One of a string of films - which boast titles like Hootenanay Hayride - actually aimed at hillbilly audiences, showcasing jug-band music and folksy jokes, this is a rare movie about happy, unthreatening, clean-looking mountain types who just want to play music and have a good time without making anyone squeal like a pig.

Deliverance (1972)

This has probably done more than any other film to put off urban folks from visiting America’s genuinely beautiful backwoods. 

At least three of the incidental characters remain the most iconic hillbillies in modern cinema: the withered-face gas station boy (Billy Redden) who plays ‘Duellin’ Banjos’ with extraordinary skill (the picking is actually by Michael Addiss) in a face-off with the guitar-toting doomed townie (Ronny Cox); and the brutal, lecherous Mountain Men (Bill McKinney, Herbert ‘Cowboy’ Coward) who rape Ned Beatty. 

It’s now impossible for anyone to encounter a hillbilly in a film without either making a plunking banjo sound or a ‘squeal like a pig’ joke.

The Last American Hero (1973)

Based on a series of magazine articles by Tom Wolfe, this is an interesting true-life drama about Elroy ‘Junior’ Jackson (a slightly too-cleancut Jeff Bridges), who started out in life by zooming along Thunder Road dodging the ‘Revenuers’ to shift moonshine but redirected himself by getting into demolition derby and then became an early star in America’s most hillbilly-friendly sporting event, the NASCAR car racing circuit. 

With a good ole boy cast including a non-squealing Ned Beatty, Gary Busey and ace biker-look dude William Smith.  

Next of Kin (1989)

Though there are plenty of films about city folks in trouble in the sticks, there are few which reverse the situation.  This is a thriller about two contrasting hillbilly brothers in Chicago - a citified by-the-book cop (Patrick Swayze) and a more determinedly old-school take-the-law-in-his-hands vigilante (Liam Neeson) - who set out to bring in the mafia killers responsible for the death of a third sibling. 

The Beverly Hillbillies (1993)

The 1962 TV series made something of a cult of the comedy hillbillies who strike it rich when oil is found on their land (‘black gold, Texas tea’) and move to Los Angeles’ exclusive Beverly Hills (‘swimming pools, movie stars). 

The Clampetts’ plain good nature shows up the city slickers next door as crass snobs, even if they are ignorant of the finer points of life, in a rare case of a positive hillbilly stereotype. 

The 1993 film, directed by Penelophe Spheeris, ideally casts redneck comedy icon Jim Varney (of the ‘Ernest’ films) in Buddy Ebsen’s old role as Jed Clampett (Ebson appears in his other old role, as geriatric PI Barnaby Jones) - but it’s among the poorest bigscreen films based on cult TV series.

Winter’s Bone (2010)

A realistic, clear-eyed depiction of contemporary mountain life in a backwoods America seemingly abandoned by society, where methamphetimine cooking has replaced moonshine-brewing as an illicit source of income and clannish insularity imposes rigid rules of conduct - especially on womenfolk - which make the mafia look like a liberal employer. 

Ree (Jennifer Lawrence), a teenager who has had to become the guardian of her siblings because of her parents’ uselessness, is forced to defy convention and find out what happened to her missing father.  This neither demonises nor sentimentalises the rural poor, but offers a genuinely admirable hillbilly heroine.

Tucker and Dale vs Evil is sure to put two more red necks in to the cinematic halls of fame when the DVD and Blu-ray is released on Monday 26 September.

Kim Newman