When it comes to the hall of fame of “so bad it’s good” movies, one under-appreciated classic is the 2008 R-rated black comedy slasher film, ThanksKilling. Directed and co-written by Jordan Downey, this Thanksgiving-themed film is a low budget parody of many of the classic horror slasher tropes, featuring a crude, rude turkey as its titular killer with a foul mouth that manages to rival Freddy Krueger. With a shockingly low budget of $3,500 and a runtime of roughly one hour, the film features some half decent practical effects and a trope-filled extravaganza of a story. While not initially successful, taking nearly a year after its initial release to receive a DVD release, and an additional year to simply reach 1000 copies sold, it gained a cult following after clips began to spread across the internet.
It wears its inspirations and parody of the genre on its sleeve, with the very first shot of the film being a naked Pilgrim woman running away from the killer turkey on the very first Thanksgiving. The lead characters all fill classic slasher archetypes – Johnny, the star athlete of the school; Billy, a redneck who enjoys partying; Darren, a nerd who wants to just fit in and be popular; Ali, an aloof, horny girl who wants to sleep with Johnny; and Kristen, who fills the traditional innocent “final girl” role. It also fills the traditional Harbinger role also parodied by the meta commentary-filled Cabin in the Woods through the character of Oscar, a hermit who warns the stereotypical friend group of the turkey’s threat.
The characters aren’t the only parodies of the film. The story is chalk full of commonly comedic moments of horror, including cheesy one-liners, characters running away to hide in a shed, and flashbacks full of filters and oversaturation showing exactly what the line prior to the flashback explained. There’s a research montage as the characters learn about the killer turkey from books written by “Turkeyologists”, which manages to further a blossoming relationship between Johnny and Kristen. Adding in a generic curse related to Native American tribe leaders and the Thanksgiving connections allow for a couple of decent jokes bringing to light the horrific treatment of indigenous people through the stupidity of the all-white lead cast. However, at the end of the day, the movie mostly exists to turn your brain off and laugh at the absurdity of the situation, the cheesy one liners, and the crude humor of the murderous turkey. It should be noted that, while the turkey seems reminiscent of A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger at times with his language and jokes, not all of the film’s dialogue has aged gracefully.
In 2012, the sequel to ThanksKilling released, aptly named ThanksKilling 3, with the marketing and partial story centering around the fact that the ThanksKilling 2 film (which didn’t actually exist) was too terrible to release and needed to be wiped from existence. With a much larger budget of roughly $112,000 largely raised through a Kickstarter campaign, the mere existence of a sequel showcases how much of a cult following the original film had managed to attain through the Internet. Featuring a mostly new cast, the sequel would take the parodying of the horror genre to a whole new level of absurdity.
If the first film hadn’t jumped the shark already with its premise of a killer turkey, the sequel opens up immediately subverting expectations, while also somehow being just like the original: the opening shot of the film again shows a scantily clad woman, this time somehow an astronaut floating through space instead of a Pilgrim running in the woods, who is promptly killed by the turkey from his spaceship. It is then revealed to be the opening of the unreleased ThanksKilling 2, which the turkey seeks to destroy. The increased budget of the film presents itself relatively quickly, with a gorgeous opening title sequence that showcases the destruction of various copies of ThanksKilling 2, as well as an obvious improvement in the lighting and cinematography. But the increased budget most obviously went towards one main thing: puppets.
While the original ThanksKilling featured a predominantly human cast, with just one puppet character in the titular killer turkey, ThanksKilling 3 flips the script by featuring a cast made up primarily of puppets. Various animated segments are also featured throughout the film, as compared to the single animated section in the original that was used to explain the Native American backstory of the turkey. Rated TV-MA with writer-director Jordan Downey returning at the helm, the sequel features similarly crude humor and an even more bizarre story.
The strange beauty of the ThanksKilling franchise, if you could describe it that way, is the meta-awareness of the quality of the project – that is to say, the films know they’re terrible. The original stands as a somewhat shoddily made, yet still fairly enjoyable, satire on the slasher genre of the 1970s and 1980s. Comparatively, ThanksKilling 3 stands as an exploration of how those same franchises would jump the shark, featuring a turkey in space as an obvious homage to Jason X, where iconic slasher Jason Voorhees is taken to the future, and the turkey’s journey to hell later in the film possibly poking at the fate of Freddy Krueger in Freddy vs. Jason.
The franchise’s cult status online is perhaps best represented by the secret third installment of the franchise (not to be confused with ThanksKilling 3). In 2013, ThanksKilling: The Musical premiered in Seattle, created by Jeff Thomson, Jordan Mann, and David Eck, none of whom worked on the original film. It featured a completely original cast, serving as a musical recreation of the original film. It played again at various festivals and venues in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017, with the 2016 performance in Columbus, Ohio featuring the return of actor Ryan Francis from the original film, reprising his role as Darren.
Up there with films like The Room, the ThanksKilling films serve as a great representation of films that may be bad on paper, but shine brightly because of how bad they supposedly are. Both ThanksKilling and ThanksKilling 3 can be streamed and watched for free on the Tubi app or website.
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