THANKSKILLING: Thanks and Shanks

Director: Jordan Downey
Writers: Jordan Downey, Kevin Stewart
Cast: Lance Predmore, Lindsey Anderson, Ryan E. Francis, Aaron Ringhiser-Carlson, Natasha Cordova, Chuck Lamb, General Bastard, Wanda Lust, Jordan Downey
Runtime: 70 mins.
2008

A great deal of the fun that comes from watching bad movies is marveling at the incomprehensible story and design choices the artists made. Sometimes a line of dialogue or a prop or an edit is so baffling that it becomes absurd, and you get to wondering how the mind of a creator could possibly perceive such a thing as entertainment. All of this becomes more complicated as you delve into the realm of intentionally bad movies, an issue I discussed in my Zombeavers review. The people who make the Sharknados of the world don't have the demented creative energy of an Ed Wood figure; they just have an appreciation (or a disdain) of these creators, and the desire to somehow replicate their work with an added layer of irony. These bad-on-purpose movies don't tend to come out nearly as interesting.

Zombeavers circumvents this issue by putting genuine care into its story and craft. Everything about the movie is ridiculous, but it's played straight so it works on a dramatic level. Thankskilling does not share this trait, nor can it reach the heights of bad-movie-as-hilarious-commentary as something like The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. Movies like Cadavra are thoughtful about why bad movies happen, and they critique those cultures. That commentary bleeds into the camerawork, composition, editing, etc. Unfortunately, within the realm of bad horror movies, Thankskilling represents the idiot teenager giggling at dick jokes.

This all becomes readily apparent when no less than the first four lines of dialogue are all about breasts. The terminology used, in order, is "tits," "tits," "titties," and "boobies," if I recall correctly, and they are said about a pilgrim, a fat man, and a hot girl. I realize that this is on some level a very clear commentary on the genre--to start off a movie with such an overload of boob discussion can be no accident. However, there is an incredibly tricky line between "enactment of trope for the purpose of critique" and "abuse of trope," and Thankskilling is constantly straddling that line in a less than healthy way, oftentimes coming down on the side of the latter.

Everything in Thankskilling is a joke, to be sure, but when you're making an exploitation gorefest like this the least you could do is put some thought into what exactly you're trying to represent. Thankskilling tends to be too proud of itself for being superior to the movie it's aping. The worst parts of Thankskilling are vulgar and puerile in the most simplistic ways, clearly designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator: people who watch these movies for the thrill of satisfying their basest instincts. "These characters are sluts and idiots" is not funny in and of itself, and Thankskilling doesn't always put in the work necessary to form its mockery into actual humor.

Of course, I can't deny the entertainment value of an atrociously-puppeteered turkey growling f-bombs and slaughtering families. The villain, known as Turkie, becomes more entertaining the more the movie engages in absurdism. I could do without all the dumb puns and crass dialogue; Thankskilling becomes watchable when Turkie is doing things like hijacking a car.

I should mention at this point that Turkie is a talking turkey who was enchanted by an Indian witch when one of the pilgrims offended her, and he comes back every 505 years to terrorize the first white people he sees. People just kind of talk to Turkie as if it's no big deal that there's a talking turkey walking around. The rules of the world of this movie are never really clarified, which is again a pointed decision. People's families die and they get kind of upset, but they're over it the very next scene. This sort of weightlessness is common to bad horror movies, so I can't call it a fault of Thankskilling's.

It's too bad the filmmaker doesn't have the comedic chops to land many of his jokes. The camerawork and editing are sloppy as hell, as they should be in a parody. But a better filmmaker would have drawn more attention to the weightlessness of his characters, or the stale staging, or the dull scene compositions. As it is, the whole film just feels cheap and lazy in how it's presented. Once again, I know it's supposed to look cheap and lazy, but a better film would have made it cheap and lazy in a more interesting way.

Yet I return to its absurdism as the movie's only saving grace, one that made me not hate myself for watching it. One car scene is intercut with a flashback of main character Johnny (star footballer and worse version of Mark Wahlberg) catching a football in a shot so overexposed that barely anything is visible, as he remembers the good times he used to have with his dad. Another sequence involves a flashback to the ice cream eating, hand holding relationship of two best friends, while one dies in the other's arm. This is when the movie starts to feel fun, and like it has some sort of identity.

Luckily, the best gags by far have to do with the killings. There's a great sequence where a man answers his door dressed as a turkey, only to discover Turkie wearing a fake-glasses-and-moustache. They then have an awkward coffee together. This is followed up by Turkie cutting off his face and making a mask of it, which he uses to trick the man's daughter.


There's another equally implausible sequence that involves a character swallowing Turkie whole.

Unlike much better horror parodies like Cannibal: The Musical, Thankskilling has no overarching reason for existing beyond a handful of really entertaining gags and images. These jokes are the only times the movie's self-awareness transcends its infantile sense of humor. They just don't make it worth recommending to anyone but a very specific demographic of people who will enjoy the absurdity enough to be able to ignore the perversity.

2 / 5  BLOBS