With “Suits” and “Grey’s Anatomy” stars: Eli Roth turns his fake trailer “Thanksgiving” into a real horror shocker

• On November 23, 2023, Thanksgiving, the US version of Thanksgiving, will be celebrated again in the USA and Canada.
• A week before, “Thanksgiving” turns the holiday into its own horror film.
• Eli Roth’s splatter shocker stars Patrick Dempsey and Rick Hoffman; its unusual production history began 16 years ago.

Quentin Tarantino is generally considered a guarantee of success, but the cult director went bad with a project close to his heart in 2007. Tarantino made the film “Grindhouse” with his friend Robert Rodriguez. The double feature, based on the trash films of the sixties and seventies, combined Tarantino’s “Death Proof” and Rodriguez’s “Planet Terror” in one film.

The picture quality, the scripts and the acting were deliberately modest, but the audience had no interest in this nod to the grindhouse cinemas of the time. In Germany, “Death Proof” and “Planet Terror” were even released directly separately from each other; a success of the “Grindhouse” concept was ruled out in this country.

Nevertheless, “Grindhouse” is still celebrated by many fans today, 16 years later, and in November 2023 another film will be released in cinemas that would probably never have existed without “Grindhouse”.

Are fans thankful for “Thanksgiving”?

To perfect the illusion of a real grindhouse double feature, Tarantino and Rodriguez had fake trailers made to run before and between their films. This is how the trailers “Machete” by Rodriguez himself, “Don’t” by Edgar Wright, “Werewolf Women of the SS” by Rob Zombie and “Thanksgiving” by “Hostel” director Eli Roth were created. You can watch the “Thanksgiving” trailer here – but be careful, it gets bloody!

Since Robert Rodriguez had already shot a lot of material for his trailer for “Machete”, he decided to turn the actually fictional production into a real film. “Machete” opened in cinemas in 2010 and was followed by a sequel in 2013, “Machete Kills”.

Now, another 10 years later, another fake trailer, “Thanksgiving,” has the chance to prove itself as a real movie. Like the trailer, the film “Thanksgiving” itself comes from Eli Roth; you can find the “real” trailer for the film here:

Roth apparently took some shots 1:1 from the fake trailer, other scenes were re-shot and of course a large part of the story had to be developed for this long version.

In any case, horror fans can look forward to November 16, 2023, when another holiday will receive its own horror film in German cinemas.