Sunday, October 03, 2010

31 DAYS OF FRIGHT: This Year, There Will Be No Leftovers

At times it's difficult to remember that Thanksgiving was originally intended as a way to celebrate something other than the start of the Christmas shopping season. The proclamation creating the holiday was delivered on this date in 1863 by President Lincoln (apparently taking a break from his duties as a vampire hunter) in a speech written by Secretary of State William Seward, who I assume is not related to Dr. John Steward of Stoker's Dracula fame.

As holidays go, Thanksgiving has always gotten short shrift when it comes to exploiting the horrific potential of the day. I suppose all that family gathering stuff is terrifying enough.

On the short list of turkey day terrors I'd like to see are 1981's HOME SWEET HOME which features an escaped mental patient making his way to a family's Thanksgiving celebration. Currently out of print, the flick commands big bucks for copies of the DVD and VHS releases. More promising is the 2009 low-budget flick THANKSKILLING which takes a more straightforward approach and features a homicidal turkey. Gobble, gobble, motherf*&%er, indeed.

Of course, no discussion of Thanksgiving horror is complete without a fresh look at Eli Roth's faux trailer for his slasher flick titled, duh, THANKSGIVING (included with GRINDHOUSE, finally bowing in its original form on BluRay on Tuesday, October 5). Though Roth has suggested that he'll go the MACHETE route and spin the gag into a full-length feature there's part of me that's just fine with the glorious three minutes shown below.



Are there any other gobble gobble gorefests I should be adding to my viewing list?

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