Gobble Gobble! Motherf*cker: Thankskilling (2008)

Thankskilling (2008)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Wanda Lust, Natasha Cordova and Lindsey Anderson

A group of (obviously and intentional) stereotypes were going back to their home town for the Thanksgiving holiday when, after camping out for the night, one of them points out that they're actually on a Native American burial ground where a killer turkey got banished to, remaining there so long as the totem pinning his resting place goes unremoved. Well, like always, clichés happens and an old hermit's dog accidentally pisses on the totem, knocking it out of place and reviving the killer turkey who wastes no time resuming his reign of terror. It's only a matter of time before our Turkey gets to town and kills off our heroes' friends and families, so it's up to them (and a convenient book of spells) to stop him before they're stuffed!

Just as the slasher world couldn't get any weirder, Thankskilling goes forward for manic absurdity and brings us the world's first killer turkey, on the loose, spewing out bad one-liners, killing folks with carving knives, axes and shotguns, and even clumsily rapes (!) one of the characters while wearing an extra small gravy-flavored rubber. He's the main course of the movie, which itself gets more and more insane the further it goes, mostly in a thankfully hilarious way.

If you think the Turkey's a bad enough character, well, you're probably right, but the rest of the cast do try to be as insanely funny as our killer critter here; a no-name casts fill our line up of slasher characters and potential victims, like the obvious nerd, the obvious fat jokester-slash-beer jugger, the obvious slut, the obvious goody guy who's paired up with the obvious "final girl". (With the latter unable to tell the difference between her father and a turkey wearing her father's face...) We even got a hermit who is our doomsayer/Ahab-hybrid, out to kill the Turkey for murdering his dog (though, unlike most of them, he actually succeeds at some point), all of them played with the most tongues pressed in cheeks possible for maximum feisty cheese.

Basically, the filmmakers wanted a fun, popcorn flick with lotsa kills, as well as kid around and throw in every slasher trope to poke fun at. (Remember our little talk of "man of steel" killers? Well the Turkey gets the same treatment too with the help of NUCLEAR WASTE!) They're wise enough to keep it all simplistic, yet goofed-up with outrageous murders and cartoon sequences which leads to one or two montage scenarios that makes me wanna scratch my head out of confusion and dumbfoundery. (I'm sure dumbfoundery isn't a word, but this is a review about a horror movie with a talking turkey. Live with it!)

Clearly not your holiday family film with Tom Turkey with its opening tit-shot of Wanda Lust's sizable melons, turds in coffee and the most outrageous gore available only in shot-on-video flicks, I find Thankskilling in all of its low-budgeted (the Turkey is obviously a puppet) and paper-thin (the film runs for 70 minutes(!)) glory making up my day as it plays horror, gore and dumbfound parody comedy right on the spot that only ones with a good (or at least, demented) sense of humor will enjoy!

Bodycount:
1 female axed
1 dog pecked, then axed offscreen
1 male beheaded (flashback animation)
1 baby bunny pecked open and thrown into a bonfire
1 male had his head blown off with shotgun
1 male had his head slashed off with hunting knife
1 female found with neck slit
1 male had his neck slit with a knife
1 female had her neck broken
1 male killed offscreen, later seen with his face peeled off
1 male shotgunned from the inside, guts blown open
1 male had his heart pecked off
1 male gets an electric knife to the gut
Total: 13