5 Fun Facts About ThanksKilling

List by Aaron Haughton

It's been heralded as "cheerily awful", and it's definitely one you should incorporate into you holiday movie watching. I'm talking about the Thanksgiving-themed turkey slasher film, ThanksKilling. Clocking in at a little over an hour (66 minutes to be exact), this low budget indie slasher gem delivers the expected goods to horror fans and knows how to tickle the low-budget funny bone in particularly effective ways.  If you're someone who enjoys laughing at a bad movie, this film is definitely for you, and with the encroaching release of James Franco's The Disaster Artist, we're celebrating all the wonderful good-bad films out there. Given the past holiday, we figured we'd start by carving the turkey, so here's our list of fun facts you probably don't know about the film ThanksKilling. Enjoy!

• What's in a name?!

Before arriving on ThanksKilling, creators Jordan Downey and Kevin Stewart were toying around with another holiday slasher set during Easter, which they titled Eggstravakill. ThanksKilling definitely flows more easily off the tongue, so they made the right choice there; however, the holiday concept wasn't the only tough topic up for debate. During the entire conception and creation of the film, Stewart and Downey attempted to come up with a clever name for the killer turkey, but nothing ever stuck. That's why they went with "turkey" in the first film, which later morphed into "Turkie" in the 2012 follow up. What can you really expect from a college film whose central tagline ("Gobble, gobble, motherf*cker!") was conceived before its plot?!

• No shots below the belt.

The feet or lower half of the turkey puppet are never shown on camera. The special effects budget was only a few hundred bucks, so they could only do so much. 

• Only the hero head remains.

Everything but the original hero head of the killer turkey puppet remains. The body and additional heads were destroyed in the making of the film. The puppet was designed and built by director Jordan Downey, who constructed most of the puppet in the bathroom of his college apartment with mostly leftover special effects supplies. The body of the puppet was just a foam turkey decoy for target practice. 

• It spawned a musical theater rendition.

up, that's right: ThanksKilling: The Musical. For a self-funded, self-distributed college film, it has a meaty reach. Based off the stills, the musical is just as schlocky as the original. 

• "To be continued in space..."

The title card at the end of the film was only included as a joke. However, it ironically ended up shooting a sequel 3 years later. The follow up isn't technically a sequel either; it's the third film in a trilogy that never released a second film. Technically. In the world of the third film, all copies of the actual sequel to ThanksKilling are destroyed. All except one, that is. And it's up to our "fowl-mouthed" protagonist to recover the last remaining copy. You have to appreciate the effort in that kinda curve ball. 

That's our list! We hope you had a happy holiday! Let us know your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!