Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine star in Tucker & Dale vs Evil

I descended into Park City today, turned up the collar on my winter coat, grabbed my press credential, and skidded into the first of two screenings.

As a horror-comedy send-up, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil hits all the right notes that make for a potential cult fave; the fact that it’s the first feature from writer-director Eli Craig earns a one-two knockout hit for the movie and its mastermind. The plot’s greatest conceit is so sublimely genius, you could almost hear all the frustrated screenwriters in attendance texting themselves “why did I not think of this first?”

Starring Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine — are there dreamier leading men, really? — T&DvE concerns a carload of college kids gearing up for a weekend camping trip, only to cross paths with Tucker (Tudyk) and Dale (Labine), two bro-mantic hillbillies looking to spend the weekend fishing and drinking beer at Tucker’s new vacation home in the mountains.

During their fateful encounter at a run-down convenience store, the judgmental kids are freaked out by the locals, while Dale becomes smitten with one of the students, Allison (Katrina Bowden, in a role that could turn her into some new kind of scream queen). Allison, of course, already has a suitor in the form of Chad (Jesse Moss), all mall-punk-lite attire, sneer, and anger-management issues.

As night sets in, booze, pot, and horror stories make the young people kinda paranoid, while Tucker and Dale get blasted in their rowboat. From here, it seems like mere moments between Allison hitting her head on a river rock, Dale saving her and overseeing her recovery, and Allison’s friends thinking she’s being held captive by redneck psychos. Let the showdown begin.

Without venturing into spoiler territory, the aforementioned conceit here is: the only evil present is a matter of perception. There’s nothing but goodness within Tucker, Dale, and most of the kids, but a grisly sequence of further misunderstandings causes liters of blood to be spilled and a villain to emerge from the chaos.

By the end of the first act, it was clear that homage was being paid to classic slasher films (love those ’80s-style kills and use of practical effects) as well as the lo-fi weirdness of Cabin Fever. However, I realized the movie has just as much in common with any episode of “Three’s Company,” only if Jack Tripper thought Mr. Furley to be a killer, and then Janet Wood, Larry Dallas, and nearly everyone else started dying.

That’s all I really want to say, because if this genre is your bag, cross your fingers for a worthwhile distribution deal, then go see it in a packed theater. It plays well with a crowd, and there are a lot of non-sequiturs, effectively scary fake-outs, asides, and other giggly moments. There’s also late-1980s flashback where Technotronic’s “Pump Up the Jam” is used amazingly, and the back story is teased out a bit.

All that said, I really hope this isn’t the last we see of Tucker and Dale.

Joan Rivers is a survivor of a slightly different kind. A year of her life — to be exact, her 75th — is chronicled by co-directors Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg (The Trials of Darryl Hunt, The Devil Came on Horseback), who offer sobering views into her obsessive work ethic, family dynamics, and showbiz milestones.

Feeling a bit long even at 84 minutes, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work works best when the comedienne is rattling off one-liners as startling now as they were 50 years ago when she was getting her start on television. Some aspects of her current efforts to stay relevant and employed were tough to watch in ways you might expect, though certain stretches, such as her attempt to stage a new play, weren’t edited effectively for me. Pacing issues can always be addressed before a general release, though, right?

Fortunately, we don’t have to contend much with her forays into plastic surgery, her QVC jewelry empire, or even her partnership with daughter Melissa as red-carpet correspondents. (Viewers do get to hear, which profane succinctness, exactly what she thought of her TV interviewer gigs, however.) Elsewhere, that whole “Celebrity Apprentice” win was just a springboard for Joan, since her current booking calendar — a cherished item — is as busy now as when she was named the permanent guest host for “The Tonight Show”.

The Johnny Carson era brings about perhaps the documentary’s greatest reveal as well as it chief weakness: as Joan acknowledges that Carson never spoke to her again when she made the jump to Fox for her own show and she was black-listed by NBC, it’s as if the film itself stiffens up and cuts away. The suicide of her second husband, Edgar Rosenberg, receives the same treatment; the eyes well with tears, she’s about to offer her unique perspective, and then we speak of it no more.

These are the layers I want to see as they’re peeled back by the relationship between subject and filmmaker. I wondered if perhaps Joan didn’t let her directors in. Then, as the credits rolled, my movie-going companion said, “You know what’s weird to me, Joan Rivers revealed more about her life, her late husband, and her spooky/lavish home in an episode of “Celebrity Ghost Story”.

And from what I’ve now researched, he’s 100% right.