A fact: When searching IMDb.com for “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil,” another result comes up, for a “related” 1988 film called “Vampiros Sexos.” Wait. It has an alternate title: “I Was a Teenage Zabbadoing and the Incredible Lusty Dust-Whip from Outer Space Conquers the Earth Versus the 3 Psychedelic Stooges of Dr. Fun Helsing and Fighting Against Surf-Vampires and Sex-Nazis and Have Troubles with This Endless Titillation Title.” In West Germany.

That double take you just experienced is sort of what happens when you watch the story of the threadbare overalls-wearing rural duo’s encounter with a group of vacationing college kids, each girl more pneumatic than the next, each boy clearly on loan from a hotwax-mandatory Abercrombie & Fitch commercial. (You can almost smell the cologne and jello shots through the screen.) This is a very enjoyable movie, and it could have even been barely, one-time-only tolerable if it had gone the stupid, obvious route: Over a three-day vacation in the woods (someplace so out-of-the-way that you might spot a shirtless boy, who probably has ringworm, pumping water) a buxom blonde in daisy dukes gets separated from her friends and wakes up in the kind of cobwebby log cabin where one of four things is guaranteed to happen: moonshine, murder, mental illness or an episode of antiquing reality show “American Pickers.” Her friends attempt to rescue her, but are met with gruesome deaths, like a bloody, incompetent version of “Saving Private Ryan” with more cleavage and popped collars.

But after five minutes of seeming vapidity, the movie ditches the script we all know. It happens when the storekeeper reads Tucker and Dale’s shopping list back to them. It includes a brush-clearing scythe, clamps, lubricated condoms, a hand-drill, feminine napkins, a stone bit and a one-eighth inch hole saw. As we’re puzzling that outside the store, Dale attempts to make innocent conversation with one of the girls, but he’s carrying the scythe, and the kids scatter. Tucker tells Dale that his problem is an inferiority complex. Dale — like a big, American, rural Simon Pegg — responds by examining the front and back of his hands.

So circumstance lands the cute girl, Allie, in the hillbillies’ cabin. She wakes up, sees a shadow looming in her room and screams, startled, and Dale — the source of the shadow — thinks it’s because she’s not a fan of pancakes, which is what he was trying to serve her (hence the looming). The quick Allie soon realizes the two are wholly amiable fellows: nothing bad is going on, there’s no conspiracy, no danger, and there’s an explanation for the way everything ends up unraveling over the course of the movie, an explanation that doesn’t involve Tucker or Dale doing anything mean or untoward. Why are the unattractive teens dying in gruesome, sudden ways? Is it, Tucker and Dale ask, a suicide cult?

And in fact, it’s the guy with the popped collar — Chad, who would be cast as the typical hero in the version of this movie we’re used to seeing — who ends up being evil. (This is quite satisfying. Why should “American Psycho” corner the market on slick, Ivy League psychos? Millions of us have been terrorized by the practices of greedy, childish prats like Chad over the last decade. They should be the bad guy in a few pictures.

Who do you think is more willing to carve you up with a chainsaw — I’m voting for the guy who’s already done the same with your retirement savings. Besides, I don’t see many hillbillies getting millions in bonuses for laying off thousands of workers and ruining their lives.) Chad’s motivation is a little bogged down in back story, which is unneeded, but after his semi-wooden “why I’m an evil guy” speech, one of the other characters pokes fun at the convention, deflating it: “Um, OK. Thank you for sharing with us, Chad.”

“Tucker and Dale” is writer/director Eli Craig’s first foray into feature films, and, one hopes, one of many movies to come that will upend convention and make us guffaw. Like a good killer, “Tucker and Dale” depends on you underestimating it. It lures you in with panties and abs and then whacks you with smarts — and it will take you someplace far stranger than a spooky campsite.

Ashley O’Dell reviews movies that aren’t in the theater anymore and has been providing trenchant critiques on turkey guillotines on Twitter since 2007. She lives in North Hollywood, near the In-N-Out Burger.