Only this has a mass-murdering, talking, demonic turkey.
ThanksKilling (USA)
Released: November 17, 2009 (made in 2007, post-production in 2008, and released straight to DVD in '09. Come on people, like this would EVER see a movie theater)
Director: Jordan Downey
Screenplay: Kevin Stewart & Jordan Downey
Tagline: "Gobble, Gobble, Motherfucker!"
Cast:
Lance Predmore as Johnny (The Jock)
Lindsey Anderson as Kristen (The Good Girl)
Ryan E. Francis as Darren (The Nerd)
Aaron Ringhiser-Carlson as Billy (The Hick)
Natasha Cordova as Ali
General Bastard as Oscar the Hermit
This wonderfully weird holiday guilty pleasure centers around a group of college kids heading out on mini-road trip at the dawn of their Thanksgiving break. When any such scenario occurs in a horror film, even casual fans of the genre know that a certain breakdown is in order: one of the girls will be a bit "loose in the legs," another will be a tad nerdy, and generally virginal, one of the guys will be the "Alpha," ideally a football player, but lacrosse or swimming is acceptable, another guy will be the fool, the comedic idiot who isn't all that attractive but remains goofy enough to keep the attention of the female company, and then there will be the fifth wheel, a painfully inept social outcast.
These tropes are recycled almost on a daily basis when it comes to crafting horror characters, characters pulled from a bin and given different names since we first saw Ned running around in his underwear wearing a Native American headdress in the very first Friday the 13th (1980). Occasionally, for the sake of making a point about these stereotypes and their constant presence in post-1980 horror, a movie like ThanksKilling will present these characters in unabashed, exaggerated stereotypical glory, but often this attempt comes across weak and forced. Then again, sometimes it doesn't.
Our crew of cardboard-cutouts in ThanksKilling encounter car trouble en route to their primary destination (big shocker there, right?) and decide to camp where they land. Because, even though the whole point of the trip is simply to go home for break, they've somehow packed sleeping bags, tents, and camping supplies, so WHY THE HELL NOT? While they drink and flirt about the campfire, the nerdiest kid of the bunch, tag-along friend Darren, tells the tale of a serial-killing turkey imbued with dark spirits immediately after the first Thanksgiving to be used as a weapon against white people (a story that, during which, we get to hear the line, "Turkeyologists all over the world refer to it as…THANKSKILLING"). Unfortunately for them (and, let's be real, for us as well) legend becomes reality when a local hermit's dog pisses on the burial site of said vengeful turkey and resurrects the foul-mouthed, rubber and plastic beast, who then proceeds to stalk our heroes and pick them off one by one.
"You just got STUFFED"
-actual line from the movie
As such, it should come to know surprise to anyone that this movie is not in any way, shape, or form meant to be taken seriously. The filmmakers made a point in the promotions for the film that there would be "tits in the first minute," which there are--some pilgrim woman is running around in her frumpy buckles and what not with the front of her dress inexplicably missing and her boobs hanging out, because WHY NOT? And it's all just downhill from there. At one point, the killer turkey is hitch-hitching (because OBVIOUSLY), and a driver pulls over and asks what the turkey is offering for a ride, "gas, grass, or ass," and the turkey proceeds to present him with this derriere. Before killing him. With a shotgun. That he somehow has. And then driving away in the car. Driving. He also, sometime later, finishes the job that the murdered lover boy started when the requisite "kill during a sex scene" goes down. Prettyyyyyy silly.
And yet, as completely wrong and messed up as it this that ThanksKilling was made, there are moments where you just have to laugh, genuinely. The filmmakers are using their weird and wonderful film to mock the staples of the horror film and all the crap B-movies that other movie-makers actually believe to be good, but at the same time the film works as a send-up for the slasher sub-genre as well. There's a certain underlying respect there that just, for whatever reason, makes it all O.K.
It's slim pickings when it comes to Thanksgiving-related horror. Christmas is actually very well-covered in the realm of horror, and of course Halloween. There's even films centering around Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, April Fools, and hell, even the Fourth of July got covered in Final Destination 3 (2006). But Thanksgiving? Not a lot of choices. Fortunately for me, my family has a weird turkey day tradition that involves another goofy horror gem that I'll be covering on Thursday, but in the grand scheme of campy horror with a holiday theme, you actually could do worse than ThanksKilling, like Blood Freak (1972), in which a man ends up with a giant turkey's head in place of his own and slaughters a bunch of teens in revenge. I'm not saying we can't do better for Thanksgiving horror, since we certainly can, but I have a feeling that because ThanksKilling is just so fun, it'll become the Troll 2 (1990) of a new generation. Gobble, gobble, motherfuckers. Gobble, gobble.
"Now that's what I call FOWL PLAY"
P.S. If you find that you can't get enough of the murderous turkey, have NO FEAR. There is a sequel, ThanksKilling 3 (2012) available to stream instantly on Amazon. Don't worry, you didn't miss ThanksKilling 2, because ThanksKilling 3 IS ThanksKilling 2….YEAH.
ThanksKilling (2009)
5-Totally Terrifying
4-Crazy Creepy
3-Fairly Frightening
2-Slightly Scary
1-Hardly Horror
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