Thanksgiving is the film horror fans want for November holiday viewing, and it’s the one they need because it just looks so amazing.

While a few other horror films touch on the Thanksgiving holiday, it was 2007’s Grindhouse that truly gave us a real must-watch offering for the Pilgrim and Turkey season. Sandwiched between Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof were three trailers for fake movies. One of them was Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving, and for slasher fans, it was just as fun as the real movies it accompanied.

The story goes like this:

In the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, the fourth Thursday in November is the most celebrated day of the year. But an uninvited guest has arrived, and this year, there will be no leftovers.

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It’s just gold.

Here’s a look at the making of the trailer:

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The trailer was filmed in two days (over the Thanksgiving holiday no less) in the Czech Republic while Roth was there directing Hostel: Part II. Jordan Ladd and Jay Hernadez, who are both in that film, appeared in Thanksgiving, as did several extras.

Here’s the cast of the trailer:

Jordan Ladd: Judy

Eli Roth: Tucker

Mark Bakunas: The Deputy (Fun fact: Bakunas was production accountant for Hostel)

Vendula Bednarova: The Cheerleader

Chris Briggs: The Vomiting Cousin

Daniel Frisch: The Human Turkey

Jay Hernandez: Bobby

Liliyan Malkina: The Grandmother

Mike McCarty: The Rioter

Jeff Rendell: The Pilgrim

Petr Vancura: The Boyfriend

Karel Vanásek: The Grandfather

Kevin Wasner: The Turkey Pilgrim

Michael Biehn: The Sherrif

Katherin-Ellen Zabehlicky: The Granddaughter

It’s interesting that Biehn’s appearance in the movie turned out to be something of a coincidence. He just happened to be in Prague shooting a film, and heard about Thanksgiving, and asked to be in it. Noting that Ladd and he himself were also both in Grindhouse in other roles, Roth has said that having Biehn in the trailer would also serve as a “perfect grindhouse crossover”.

Fun fact: In the book Grindhouse: The Sleaze-Filled Saga of an Exploitation Double Feature, Roth shared an anecdote about how he shot the cheerleader stripping scene way more times that he needed to because, “It’s an exploitation film. What’s the point in shooting an exploitation trailer if you don’t get to exploit anybody? I was simply doing my job.”

Another fun fact (via IMDb): The trailer uses part of John Harrison’s Creepshow score, which is used for the Father’s Day and Something to Tide You Over segments. Roth regular Nathan Barr also gets a music credit.

 

If you’re looking for something to watch for the holiday, you probably aren’t going to do much better than the Thanksgiving trailer. Unfortunately, it’s not actually a movie we can watch…yet.

As you probably know, Roth has been teasing a full-length Thanksgiving film for years. The trailer was clearly a crowdpleaser, and fans wanted more, but for Roth himself, it would seem that the project is really something of a Labor of Love, which is why I’m still optimistic that it will happen.

In the book, Roth reminisced about the 80s:

“My friend Jeff Rendell and I saw every single film the day they came out and often had to drag our parents with us because the films were R-rated (as all slasher films should be). I have wonderful memories of the usher at the Dedham, Massachusetts movie telling Jeff’s father that he didn’t think it was appropriate for two twelve year olds to be seeing Silent Night, Deadly Night to which Jeff’s dad replied ‘I don’t give a goddamn fuck what you think – I don’t pay you to think! Just gimme those goddamn tickets!’ Ah, sweet memories. But year after year each holiday passed without that one slasher film we were waiting for – Thanksgiving. Growing up in Massachusetts, Thanksgiving was a big fucking deal. We had not just one but two full-time reenactment villages where you could go and see how the Pilgrims lived – or fuck with them when they claimed to have no idea what television was and ask them if they watched the Celtics game. That always got them. To us it was so obvious – how could someone not make a Thanksgiving slasher film? By the time we were teenagers, we decided it was our purpose in life to take this problem into our own hands and create the horror film of our dreams. So in November of 2006, we got to fulfill our destiny and shoot the trailer for our dream project, Thanksgiving.”

A little bit later in the book, Roth said:

“Jeff Rendell flew into Prague the day before we we began shooting, and brought a ton of cheesy Thanksgiving decorations with him. Once Jeff got to his hotel, I broke the news to him – he was going to play the Pilgrim. I knew that nobody would understand how to play the killer like Jeff would. He’s got the right look for it, and even though he’d never acted a day in his life, I knew that he’d be brilliant. And he was. As soon as he put on the jumpsuit, hat and driving gloves, he smiled and said ‘This outfit just makes me want to kill people.’ I’ve never seen him look so happy.”

You can just tell Roth and Rendell are incredibly passionate about this. By the way, if you’re fan of Grindhouse, or even just Thanksgiving, I highly recommend buying this book. There’s a whole section including Roth talking about the making of Thanksgiving and some great photos from the set, not to mention the screenplay for the trailer.

After Grindhouse was released, Roth said he was going to make a feature film made up of a bunch of fake trailers called Trailer Trash. This would include more Thanksgiving. Obviously that never happened. Since then, Roth has talked about creating a full Thanksgiving feature numerous times.  Unfortunately, it always seems to be pushed aside.

In 2009, Roth reportedly talked about wanting to direct a big budget sci-fi movie called Endangered Species and then shooting Thanksgiving right after that. Empire Online quoted him at the time:

“There’s a science fiction movie,” he told us, “and I definitely wanna make Thanksgiving. I want to do a sci-fi movie, like, a $60m movie – something in that budget range – where I can really do lots of mass destruction and really destroy lots of shit!”

“But I want to tack on three weeks at the end of it – like, 18 days. The way I did Nation’s Pride [the film-within-a-film from Inglourious Basterds], that’s how I want to shoot Thanksgiving. I just want to go, go, go. Get as much footage, and as many kills as possible, and not be self-conscious. Because when you’re moving at that speed, you’re not thinking, you’re just feeling and you’re going on instinct. And that’s where the best stuff comes from. There’s an energy to that Grindhouse trailer for Thanksgiving that, for me caught the spirit of the movie. And I was like, ‘What if I did this for three weeks?’ No pretensions. Just, ‘Fuck it. Let’s make a fifth movie, do it fast, bang it out and make it great.’ I mean, still take it seriously, as a real movie, but just do it in 18 says and see what the hell happens when I really push myself.”

The following year, he reportedly told Cinemablend he was working on the script with Rendell:

“I’ve been working on the script with my co-writer, Jeff Rendell, who plays the pilgrim in the trailer. And it’s me imitating Jeff’s voice [for the narration]. But Jeff has been working. I said that his deal is he has to work on the script while I’m promoting The Last Exorcism, and as soon as I’m done in mid-September he’s going to fly to California, we’re going to sit down, and bang out the script.”

Cinemablend added, “While Roth did say that both he and Rendell are committed to making the film, he does have some concerns about their working relationship. According to Roth, because he and Rendell have known each other since kindergarten, they “always wind up talking about girls from high school and going on Facebook and screwing around.”

In 2012, Roth told Behind the Thrills that Thanksgiving was still happening, and that he was working with Clown writers Jon Watts and Christopher D. Ford on it. He even said they had a call scheduled for it the following day. He said he and Rendell had “a very extensive treatment”.

“We finally cracked the story, and figured out how to really, really make it scary and the reason to do it, and I’m really excited about it,” he said.

This part of the conversation is at the end of the video below.

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Again, he said without hesitation that it was going to happen. He said they’d have a draft soon.

That was over two years ago, but even Clown is only just making its way to the light of day. Last month, Roth said that film was in post production, and they were still trying to figure out a release strategy for it.

In May of 2013, Roth reportedly offered the following to SciFi Now:

Are we ever going to see this as a full length feature?

Yeah, it is definitely happening. I don’t want to do a throwback though; I want to do a straight-faced slasher movie. I love them. I can’t get enough of them. This is a holiday slasher movie, too – you know, the sub-genre that includes stuff like My Bloody Valentine – so I want to make my contribution to that. It is going to be great.

The original trailer indicated that Thanksgiving was going to be far from serious…

No, it is going to be scary. I mean, yeah, there’s ridiculous things in the trailer – like the guy fucking the turkey – but you can’t have 90 minutes of that.

I guess until we hear differently, we can still expect this to happen. It may be taking forever, but Roth has been reasonably consistent in terms of insisting that he’s going to make this movie. That very fact along with the obvious longtime passion he and Rendell have had for the project are plenty to leave fans hopeful. And hey, we did get two Machete movies so far (with another on the way). Who would have thought that back in Grindhouse first graced the screen.

It’s not looking like fans will be getting Thanksgiving in the near future, but Roth fans have to be patient by this point. They have no choice. Hostel: Part II is still the last Roth-directed film we’ve seen really get released (not including Nation’s Pride), and that was in 2007- the same year as Grindhouse.

He has worked on numerous other projects since first talking about Thanksgiving as a feature. These have included his short-lived Goretorium attraction, Aftershock, The Man with the Iron Fists, The Last Exorcism Part II, The Sacrament, The Green Inferno, Hemlock Grove, The Stranger, Clown, and Knock Knock. Other projects in the works include South of Hell, Lake Mead, and a Cabin Fever remake. The Green Inferno is expected to see a U.S. release in early 2015.

Regardless of whether or not Thanksgiving ever actually happens, we’ll always have the wonderful trailer, and the doors are wide open for filmmakers to create more Thanksgiving-based bloodbaths. They’ll surely be welcomed by the horror community.

In the meantime, you might as well just go ahead and watch Planet Terror, Death Proof and the other Grindhouse trailers too. They’re all great. Why not make a night of it?