Thankskilling (2009) Review

  • Director: Jordan Downey
  • Writers: Jordan Downey, Bradly Schulz
  • Stars: Wanda Lust, Natasha Cordova, Lindsey Anderson
  • 1 Hour, 10 Minutes
    -Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/338BcLI
Thankskilling

Thankskilling (2009) Review

Synopsis

“There’s no such thing as an evil turkey…

There’s no such thing as an evil turkey…

Gobble, Gobber, Motherfucker!”

In 1621, moments after the very first Thanksgiving, a nearly-naked pilgrim woman runs through the woods and is knocked down. The evil turkey says, “Nice tits, bitch!” and kills her with an axe.

Credits roll.

Five college friends go out together for Thanksgiving break. We get to know the five as they drive in their jeep.

Meanwhile, a homeless man and his dog live out in the woods. The dog pees on an old indian totem and Turkie rises from the grave to kill the dog.

The college group’s car breaks down, so they take out their tents and camp right there on the side of the road. Darren finds a sign that says “Crawberg,” and he remembers the old story about the old indian, Feathercloud, who was dishonored by a pilgrim. He vowed to curse all whote men, and he necromanced a turkey, who would rise every 505 years to kill. Turkeyologists all over the world refer to it as Thankskilling, and it’s going to happen again in 35 minutes. What a coincidence!

The homeless guy and the turkey argue for a bit, culminating in him screaming “Damn you Turkie, Damn you!”

Turkie chases one of the girls back to camp, and they all laugh at her. The next morning, the homeless guy has been guarding their camp while they slept. They manage to fix the car and drive away.

Turkie gets a car to pull over, and the guy wants to have sex with Turkie. Turkie shoots the guy and steals his car. The teenagers all go to their various homes. Turkie kills the football player’s father and throws him the head. Afterwarrds, they all convene at Billy’s house except for Allie, who’s having sex while Turkie watches. Turkie kills the guy and finishes up with Allie, who can’t tell the difference. “You just got stuffed!” he says right before killing her. At least he used an extra-small, gravy-flavord condom.

The Turkey kills the sheriff, who is Kristen’s father, and starts wearing his face around, but no one, including her, can really tell the difference. They read in a book that all they have to do is steal the turkey’s magical talisman, and then they can kill him. Billy dreams he sees a cooked turkey and eats it, then Turkie shoots his way out of his belly.

They confront Turkie in his teepee and tie him up. He gets away from them, but the hermit shoots him as he leaves the tent. They dump the body in a dumpster that also contains… radioactive nuclear waste. Now he’s a radioactive nuclear killer turkey, who pulls Darren’s tongue out of his mouth and pecks his heart out. Finally, Kristen makes a flame thrower and fries the turkey.

The film ends with the tag line: “Turkie will return… In Space!”

Commentary

The trailers made this look like a low-budget student movie, but it was actually far better than I expected. It’s more comedy than horror; it’s pretty low budget, but it’s low budget done right. Everything looks well lit, and even though the turkey is a cheap hand puppet-looking thing, it totally works for this kind of horror comedy.

It’s not even remotely serious, but it had good gore and creature effects, the dialogue was often funny, and overall, I liked it a lot.