And the Thanksgiving festivities continue! My first memory of ThanksKilling is walking through a video store and seeing this VHS on the shelves next to movies like Killer Condom and Cube. Wait, this movie isn’t on VHS? Nor was it around at the same time as those other movies? Memories are weird. Even though that’s not actually my first memory of ThanksKilling, it might as well be, because it’s a straight to video, super low budget, absolutely ridiculous horror comedy. WAIT! Guys, I figured it out. My actual first memory of ThanksKilling is in the early days of Netflix Instant when it was FULL of garbage. I scrolled past this movie countless times, despite the fact that the poster included the tagline “Gobble gobble, motherfucker.” I don’t think I actually watched it until two years ago, but for the holiday season, I figured I’d revisit it! Please don’t rely on my synopsis for the actual plot as I was distracted by playing with dogs through a good portion of watching it.

Two very convincing costumes.

TITS. That’s the first image we see in the movie after we are told these tits are flopping around after the very first Thanksgiving. Shortly after we see these pilgrim boobs, a terrible looking turkey puppet pops up and says, “Nice tits, bitch,” before killing the booby pilgrim with an ax. A few centuries later, a group of college kids are celebrating their Thanksgiving break by going on a camping trip. In the woods where these kids are camping, a dog takes a piss on a talisman which awakens this demonic turkey. To everyone’s surprise, this demonic turkey then goes on a murderous rampage of these college kids while tossing around Thanksgiving related puns like they’re going out of style. Although, I guess if you’re the first Thanksgiving horror comedy, you wanna take full advantage of it before anyone else does. Anyways, the kids end up reading a book or something that weakens the turkey and they eventually “kill” it, only to have a turkey come alive on the Thanksgiving table with a title card popping up that let’s us know there will be a sequel…in space.

I’m sure this was a Texas Chain Saw Massacre reference but I’m going to pretend it was a Face/Off reference.

Boy oh boy, where the fuck do I start. Firstly, this movie is garbage. It’s really, really bad. However, it made no attempt to be a quality film and instead focused on at least being a fun experience. In that regard, it succeeds for the most part. The concept is absolutely ridiculous, so to think there would be anything of merit as far as the plot was concerned would be a mistake on the viewer’s part. I think there was some exposition of where this turkey came from, told in animated form, but I don’t really remember what that said and I don’t think it really matters while watching the movie. There’s a killer turkey and he kills a guy who’s having sex with a girl from behind, starts having sex with her as she remains oblivious, then shouts, “You just got stuffed!” The turkey comes across more like Chucky from Child’s Play than anything else, so if you dig that movie then you’ll probably enjoy the wacky antics of the turkey puppet that much more. The movie’s biggest strength is that it’s barely over an hour long, so before you have time to really get sick of the bad acting, cheesy dialogue, and terrible effects, the movie is over. If you’re watching this with a group of friends, it’s kind of fun to laugh at its ridiculousness, but it’s far from being a Thanksgiving classic.

Wolfman Moon Scale