Holiday season is more than just November and December. There are holidays throughout the year. Whether they are days off from work, or just
goofy little things like National Hot Dog Day, there are holidays all the
time. And they celebrate almost anything. Filmmakers know this, and they like to infuse
their movies with a little bit of the holiday fever. It adds something more to what could have
been a fairly standard story. The horror
genre has notably been using holidays in storytelling for decades, and fans eat
it up.
Many holidays have their classic horror entries. Halloween has John Carpenter’s Halloween. It also has Trick ‘R Treat. Christmas
has Black Christmas and Silent Night Deadly Night among all of
the others. Independence Day has Jaws. Those are only a few examples, and they’re the
ones that end up on the upper end of fans’ favourites. What about the lower end, though? What about the bad horror movies that use
holidays? There are many of them, enough
so that there can be a whole post about the ones that have been featured in the
Sunday “Bad” Movies.
Last week would have been the perfect week for some holiday
horror. As it was, the perfect movie was
scheduled a week too late, this week.
Last Monday was Thanksgiving in Canada, and as such, this week featured
a movie called ThanksKilling. The movie followed five friends as they
travelled home for Thanksgiving, only to encounter a bloodthirsty turkey. The turkey was out to kill them all and
wouldn’t stop until all five of them were dead.
The quality of that synopsis was about the quality of the movie.
The story hinged upon the fact that it was
Thanksgiving. That was the reason that
the friends weren’t in their college classes.
It was the reason that their families got tangled up in the horrific
events. Thanksgiving was the reason that
the Turkey was attacking. It had
something to do with the first Thanksgiving and the fact that the turkey wanted
revenge upon the human race for what they were doing. Unlike the family film Free Birds, where the turkeys simply wanted to replace themselves
as the Thanksgiving meal with pizza, this turkey was out for revenge. It wasn’t there every year. It only showed up once every hundred and
something years, but it was out to kill the people that killed its kind. And it did so in outlandish ways.
Holidays influence all kinds of horror movies. All year round there are horror movies that
fit into the holidays. ThanksKilling wasn’t the only one to be
featured on the Sunday “Bad” Movies. It
was the only one where a turkey raped a woman, dressed up as a man to trick a
sheriff, then disguised itself as the sheriff with the sheriff’s own face for a
face. No other movies had that stuff in
them. But there were other holiday
movies that sometimes bordered on that kind of insanity.
Valentine’s Day
There have been a few horror movies set around Valentine’s
Day. The most notable was the Canadian
slasher film My Bloody Valentine,
which was remade twenty-eight years later as My Bloody Valentine 3-D. The
two movies saw a miner coming after the people working and living around there,
killing them one by one. What set it
apart was the level of violence in it.
The original was one of the most strikingly violent horror movies of the
time, and ended up being one of the most entertaining.
No Valentine’s Day based horror movies have been featured in
the Sunday “Bad” Movies, though there have been other genres that touched upon
that day making their way into the blog.
There have been plenty of horror movies featuring weird romances,
though. Bigfoot vs. Zombies had a sasquatch falling in love with a
scientist while helping her evade zombies at a body farm. So, yeah, romantic.
St. Patrick’s Day
Drinking. The
Irish. Leprechauns. Those are the main things that people think
about when St. Patrick’s Day gets closer.
There are mass drinking parties that day, which lead to mass passed out
people or mass vomit or mass noise complaints and mass police. It’s a day for loud day drinking and louder
night drinking as a celebration of… Drinking?
Anyway, the Leprechaun
movies fit into that St. Patrick’s Day theme.
Though they might not be directly tied into the day, it’s hard to say
that the day doesn’t make people think of leprechauns. Two Leprechaun
movies were featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies, and they were perhaps the best
two entries in the franchise. Leprechaun in the Hood took the slasher
villain back to Earth after the disastrous Leprechaun
4: In Space, and saw him taking on some aspiring hip hop artists. It was wacky, fun, and hilarious all at the
same time, becoming an enjoyable bad rather than the bad bad of what came
before.
Then there was Leprechaun:
Back 2 tha Hood. Though not as good
as the first Hood entry, it was still
a fun movie as the leprechaun interacted with people at parties drinking and
smoking. The two movies brought a fresh
voice to the series, elevating it in a way it hadn’t been elevated before.
April Fool’s Day
This one’s an oddball because you wouldn’t think that there
were too many movies that celebrated this day.
Yet, two movies featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies heavily depended
upon the day and the pranks committed upon it.
April Fools was an
early movie in the history of the blog that played very much like I Know What You Did Last Summer, except
set in April with a different demographic.
A group of friends played a prank on someone from their school and ended
up accidentally killing him in the process.
They covered up the death, only to be threatened by someone a year later
who knew what they did. They went after
them, killing them, until a final showdown where their identity was revealed. The day was rooted in the movie through the
prank gone wrong.
Another movie that used the prank gone wrong idea was Slaughter High. The high school bullies had played a prank on
the nerd that caused him to have severe injuries all over his body. Ten years later, they were invited back to
the now closed school for a reunion.
Only, the reunion was thrown for the sole purpose of killing each of
them. Slasher movie again, eh?
Both movies utilized the same element of April Fools Day,
which was that a prank went wrong causing serious harm to someone. April Fools Day is a day all about the
pranks, and there are really only two ways to take that concept and play into
horror with it. Either, a prank goes
wrong, or someone is intentionally killing people through the pranks. That hasn’t been featured in the Sunday “Bad”
Movies yet. Maybe that twist will pop up
in the future.
Easter
Because Easter has tended to be reserved for the religious
movies like God’s Not Dead, or the
date of the holiday is simply forgotten, there haven’t been any actual Easter
horror movies featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies. There are a bunch out there, though, mostly
involving killer Easter Bunnies. Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill! and such other
movies.
The closest the blog came to an Easter horror movie was Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, where Jesus
was resurrected to fight off lesbian vampires in Ottawa, Canada. It was a low budget action, horror, musical
with heaps of comedy. What worked was
that the movie never took itself seriously, while the people behind it knew
what they were doing with their low budget to make an actual movie. It was a delightfully fun time watching one
of the most religious figures in the world take on vampires.
Independence Day
As mentioned earlier, Jaws
was one of the most iconic movies to be set on the 4th of July. It was about the shark attacks that occurred
around Amity Island during the long weekend, and the police chief who set out
to stop them. It wasn’t a part of the
Sunday “Bad” Movies. The Spielberg
horror movie was too well done to be included.
That didn’t stop the sequels from being covered, though.
Jaws 3-D was about
police chief Brody’s two sons trying to stop sharks in Seaworld, or a place
very much like Seaworld. What brought
the movie down were the effects. The
movie attempted to try 3-D effects, but did them in a poor way. Seeing it in 2-D might be to blame. That doesn’t seem to be the case. The scenes that attempted 3-D were horribly
done. Jaws: The Revenge failed in a storytelling way. A shark followed Chief Brody’s widowed wife
to the Caribbean for some reason. She
was having panic attacks thinking that sharks were out to get her. It was weird.
Neither of the movies capitalized on Independence Day the
was that the original Jaws did. That weekend was a crucial part of the
story. It was the busiest tourism
weekend for Amity, so the mayor didn’t want to shut the beaches down. There was evidence of shark attacks, but the
money that could be made from the tourists was too good to give up. It was an opportunity that the mayor wouldn’t
let pass by, so he kept the beaches open and more people were killed. All because of the long weekend.
Halloween
The most notable horror movie to be set around a holiday is Halloween. Halloween might not be an actual holiday, but
it’s a day that people celebrate. The
movie spawned seven sequels, with an eighth on the way, and a rebooted
two-movie franchise. The eleven movies
vary in quality, ranging from the great Halloween
to the terrible Halloween: The Curse of
Michael Myers.
The latter film was featured in the Sunday “Bad”
Movies. Halloween was an important part
of the Halloween franchise,
obviously. Michael Myers always attacked
people on Halloween. There’s more to it
than that, though. Going back to the
original movie, it’s easy to see that it wouldn’t be the same without being set
on Halloween. First, the day just makes
things spookier. Second, Michael Myers
wore a Halloween mask as he attacked his victims. And third, the whole boogeyman thing came
from the bullies at school saying that the boogeyman came out on
Halloween. It all gelled together to
make for solid horror franchise.
Even the one movie in the Halloween franchise that didn’t have Michael Myers as the villain
utilized the Halloween motifs. Halloween III: Season of the Witch was
about a toy salesman who was producing Halloween masks. He planned on using an advertisement on television
to kill people through the masks. He was
using Halloween and children’s love of popular masks to kill a massive amount
of people. One man was out to stop
him. It was an interesting way to use
Halloween to a horrific effect and there’s a reason that the third entry in the
series recently found a surge in popularity.
Christmas
Skipping over Thanksgiving because ThanksKilling was already discussed, the next stop is Christmas. There are way too many Christmas horror
movies to count. The Jack Frost movies, Elves, and Santa’s Slay
were all featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies, and each used the Christmas
season in their own way to shape their story.
Jack Frost was one
of the lighter movies on the Christmas elements, though it still had a lot of
holiday influence. It took place around
that time of year, so there were Christmas lights and snowmen. It wasn’t as heavy on Christmas as other
movies have been, though. The bad guy
was a snowman and he did some crazy things, but a killer snowman could have
been at any time of winter without really feeling out of place. Where Michael Myers is only the way he is
because of the Halloween influence, Jack Frost isn’t the way he is because of
Christmas.
Elves, on the
other hand, was very much a Christmas influenced movie. It took place during the holidays, and the
hero was a guy who had been a mall Santa.
While on his quest to save the protagonist girl, he interrupted a family’s
Christmas dinner. The villainous monster
was an elf. It was all Christmas themed. The story itself might not have required the
Christmas setting. It was about a Nazi
science experiment where an elf would have sex with a virgin girl to produce
the master race. Did that require Christmas? Maybe not.
It was better to feature Christmas, though.
Santa’s Slay was
even more influenced by Christmas in that it had Santa as the villain. He had lost a bet many years before that made
him be nice to children for a certain amount of time. That time was up and Santa was going back to
his old people-killing ways. The killing
spree brought him face to face with the man who had defeated him years before
and now that man, along with his descendants, had to put a stop to Santa. There was no way this could have been made
without the Christmas setting.
New Year’s
A new year can mean a new beginning and some horror has
managed to capitalize on that. There
aren’t too many horror movies based around the new year, or featuring New Year’s
Day, even. There are a few, though, and
one such movie was a part of the Sunday “Bad” Movies a couple years ago.
Antisocial was a
movie about the problems with social media.
It didn’t take that on directly.
It wasn’t a movie about people being so absorbed in social media that
they ignored the world around them. It
was, to an extent, but it was a zombie movie at its core. A group of friends gather for a New Year’s
celebration and are one by one turned into zombies through their social media
pages. In the most recent software
update, a virus was added to the platform that would infect the brains of the
people using it and effectively turn them into rage zombies. The main character’s life was falling to pieces
before that night, and the events bring about a new life in a new zombie world. She was getting a new start in a new
world. The idea of New Year’s was baked
into her story.
All year long, movies are influenced by the days that people
celebrate. Birthdays, holidays, national
days. People like to celebrate and with
that, movies like to celebrate. That’s
why there are Christmas movies, New Year’s movies, Independence Day movies,
Thanksgiving movies, Halloween movies, and Valentine’s Day movies. Every day gets celebrations and every day
gets movies.
Horror tends to be a genre that dives into the pool of
celebratory days. That’s why there can
be a horror movie found for pretty much every day that can be thought of. Some of them are good, some of them are
bad. Regardless of quality, they get
celebrated as much as the days that they are based around. People watch them at those times of year
because they associate them with the day.
People watch Halloween on
Halloween. They watch Elves around Christmas. They watch Friday the 13th when there’s a Friday the 13th. The movies became a part of the tradition of
that day.
ThanksKilling may
not have become a part of the Thanksgiving tradition. There have been better movies based around
that holiday, outside of the horror genre.
For horror fans looking for a fun, low budget horror comedy, though, ThanksKilling is a breath of fresh air
for the Thanksgiving season. It’s a ridiculous,
over the top horrorfest. And it’s a part
of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.
These notes are also a part of the Sunday “Bad” Movies:
- ThanksKilling wasn’t the only movie mentioned in this post. Other movies that were brought up included Free Birds (week 209), Bigfoot vs. Zombies (week 218), Leprechaun in the Hood (week 120), Leprechaun Back2 tha Hood (week 120), April Fools (week 18), Slaughter High (week 279), God’s Not Dead (week 230), Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (week 87), Jaws 3-D (week 240), Jaws: The Revenge (week 240), Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (week 48), Jack Frost (week 54), Elves (week 106), Santa’s Slay (week 263), and Antisocial (week 214).
- Have you seen ThanksKilling? What did you think of it? Are you excited for whenever I get around to covering the sequel? Let me know in the comments.
- Another thing you can do in the comments is suggest something for me to watch. I’m always trying to find movies I might not know about. ThanksKilling was brought to my attention by someone I go to school with. Do you have any ideas for what I should check out? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.
- Sometimes, while watching bad movies, I share clips of them on Snapchat (jurassicgriffin). Add me if that’s something you want to see.
- Next week, I’ll be continuing the month of horror here as I check out a movie called From Hell to the Wild West. There aren’t too many horror westerns that get made, so this should be an interesting trip into an area that hasn’t really been featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies. I’ll see you then with my thoughts on the movie.
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