When you go into a franchise fully expecting a turkey and come out with a turd

I was psyched for ThanksKilling. We have been so in need of a bad Thanksgiving slasher, and what better way to do it than a talking, murderous turkey?

 THANKSKILLING (2009)

I couldn’t have asked for more from ThanksKilling. It’s only an hour and 6 minutes long, which is amazing. The DVD menu actually warns you that there are “Tits in the first second!” And of course, it’s about a fricking turkey with an axe.

So there’s this ancient Native American curse and a turkey that’s been buried for over 500 years. Then some hillbilly’s pet Collie (named Flashy) comes along and pees on the ancient Indian burial ground. From the ground rises potty-mouthed Turkie, out for revenge!

After the huge tits flashed in the opening second of the film by a pilgrim chick, we’re introduced to a group of college kids headed home for the holidays. A few seconds after the opening credits, the chunky hick flashes his moobs to balance things out. Then there’s the dreamy jock. He’s SO cute. There’s a geek. There’s a nice girl and a slut. The jock flexes his muscles to let the geek feel them.

It’s all total trash, but it’s fricking funny. Just the fact that the actors deliver their lines to a witty and sarcastic hand puppet without cracking a smile is incredible. And they deliver every cheesy line with the kind of nuances you anticipate in a low-budget flick. For instance, when the hot jock’s parents are killed by Turkie, he cries, “No more pumpkin pie! No more cranberry sauce!”

Naturally, Turkie has some of the best lines, like, “Nice tits, bitch” and “Gobble gobble, mother fucker!” Turkie bangs a chick after killing her man (using an extra small, gravy flavored condom), and then almost gets to be the bottom bitch when a perv offers him a ride and targets his sweet ass.

There’s even some nasty gore. At one point, Turkie dons the face of one chick’s father—and even though she has to stoop to talk to him, she’s convinced it’s her father, since he likes to wear a turkey costume on Thanksgiving. This is the kind of stuff you would hope happens in ThanksKilling. And it gets even better when Turkie becomes radioactive and glows green!

On top of all that, the final girl has a great last line and Turkie has an even better last line. Of course, Turkie also calls the geek a faggot at one point, but he’ll pay for his gay slur in the sequel….

THANKSKILLING 3 (2012)

In one of the most genius franchise moves ever, we learn in the third film that ThanksKilling 2 was so bad that every copy of the DVD was destroyed…except one. ThanksKilling 2 was filmed in space and we get a tiny glimpse of some of the footage at the beginning of ThanksKilling 3, after which we get an hour and 35 minutes of “what were they smoking” turkey turd that totally destroys the legacy of the original ThanksKilling.

I love some of the worst crap out there (like ThanksKilling), but ThanksKilling 3 takes a great premise and makes a puppet show out of it. Literally. There’s essentially only one real actor in this film.

In ThanksKilling 3, Turkie plays himself (yeah, I really just said that), and finds out that the sequel that he starred in has been pretty much wiped off the face of the planet. So he sets out to find that one remaining DVD copy of ThanksKilling 2.

Aside from Uncle Donny, a young, bearded, wig-wearing cub, all the other characters are puppets. WTF? Even Uncle Donny’s grandmother is a rapping puppet.

This all manages to not only overshadow the Turkie puppet, but subjects us to a feature-length film of endless high-pitched baby talk puppets more appropriate for children to watch on Sesame Street.

Of course, there are those moments of child inappropriate animation…or should I say, analmation.

Any funny lines lose all their charm because this is a fricking puppet movie! Just want to make sure I drive that home. It’s a PUPPET MOVIE. The only things being slashed in the sequel to the best killer turkey movie ever are puppets. There’s this lead puppet girl who used to have her own television show.

There’s a puppet fly. A puppet cockroach. Puppet rats. Several puppet turkeys. And then there’s the gay puppet worm who, along with his robot, is on the hunt for Turkie to keep him from finding the lone copy of Thankskilling 2, or, as I like to call it, T2.

Humor includes chatter about Mandy Moore fandom, the gay worm “churning butter” in the robot’s asshole to open a vortex to another dimension, Turkie being resurrected without his penis and therefore connecting a chainsaw to his crotch and saying “Gravy” (get it?), puppet rats who play a game of “guess what kind of cheese I ate” by sniffing each other’s puppet butts, and Turkie discovering that when he had sex with gay worm, he was actually having sex with a gay worm and not a female worm (you’d think the gay worm’s mustache would have clued him in). Oh…and Turkie gets stuck in a 1993 video game for the final battle. Retro awesomeness, for sure.

But I think the worst part of ThanksKilling 3 is the ending, which promises another sequel….

Seriously, director Jordan Downey better start whoring out his adorable face in front of the camera instead of behind his Turkie puppet’s butt if he wants me to watch any more ThanksKilling movies that aren’t up to the caliber of the original.

Of course, there are some of you out there who will get good and stoked before watching this film and see it for the true piece of art it really is.

Here’s my Boys, Bears & Scares vlog about the films: