It’s still so wild that Grindhouse exists. It was an attempt by directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez to pay homage to and recreate the old experience of seeing exploitation movies by giving audiences two full feature-length movies for the price of one. (Naturally, the thing bombed despite the fact that it gave audiences double the bang for their buck.) To complete the illusion, the Grindhouse program was filled out with vintage theater bumpers along with trailers for movies that did not exist, including a couple from Tarantino and Rodriguez’ filmmaker friends.
The faux trailers included Thanksgiving by Eli Roth, a spoof of holiday-themed horror films like Halloween or My Bloody Valentine. Improbably, more than 15 years after Grindhouse came and went from theaters, Roth is finally going to turn Thanksgiving into a feature-length film, with Patrick Dempsey reportedly in talks to star. Production is set to begin later this spring.
Here is the vintage (and extremely graphic) trailer for Thanksgiving from Grindhouse:
Thanksgiving will be the third fake trailer that appeared in Grindhouse to be turned into a full-length movie. Robert Rodriguez quickly made Machete with Danny Trejo into its own low-budget exploitation movie. (It even got a sequel, Machete Kills.) And a trailer for Hobo With a Shotgun, which was screened with the movie after winning a contest to create the best faux grindhouse trailer, later became its own movie as well.
Roth was still in his early 30s at the time he made the Thanksgiving trailer, following his rapid rise among the ranks of young horror directors on the strength of his films Cabin Fever and the Hostel movies. In recent years he’s branched out a little bit with thrillers like the remake of Death Wish and the fantasy film The House with a Clock in its Walls. He recently directed the upcoming adaptation of the Borderlands video game franchise.
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