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Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving has been a fan-favorite ever since it premiered as one of the “fake trailers” in Grindhouse. The 2007 movie, a double feature of Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, was designed as a throwback to exploration cinema of the 1970s and ’80s. This was managed not only by channeling the tone of such films in the feature-length movies, but in the trailers made specifically for other films that played between them. For Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving trailer, the director paid tribute to holiday themed slashers that arrived after the success of Halloween, movies like Silent Night, Deadly Night, April Fool’s Day, and My Bloody Valentine.
In the fake trailer a disgruntled pilgrim character (played by co-writer Jeff Rendell) marches aboutPlymouth, Massachusetts, murdering parade participants and, naturally, frisky teenagers. Roth, and several of his Hostel stars, actually appeared in the fake trailer, adding another layer as 30-somethings playing high schoolers. The pilgrim character holds an entire family hostage in the end too, roasting a body like a thanksgiving turkey. The final cherry on top of the fake Thanksgiving trailer of course was the quickly revealed “This February” release date, a jab at holiday slashers never being released at the right time.
Other fake trailers that appeared in Grindhouse included Rob Zombie’s Werewolf Women of the SS, marrying the Nazi-themed horror with women in prison movies; Edgar Wright’s Don’t, a riff on UK movies being sold to US audiences without giving away that it wasn’t an American movie; Robert Rodriguez’s Machete, a Mexploitation riff starring Danny Trejo; and Hobo with a Shotgun, which seems pretty self explanatory.
Prior to Thanksgiving becoming its own movie, filmmaker Jason Eisener stretched Hobo With A Shotgun into a feature as well, starring Rutger Hauer; while Rodriguez would direct two Machete movies. For those keeping track at home, with Thanksgiving now a reality, there will soon be six movies in total from “Grindhouse,” something that would have been unimaginable in 2007 when the film bombed with just $50 million globally.
