Macabre Movie Mausoleum: ThanksKilling
Hello again my little tombstones and grave toppers. I hope everyone enjoyed their Halloween, as well as Geekade’s 31 Days of Halloween celebration. Now that October is behind us, on this installment of Macabre Movie Mausoleum we look forward towards Thanksgiving.
Before that, you will notice two changes starting with this MMM review. Firstly, your favorite movie review of b-horror gory glory is now a monthly feature. Secondly, the rating system has been refined and updated, but more on that later. On to the good stuff…
“Thankskilling” (2009)
Director: Jordan Downey
Stars: Wanda Lust, Natasha Cordova, Lindsey Anderson
Let’s begin with a difficult topic; horror/comedy movies. These movies are typically either funny but not scary, or vise versa, and unfortunately too often they aren’t either humorous or terrifying in any way (Evil Dead trilogy being the exception to the rule). Coming into a movie called Thankskilling, your standards have to be pretty low, but sometimes lowbrow is the way to go. (Plus, there aren’t many good Thanksgiving themed horror movies (have I used enough parenthesis yet?)).
The movie is about a homicidal turkey from the days of the first Thanksgiving. A curse, or some such nonsense, returns the turkey to life to resume his murdering ways. Targeted are a group of five college students heading home over Thanksgiving break, because one of them is an ancestor of a pilgrim that was a part of the first Thanksgiving (again, low standards, especially when it comes to the story).
There’s a character that looks like Ted Nugent playing Ted Nugent, and it really took me out of the movie more than it should have.
Anyway, on to the rating…
The grave of this movie is not impressive and should be passed by for other more glorious tombstones. This movie did some things right. The bad dialogue is is mostly really good for a cheesy movie and it never takes itself seriously at all. One of the funnier moments came when the movie did a study montage trying to figure out how to stop the turkey. Someone makes the comment of how much time passed, just for someone else to say it was only five minutes. It was a simple joke, a throw away line really, but it shows the kind of wit (if you can call it that) the script had.
There’s actually a scene where the turkey wears the face of one of the student’s father as a mask and it fools everyone. It is such a stupid idea with practical effects that aren’t as bad as you’d expect (they’re worse) that the scene somehow works, in the best ways possible. The gore factor in the movie isn’t high, but the murder scenes do have some creative practical effects, and that goes a long way for me.
Like I said, the story is meant to be stupid, but what gets me is that the movie screws up their own rules and facts. Sure this shouldn’t matter when it comes to schlock, but when a movie contradicts itself in simple ways, it deserves the negative attention.
I feel I need to address the elephant in the room (or on the cover (top left to be exact)) “Boobs in the first second!”. The movie does live up to that promise, but I actually feel it took away from the movie expectations. It led me to believe it was going to be lacking any form of quality anything and just littered with nudity for no reason, but in fact the opening boobs is the only scene of nudity in the entire movie (I know that may be disparaging for some readers), but fret not grave toppers, there is a scene of the turkey having sex with one of the students, after he kills the guy she was having sex with and takes his spot.
As far as horror/comedy movies go, this doesn’t deliver on the frights, but Thankskilling does supply some good laughs. It’s not the worst horror/comedy movie out there, but it is a far cry from being good.
If a murderous turkey isn’t a big enough clue as to the type of movie in store for you when you tune into Thankskilling, lets just end on the gem that is the opening line, said by the turkey himself, “Nice tits bitch!”
