Two Whole Decades of Turkeys. I started this crazy idea in 2003, rather than go out and battle the crazy shoppers on Black Friday, but to stay at home and watch some of the best in the worst cinematic achievement on film. Or at least that is how described it when I started. But something has changed over these past 20 years. Films that I even would call typical “so bad they’re good”, or bad but for all the right reasons, I’ve learned over the years how the terms “good” and “bad” are so damn objective. Kind of like food, it all comes down to one’s particular taste. There’re people that eat rotted fish head soup that might look at someone who doesn’t like they are the crazy ones. Same with movies.

For me, it has always come down to not being good or bad but if they’re entertaining. If the answer is yes, then they can’t be bad, at least not for that particular viewer.

Which then brings us to Turkey Day. If there are no bad movies, then what is a Turkey? Easy, it is a title where the filmmakers honestly tried to make a good movie, but for a variety of reasons, such as budget (or lack thereof), bad script, not the greatest talent in front of and behind the camera, or sometimes just the plain audacity of the creators to decide that “yeah, this will work and it’s going in the picture!” But at the end of the running time, instead of “normal” viewers questioning why they just wasted 90 minutes of their time, Turkey Day fans just revel in those things, and enjoy it for what it was trying to do.

And after two decades of celebrating those kinds of films, here we are at the 20^th anniversary of the Turkey Day Marathon!

The other amazing thing that happened this Turkey Day was that we are one step closer to making this event a nationwide holiday! My friend and Discover the Horror co-host Damien Glonek has been hosting his own Turkey Day out in New Jersey since 2012. Now, our friend Scott Bradley, who’s actually flown out here a couple of times for my marathon, hosted his own event out in California. Another friend, Don England started his marathon as well in Michigan. Like myself, Don made his first Turkey Day by watching the films by himself! I would only advise doing that if you’re a professional! There were a couple of others that were going to be others, but they had to cancel. But I think next year, we just might have over a half-dozen Turkey Day events going on around the country! If that is going to be my legacy, I’m damn proud of it!

Because of these different events starting to pop up, my wife (with a huge help from Don England) came up with an official Turkey Day patch, depending on what state it was happening in, to pass out to the different people attending. In the future, we will have these available to purchase if you want to start your own chapter. We’ll keep you posted.

My co-host since 2005, Aaron Christensen, has never missed a single event since he started, so of course, he’d be here for this one as well. Strange how it came to be, but that’s the thing about Turkey Day, that once you start coming, very seldom do you miss the next event. It is almost like a reunion or meeting every 6 months, where these demented cinephiles come to dive into the dregs of cinema (and pizza), laugh out loud, and just have a great time, bonding with other like-minded film fans. I am just thrilled to be the host of this kind of event.

The other usual suspects that joined us are Chicagoland regulars Jason Coffman, Neil Calderone, Tim Palace, Brian Fukala, Bryan Martinez, and Matt Harding! Coming down from Wisconsin was Gavin Schmitt, and making his Turkey Day debut, Liquid Cheese founder Dave Kosanke! Then coming up from southern Illinois was Gregg & Jill from Lix! I’ve known Jill for over 20 years from being at a lot of the same conventions, so they are definitely part of our horror family!

I’m not sure of the exact time when it started, but somewhere around 2011 or 2012, Dawn decided to make some pizzas for us. But not just your ordinary pizzas but, like the films we were watching, extraordinary ones, like a crab rangoon pizza. And then it just spiraled out of control over the next decade, where the pizzas that she and sometimes Nick churn out throughout the day are just mind-boggling. You take the number of people attending, then add five, and that’s about how many different pizzas we go through. I think the last count I remember was something like 21 or 22 pizzas total. And over the last 10+ years, Dawn and Nick have come up with some of the most unusual ideas, but always knocking it out of the park. There’s my personal favorite, the Chili-Dog pizza, as well as breakfast pizzas (both meat and vegetarian), biscuits and gravy pizza, jalapeno popper pizza, chicken tiki masala pizza, paneer tiki masala pizza, chorizo and egg pizza, poblano and corn pizza, Italian beef pizza, gyro pizza, mac n cheese pizza, and making their debut this year that Nick came up with, the chicken cordon bleu pizza, and one that we just called the Death Pizza, that had enough hot peppers on there to kill anybody with a weak intestinal disposition! Needless to say, only a few of us dived into that particular one, at last check, we all survived! But these pizzas have become a regular part of this event, to the point where sometimes I question whether my friends are coming for the movies or the food? Nah . . . it’s got to be the movies. Right?

Speaking of films, let’s get down to them!

Monster A Go-Go (1965) – This one was started by Wisconsin director Bill Rebane, under the title Terror at Halfday, in 1961 but kept running out of finances so it was never finished. A few years later, H.G. Lewis was looking for a something to fill a double feature spot with his film Moonshine Mountain (1964) and bought the footage that Rebane had shot, which was about 10 times what Lewis had used to shoot his earlier picture The Adventures of Luckey Pierre (1961), figuring he could find a movie in there somewhere.

According to Lewis, “I was wrong.”

The story is a simple early sci-fi one, where an astronaut goes into space and comes down as something different. Running for a little over an hour, with a ton of narration telling the viewers what is going on, with little else making a lot of sense, it does make sense why the normal critics shit on this one. But for us, the narration alone is worth watching it for. There is some pretty amazing science babble in here, like just spraying a mist of some chemical on radioactive area that will dissipate the dangerous elements to it! We’ve come a long way in science since then. At least I hope so!

Thankfully, it is just over an hour. But even at that running time, the last 20 minutes or so make this feel like it a 2-hour running time! A lot of footage of firetrucks and police vehicles running about Chicago with not much else going on in the story! If this would have been much more than an hour long, it would have been a very rough start for Turkey Day!

Help Me…I’m Possessed (1974) – A few months ago, I ordered this set from Vinegar Syndrome, called Blood-A-Rama Triple Frightmare, mainly because I had never heard (or had in my collection) two of the three titles in this triple feature set. This title being one of them. I remember seeing the poster of this particular one but had never seen this particular title. I popped in this title, and within the first 10-15 minutes, I knew this would be a perfect entry in the next T-Day event. The acting alone is pure Turkey Gold, with the actors giving it their all, and going for an Oscar caliber performance. Well, at least some of the actors.

There is a strange doctor running a sanitarium out in the middle of the desert, where some thing is on the prowl, brutally killing whoever it comes across. While the local police try and investigate, the doctor is not the most helpful, completely denying he knows anything about it, nor would anybody at his facility be capable of such carnage. Of course, we know right from what we see in the beginning that he’s full of shit. Good doctors tend not to have people locked up in their dungeon-style basements. At least, as far as I would suspect!

Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t hold that golden element throughout the whole picture. Maybe if we’d actually seen the monster, or if someone was actually possessed (!?!?), it might have had more of a payoff. But there are plenty of WTF moments, like the mysterious moving cat statue and the leering eye, or the even what was called the “Twizzler monster”. Not a terrible choice for today’s event, but just didn’t have the impact I thought it would. But as I’ve pointed out before, we are professionals here, so it is our job to sit through some of these films, looking for entertainment. Just harder sometimes with certain films!

Still, it is a great representation of some low budget regional filmmaking, filmed in the Bronson Canyon / Griffith Park area where so many sci-fi / horror films of the ‘50s were shot.

A*P*E (1976) – My first experience with this one was in It Came from Hollywood (1982), which really started my love for Turkeys. While the thought of a guy in a gorilla suit crashing through South Korea, taking on all sorts of buildings, helicopters, and giant sharks, you’d think they were obviously knowing the kind of cheese they were making. But yet, everyone in here, once again, seems to be giving it their all, and taking it very seriously. How, or why, I’ll never understand. It really is a film that you need to see to be believed. And the fact that it came out the same year as the big Hollywood remake of King Kong is even more mind-boggling.

The film starts out on a big ship that is apparently carrying a 36-foot gorilla to be put on display at Disneyland. We know all of this because all the exposition giving in those first few minutes tells us. Then the ape breaks out, destroys the ship that now shows us it was way too small to even hold him, gets attack by a shark that, comparing it to the ape’s size, had to been at least 25 feet long, and then makes his way to the nearest shore, which just happens to be South Korea. Arriving at the same time is big movie star Marilyn Baker, played by Joanna Kerns (billed under her real name Joanna DeVarona), just shy of a decade before she became a household name being the mother on the TV show Growing Pains. While filming her new movie, where apparently there is a “gentle rape scene”, she just happens to run across the big hairy guy. After that, a lot of things get destroyed, a lot of yelling by the army ranks, and some effects that are a lot of fun, no matter how silly they might look.

The film was filmed for a 3D release, so there are a lot of obvious sequences to take advantage of that, which are very noticeable and even funnier. But if we actually had a 3D print, it would be even more entertaining!

Released the same year as Dino De Laurentiis’ big-budgeted King Kong, there are plenty of winks here in A*P*E, even having the director in the film within a film named Dino. Alex Nicol, who plays Col. Davis, is one of the best characters in the film, since in just about every scene he is in, he is yelling, cursing, or both, at some poor soul on the phone, or at his assistant. You never know what he is going to say, but it is usually pretty damn funny.

Robot Monster 3D (1953) – Next to Blood Freak (1972) and The Giant Claw (1957), no other title has earned its place in Turkey Day more than Robot Monster. I’m actually surprised it took this long for us to screen it, but I think it well worth the wait, mainly because of the recently remastering effort, as well as being able to screen it in 3D, which was a first for Turkey Day!

More than a few attending here commented on just how amazing the 3D looked, even with the old fashion anaglyphic 3D and the red & blue glasses. Even if you didn’t like the movie, just watching the 3D element is pretty damn cool and pretty effective.

But you can’t get away from one of the most famous and most confounding monster designs committed to celluloid, which is a guy in a gorilla suit with a space helmet on, that hangs out in a cave with a bubble machine. Reported shot in 4 days, which very little money, it had always been known as being one of the worst films ever made, which I will argue that point until my last breath. I have never sat down to watch this and not smiled, laughed out loud, or at the very least, just been entertained. And watching this new restoration, and in 3D, it is very impressive with what they did accomplish here. It shows the true spirit of filmmakers doing whatever they can, with whatever they have, and getting their film done.

While there are some very dated and sexist dialogue in here, keep in mind that one of the female characters is a scientist as well and seems to know a great deal, which really was quite different for a film of that era.

If you ever doubt or question, why someone could enjoy this picture, just listen to the words of Ro-Man himself to try and explain why this film is so much fun: “I cannot – yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do “must” and “cannot” meet? Yet I must – but I cannot!”

Moonstalker (1989) – This film was another one that I had never heard of or seen before until it was released in Vinegar Syndrome’s second volume of their Homemade Horrors box set. In fact, all three of the titles in there were new to me. But again, with a killer sometimes looking like Danzig, I had a feeling it was going to play well in the marathon.

Okay, maybe I was wrong.

The story takes place out in the wintery woods of a counselor’s training camp, that is invaded by a nutcase that loves to slice people up. We’re given a basic backstory to the killer, have some wonderfully annoying characters that we just can’t wait for them to be killed off, and some surprises on who lives and dies. New characters are introduced halfway through, other ones just seem to pop in, and the police there seemed to take in kids right out of grade school to join the force!

This is a standard slasher film for that era, not particularly well made, but not terribly bad either. Which is why it might not have been the best choice for Turkey Day. I was hoping that in the right setting, it would be more entertaining, but not so much.

It does have its moments though and is still worth watching, if only to appreciate the low budget quality of what the filmmakers were trying to do. Plus, filming in the winter, out in the woods, couldn’t have been easy. But as a Turkey film, not the best choice.

The Ship of Monsters aka La nave de los monstruos (1960) – This is another first for Turkey Day. While we’ve had films that are not in English, with sub-titles, this is the first one to have several musical numbers in it! Don’t remember how long ago I stumbled across this film, but the titular creatures in here were so damn cool and fun, I knew I wanted to screen it for a Turkey Day. The only problem was finding a decent enough print, with subtitles, which turned out harder than I thought. But I eventually found one and here we are.

A couple of female aliens are in search of specimens to take back to their planet to help reproduce their dying race. They have already collected a variety of different residents from other planets before stopping on Earth due to needing some repairs to their spaceship. While there, the two aliens run into Lauriano, or Lawrence as he is called in the subtitles. Lauriano likes to go to the local pub and tell tall tales of his adventures, that nobody believes, and he is usually laughed out of town or threatened with violence. But when he runs across these two female visitors, his life changes.

The real reason to watch this film is just the craziness of the film. Mexican sci-fi / horror of that era were just wild and so unpredictable that you really didn’t know what to expect. Sure, there are some musical numbers, but they move the story along and don’t detract too much from what is going on. But it is the monsters from the title that is the reason to watch this. They are so amazing, with some incredible designs and effective, especially in the creation of the suits! Very cool and a lot of fun.

The Cyclops (1957) – Due to the time, I decided to switch out my last choice and go with this one, which is about 30 minutes shorter. I actually like this movie and not sure if I would consider it a Turkey, but because of the time it was made, being directed by Bert I. Gordon, I thought it would still be fun and I knew of at least a few scenes that would get a good reaction, which they did.

The unintentionally fun thing about some of the movies from that era is just the pure ignorance of science that we know of today. Such as when Lon Chaney Jr.’s character comes across some rocks that he’s holding are beaming with uranium, all excited about filing a claim and making a ton of money, without realizing that they are all going to die from radiation poisoning! Again, from science back then, we learned that just by putting it in water would defuse the radiation. Oh, how naïve we were!

Gloria Talbot is on a quest to find her boyfriend who went missing 3 years ago over a stretch of mountains in Mexico that the government doesn’t want anybody going to. But with her pilot, a friend who’s secretly in love with her, and the aforementioned Chaney who wants to find the uranium, they sneak their way there, only to find not only the remains of her boyfriend’s plane, but some giant animals along the way. When they finally come across the one-eyed giant from the title, it takes the viewer about 2 seconds to put the clues together on who this monster is, but more like a few hours for our characters to figure it out.

The film does have some of the usual camera effects we’ve come to expect from Mr. B.I.G., with some giant animals superimposed over the action, sometimes that have become slightly transparent. But with those cheesy camera effects aside, I have always really liked the makeup effects of the monster and think it’s pretty damn effective, even scary if you were a kid seeing this on TV.

And thus ends our 20^th Anniversary Turkey Day Marathon. It was a lot of fun, with many pizzas devoured, many hours of entertainment (and maybe an hour or two of real work to get through) were had. Once again, many thanks to my friends that attended, some that traveled a bit to come, and to spend the day with me to celebrate these unsung masterpieces of cinema. Okay, maybe not masterpieces, but pretty entertaining. Then again, had it not been for the company, they probably wouldn’t have been as fun.

And of course, a HUGE shout out to my wife Dawn and son Nick for creating some amazing work in the kitchen, consistently cranking out pizzas to be ready each time a film ended. I’ve said it before, but I really wonder if people don’t come for the food, and just deal with the movies! If so, I can’t say I would blame them!

Until next Turkey Day . . .