THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: THANKSKILLING 3 (2012) *

The first thing we see in Thankskilling 3 is boobs in space.  I thought right then and there I was in for a good time.  I was wrong.

The Thankskilling series skipped over Part 2 and went straight to 3, which happens to be the best joke of the movie.  This one plays with the conceit that Thankskilling 2 was so bad that the studio burned every copy.  When the star of the movie, the evil wisecracking killer turkey, finds out the movie was destroyed, he goes nuts and sets out to get revenge.  A puppet named Yomi comes into possession of the only copy of Part 2 in existence and the killer turkey comes after her.

Now, I know they said that Part 2 was so bad they burned all the copies.  However, it couldn’t have been much worse than this one.  There were times while I was watching it that I was wishing it got destroyed in a fire too.

Thankskilling was hit-and-miss, but it was only an hour long and knew when to quit.  Part 3 is 99 minutes, and trust me, you’ll feel each and every excruciating minute.  The long, painful scenes of the puppets cursing become exhausting almost immediately.  Meet the Feebles this is not.  You also have to put up with scenes of puppet sex, rap videos, and animated segments.  All of this is crudely cobbled together, and very rarely ever scores laughs.

The puppets, it must be said, are well done.  They’re a lot more intricate and articulate than the ones found in the original, but that also means they lack that film’s scrappy charm.  There’s a talking garbage pile, a foulmouthed rapping granny, and a worm that lives inside a robot (don’t ask).  The killer turkey is still the most entertaining.  I liked the part where he killed someone and quipped, “He quit life cold turkey!”  It just goes to show that the simplest jokes in the movie are often the best.

There are some moments that work.  I liked the scene that cleverly cribs from Evil Dead 2.  The part where some characters momentarily get sucked into a Thankskilling video game is also pretty great.  However, there’s barely enough quality moments here to fill a fake trailer, let alone an actual full-length movie.