least favorite devices in entertainment. How often have we seen, "He's a doctor, but he can't fix himself," or "He's a powerful ruler, but he can't hold court over his own family" premises? Kalifornia marks one of the most ridiculous examples of this we've ever seen.

The premise: A couple sets out to study serial killers, only to run afoul of a serial killer. Brad Pitt has the unenviable task of manifesting that irony into being via Earl Grayce, the hillbilly psychopath. Pitt gives it a damn good shot: Earl has a free-wheeling dynamic quality that transcends your run-of-the-mill redneck stereotypes.

Played By: Billy Drago, Robert Joy, Desmond Askew, Ezra Buzzington, Micahel Bailey Smith, Laura Ortiz

The next time your family takes a vacation, you need to set Mapquest to avoid old nuclear testing sites. Unfortunately for the family in Alexandre Aja's merciless remake of The Hills Have Eyes, they drive straight into the nightmare.

The thing about deformed mutants is that they hold a bit of a grudge. It's hard to blame them after those damn scientists ruined their chances of winning any beauty pageants with all them mushroom clouds. Granted, burning people alive and killing mothers heads off in front of their infant children is taking that anger a bit too far.

Played By: Holden McGuire, Billy Ray McQuade

David Allen Coe once said that a country song isn't really a country song if it "doesn't say anything at all about mama." He makes a good point. A good country boy loves his mama.

The problem comes, though, when the mama in question prompts you to rape and murder unsuspecting female campers who happen to be frolicking naked in a pond. Roger Ebert wasn't too interested in seeing how that problem played out. He famously hated this Troma film, saying, "The question of why anyone of any age would possibly want to see this movie remains without an answer."

Played By: Alan Tudyk, Tyler Labine

Not all scary rednecks are dangerous. The hilarious 2010 horror-comedy Tucker & Dale Vs Evil explores the idea that sometimes if we believe something, it will come to pass despite our best intentions.

Tucker (Tudyk) and Dale (Labine) were planning on having a peaceful retreat in their mountain cabin, but when a group of attractive young college students convince themselves that the well-meaning rednecks are murderers, a series of accidental deaths and misunderstandings ensue.

This should teach all you city folk out there not to judge a book by its cover, even if that book's title reads You Might Be a Redneck If...

Played By: Jackie Gleason

Sheriff Buford T. Justice should only be scary to people who fall on the wrong side of the law. For the ne'er-do-wells out there, his face is scarier than any you will ever see. The "Smokey" of the film's title, Justice normally locks up bad guys faster than you can can say "sumbitch."

Gleason's comedic portrayal of Justice is the stuff of comedy legend. His performance remains cinema's iconic Southern lawman thirty years after the film's release.

Played By: Julian Richings, Garry Robbins, Ted Clark

Country folk are always happy to give you directions when you get lost, unless, of course, they're inbred mutant cannibals trying to lure you into a trap.

As anyone who has lived off of a dead-end road will tell you, even with the proliferation of smart phones and GPS technology, people still constantly end up getting lost in the country, in need of directions. Which is lucky for the backwoods cannibals in Wrong Turn, who otherwise would be sorely lacking in bodies to dismember. Call them opportunists.

Played By: John Goodman, William Forsythe

Sure, Gale (Goodman) and Evelle (Forsythe) don't exactly strike fear into you like Raising Arizona's other antagonist, Leonard Smalls (Randall "Tex" Cobb). Still, they're extremely dangerous.

They don't throw grenades from motorcycles like Smalls, and they're not figments of protagonist Herbert "Hi" McDunnough's (Nicolas Cage) colorful imagination, so, ultimately they earn the title of Raising Arizona's scariest rednecks in a tight race. The Snoats brothers—Hi's old prison buddies who dig themsevles out of lock-up—can smell a moneymaking opportunity a mile away. Luckily for Hi, the blundering siblings turn out to be just as stupid as they are unpleasant.

Played By: Kane Hodder

Walking into a cursed swamp pretty much guarantees your death in horror films. But entering said swamp to film a porno entitled Bayou Beavers ensures that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, most of your party is about to get slaughtered.

Even if Victor Crawley—the monstrous slasher/antagonist in the independent throwback horror romp Hatchet—didn't want to attack the sleazy porno artists and aimless college students who've wonder into his woods, the gods of cinema would have demanded it.

Played By: James H. Housely, Martin J. Wolfman, Joe Benson, P. Floyd Piranha, William Decker et al.

One of the first straight-to-video films ever released, Redneck Zombies has one of the greatest taglines ever: "They're Tobacco Chewin', Gut Chompin', Cannibal Kinfolk from Hell!" Rather than try to tell you how amazingly schlocky and fun this film—which distribution company Troma Entertainment claims was filmed in "EntrailVision"—is, just watch the trailer. It's truly something to behold.

Played By: Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Sheri Moon Zombie

When Rob Zombie’s directorial debut, House Of 1,000 Corpses, premiered in 2003, very few, if any, critics and cinema purists expected a piece of high art. One of rock music’s most outlandish personalities, Zombie’s reputation as a nihilistic performer guaranteed that his brand of film would be just as maniacal; besides, no one anticipates much out of musicians turned filmmakers, anyway. So when people saw House Of 1,000 Corpses, an uneven freakshow crammed with great ideas and hazardous execution, the unhinged camerawork and nonsensical writing fell in line with the anticipation.

And that’s why Zombie’s follow-up, the far more serious The Devil’s Rejects, knocked fools on their asses two years later. Continuing the exploits of Corpses villains Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), Otis (Bill Moseley), and Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie), The Devil’s Rejects forgets all about the first movie’s dark comedy. Zombie shoots the film’s open-road landscapes with true grit, giving his best movie to date the feel of a nightmarish western at times.

Mostly, though, The Devil’s Rejects is brutal horror, a distinction exemplified by a sequence in which one of the trio’s victims, wearing the face of her murdered lover, runs onto a highway for help and gets flattened by a speeding truck. Even if you know the scene is coming, it’s still a visceral shock. —Matt Barone

Played By: Eron Tabor, Richard Pace, Anthony Nichols, Gunter Kleeman

I Spit on Your Grave went by a variety of titles—at one time it was called The Day of the Woman, and, after its release, I Hate Your Guts and The Rape and Revenge of Jennifer Hill were also used. Whatever you call it, though, director Meir Zarchi's controversial exploitation picture is legendary for its violence.

We first meet Jennifer Hill (Camille Keaton) shortly before she gets gang-raped by a group of dirty, abhorrent yokels. The rest of the film consists of a pissed-off but calmly manipulative Jennifer exacting her revenge on the men who were responsible. By the film's end, the redneck rapists are all dead, and unable to ever sexually violate another out-of-towner again.

Unsurprisingly, I Spit on Your Grave wasn't greeted warmly by critics. Roger Ebert, for example, initially called the film, "a vile bag of garbage...without a shred of artistic distinction." However, later critics have asked if the film can be read as a feminist text. Regardless of how you experience the film, you'll likely agree that many of the scenes are difficult to stomach.

Played By: Robert De Niro

Martin Scorsese's underrated Cape Fear teaches us a lesson that the Republican Party has known for years: The most dangerous thing you can give a country boy is some book-learning.

After Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) mishandles Max Cady's case, Cady has a few years to stew about it in the federal pen. He spends that time like any good psychopath would, learning the ins and outs of the law so that he can make Bowden's life a living hell and wreck his boat.

You country folk out there know that this meant Cady was serious: A real good ol' boy would do whatever he could not to mess up a good boat.

Played By: Charlize Theron

In the spirit of equal opportunity, we would like to take this moment to remind you that women can be terribly scary rednecks too. Though she's just as violent as many of the other characters on this list, Aileen Wuornos (portrayed in an Oscar-winning performance by an unrecognizable Theron in this powerful biopic) elicits far more empathy than most of her peers in redneck violence. After years of prostitution, she tries to stick to the straight and narrow, but slim prospects send her back into turning tricks, even though one of her customers raped her.

Even though she had her reasons, no sane person would ever want to end up in the back seat of a car with Aileen.

Played By: Gunnar Hansen

Inspired by real-life, skin-wearing serial killer Ed Gein, Leatherface is one of the most frightening creations to ever grace the silver screen. The cow-butcher-turned-human-butcher is just one member of a deranged family known for making home improvements and culinary delights with human body parts.

No matter what human flesh mask Leatherface wears, horror fans can't get enough; There have been seven released films in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise to date grossing over $300 million.

Played By: Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis

It takes a good amount of killing to stand out amongst cinematic redneck murderers. In Natural Born Killers, Micky (Harrelson) and Mallory (Lewis) did that and more.

The film remains a scapegoat of conservative groups still today almost 20 years after its release. Though the Oliver Stone-directed movie does have an incredible body count, the script has the media firmly in its crosshairs, taking to task their myth-making glorification of mass murderers. Reflecting on the film is a bit depressing, as real-life atrocities similar the characters' on-screen killing sprees have only gotten more coverage in the intervening years since the film's release.

Played By: Ed Ramey, Billy Redden, Seamon Glass, Randall Deal, Bill McKinney, Herbert "Cowboy" Coward, Hoyt Pollard

Deliverance's infamous "squeal like a pig" rape scene will always be hard to watch, but we'd be remiss not to include Lonnie (Billy Redden, seen above), whose creepy banjo playing has been permanently etched into the pop culture consciousness.

When revisiting scenes from the film, you realize you forgot just how creepy every single bit player is, from the guy pumping gas to the old lady looking out the window. Deliverance is remembered as a great movie for a number of reasons, but the extras casting is a work of art in itself.