Release Date: December 8, 2008
Director: Jordan Downey
Starring: Wanda Lust, Chuck Lamb, Ryan Francis, Aaron Carlson, General Bastard, Lance Predmore, Natasha Cordova and Lindsey Anderson
Favorite Quote: “Damn, that was good! You just got stuffed!” – The Killer Turkey
Since we normally do Have You Seen on the site to talk about great movies you should see, we thought of doing something different for all of those bad cheesy movies that should never be seen by anyone. To begin the Don’t Watch This series, I decided to torture myself.
Wow! Like, really, wow! What did I just watch?
This is a Thanksgiving-related horror movie about a killer turkey because, why not? To say that this movie is bad is offensive to the word bad, but this is a bad low-budget straight to DVD movie. Wait, here is the best part! This movie is supposed to be a comedy-horror movie!
We get to the intro of the movie and everything happened after the first Thanksgiving in 1621. We see a topless Pilgrim running away from an unseen force. While she trips, we get to see the Killer Turkey for the first time. From there on the movie goes downhill and, no, it’s not because they killed Boobs McGee. This movie just sucks badly. So Flashy the Dog (no relation to Lassie) comes towards a totem and literally takes a piss on it. This is what brings the Turkey back after 505 years.
So we get to our main characters, Kristen the good girl next door, Johnny the jock, Ali the ditzy slut, Billy the fat redneck and Darren the nerdy kid. While heading to Thanksgiving break from college, they decide to go back home to spend time with the family. But the car breaks down at Crawl Berg and they are forced to camp for the night. During the camp, Darren tells the group about the local legend of Crawl Berg and ThanksKilling (roll credits). The local legend is that after Billy’s ancestor dishonored a Native American shaman, he brought back from the grave a turkey, and the mission of the turkey is to slaughter all the white men and women he encounters.
The run time of this movie is 70 minutes, and that is 80 minutes to damn long! For one, the acting was horrible. I should have expected that for a low budget movie, but that is no excuse to make all of your characters to be so damn retarded. I did like that they used practical effects for everything within the movie the same way it was done back in the 70s and 80s for their slasher films. The puppeteering of the Turkey was decent and I think he was the best thing about the movie apart from Boobs McGee (you shall be missed). We get elements from the old-school genre like seeing things from the Killer’s view, which was interesting. The turkey did have a one-liner for every kill he made. Man, they are bad but some were good. Hell, the quote at the beginning of this article is one of his one-liners.
You don’t care for any of the characters. To really succeed in the horror movie business, you have to have at least one character to be invested in. Without a connection from the audience to any of the character, no one will care who lives or dies. This is a movie that started on a budget of $3,500 and it seems like it. Of course, they recently released a sequel that was backed on Kickstarter for a bigger budget. I’m not sure it’s better.
The idea was good because there really isn’t a horror movie for Thanksgiving that uses a Turkey as the main villain. Using a Native American curse as the core of the reasoning of why the Turkey kills is not a bad idea also. But when the acting and the script is bad, there is no way to save this movie. Of course, since the sequel is out with a bigger budget, what do I know? I don’t recommend anyone to watch this movie and if you decide to watch it then may the Turkey Gods pray on your soul, because I will not feel bad at all. You were warned.
