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10 Things We Learned from Eli Roth’s ‘Thanksgiving’ Commentary Track
16 years after the faux trailer debuted as part of Grindhouse, Eli Roth finally delivered the feature version of Thanksgiving. There were no leftovers, but among the special features on the slasher’s home video release is an audio commentary by Roth and producer-writer Jeff Rendell.
Here are 10 things I learned from the Thanksgiving commentary…
1. The concept dates back to the filmmakers’ childhoods.
Thanksgiving is based on Roth’s faux trailer from Grindhouse, but its origins date back even further than 2007. Best friends since kindergarten, Roth and Rendell grew up in Newton, Massachusetts (about an hour from Plymouth) watching horror movies together.
Inspired by a pivotal theatrical viewing of Silent Night, Deadly Night circa 1984, they longed for a definitive Thanksgiving slasher in the vein of the other holiday horrors.
“We just started thinking of like, ‘What if there was a Thanksgiving slasher movie? You could put someone in an oven, and there was a killer pilgrim, and someone was dressed as a turkey and they get decapitated,'” Roth remembers. “We were probably 12 or 13 years old.”
2. Characters are named after old classmates.
Several characters were named after Roth and Rendell’s high school classmates, requiring permission from their real-life counterparts.
“We had to get their permission. So kids we hadn’t talked to in 30 years at least, and we’re like ‘Hey, you didn’t really know us, but we really like your name,'” explains Roth.
“More often than not we couldn’t even go directly to them, so we had to get a go-between to then approach the person,” adds Rendell.
“Scuba” Dybing (played by Gabriel Davenport) is the most notable name borrowed from an old acquaintance. “Everyone was trying to get us to change the name, but we didn’t want to do it,” notes Roth.
3. A descendant of the real John Carver appears in the film.
Thanksgiving‘s killer dons a mask of John Carver, the first governor of New Plymouth Colony. Amanda Barker, who plays ill-fated diner waitress Lizzie, happens to be a descendant of the real-life historical figure.
Although she resides in Canada, the actress is a Hanover, Massachusetts native — which explains why her Boston accent is so convincing.
4. An early draft featured a decapitated head landing in a tuba.
Reporter Hank Morton’s (played by Yusuf Zine) name spawned from a character named Mort in an earlier draft of the script. Rendell reveals, “There was a tuba player, Mort, when it was a bit less serious, and a head landed in it.”
“I forgot!” Roth replies. “If you had reminded me of the head going into the tuba with the tuba player, I would have shot it. Well, hopefully we get to do a sequel.”
The commentary was recorded weeks before the film opened in theaters, but now we know that a sequel is officially in development for a 2025 release.
5. Nell Verlaque was chosen out of 600 actresses.
Roth struggled to find the right actress to play final girl Jessica Wright until Rendell discovered Nell Verlaque among roughly 600 audition tapes.
“I couldn’t find the lead girl,” Roth mentions. “There was always something that just wasn’t right about the actors that were being proposed. And then Jeff was like, ‘What about Nell Verlaque?’
Rendell recalls, “That night, I remember I wanted to just go to sleep. I was totally exhausted, and I just went, ‘Well, I should be a professional here and just plow through.’ And I watched all the rest of the auditions in that night. The second I saw her, I texted Eli on WhatsApp and said, ‘Dude, you need to call this girl.'”
Roth concurred. “Nell came in and she was absolutely the girl.”
6. Mute Witness influenced the film.
In addition to the holiday slashers you’d expect, Roth cites Mute Witness as a big influence on Thanksgiving, particularly when the kids are wandering around the empty high school.
“The empty hallways, the long shots, the loneliness, and just they’re walking into this sense of danger, and the way we just linger on the shot of the doors closing,” Roth expounds. “I knew when we scouted the high school exactly how I wanted to shoot this sequence.”
The House by the Cemetery, Predator, Cruising, The Shining, and Carrie are among the other titles the filmmaker references throughout the commentary.
7. Dewey the cat has a previous horror credit.
Dewey the cat was played by Tonic, who was one of several felines that shared the role of Church in the 2019 adaptation of Pet Sematary. Roth lovingly refers to him as “the Leonardo Di-Cat-prio of cats.”
Not a Scream reference as some had surmised, Dewey is yet another nod to Massachusetts. “If you are from Boston, you will know what Dewey means. If you’re not, ask someone,” Roth teases.
He’s likely referring to Boston Red Sox great Dwight “Dewey” Evans. Dewey Square is also a central intersection in downtown Boston.
8. The cosmetology room was not in the script.
The cosmetology room — in which a group dialogue scene and a memorable chase sequence take place — was not written in the script. Rather, it was a serendipitous discovery in Ontario’s Waterdown District High School where filming took place.
“We’re scouting at this high school, and there’s this room where they have cosmetology. The kids literally learn cosmetology. That was never in any draft,” says Roth. “So we thought, ‘Well, why not set it here?’ And then later, when Jessica’s being chased, she runs in the room with all the heads. It just was such good foreshadowing.”
9. The killer was played by multiple people, including the real actor behind the role.
It’s not uncommon for movie slashers to be portrayed by stunt performers, with the actual actor behind the role only playing the part after being unmasked — but that was not the case with Thanksgiving.
“We kept switching the killer. We had a bunch of different people playing John Carver, because I didn’t want anyone to guess. Everyone kind of took a turn playing the killer, so you wouldn’t be able to read the body language.”
Patrick Dempsey played John Carver in the cosmetology chase and during the dinner scene. Milo Manheim, who plays Ryan, plays the clown that decapitates the turkey mascot during the parade. A sous chef was hired to play the killer as he prepares the human turkey. Stunt performer Alex Armbruster handled the dangerous moments throughout the film.
John Carver’s voice was provided by Canadian actor/filmmaker Adam MacDonald, who’s best known for helming Backcountry and Pyewacket. He previously collaborated with Roth on Be Mine: A VR Valentine’s Slasher, which MacDonald directed and Roth wrote and produced.
10. Roth was able to use the Misfits’ music after appearing in Danzig’s movie.
Roth was able to secure the Misfits’ horror-punk classic “Where Eagles Dare” to play over the film’s end credits after appearing in Death Rider in the House of Vampires, a film directed by iconic frontman Glenn Danzig.
“Big special thanks to Glenn Danzig and the Misfits. Glenn, he gave me the song. We didn’t have money,” Roth explains. “I had acted in his vampire movie as Drac Cassidy, and he’s like, ‘Hey, man, if you want to use a song in a movie.’ And I’m like, ‘Actually, I wanna use ‘Where Eagles Dare.’ I love this song so much. I love the energy.”
As the song says, Danzig ain’t no goddamn son of a bitch.
Thanksgiving is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital.
Night School, director Ken Hughes and writer Ruth Avergon‘s tale of a headhunting slasher on the streets of Boston, arrived in the early Golden Age of the slasher film and never quite broke through the endurance test that other films in the subgenre, like Friday the 13th, managed to pass with flying colors. Blame it on a more cerebral tone, a crowded market, whatever you like, but saying it’s a shame that the film didn’t break through doesn’t begin to cover it.
Night School isn’t just an underrated slasher, or an underseen one. For my money, it’s one of the best films the subgenre has ever produced, full stop, and Vinegar Syndrome’s new 4K UHD restoration, arriving just in time for the film’s 45th anniversary, is must-have proof. Stacked with special features highlighting the craft of the film and its place in slasher history, and headlined by a gorgeous restoration showcasing the wonderfully textured production, this is Night School as it’s meant to be seen for slasher devotees everywhere.
So, what makes the film so effective? It starts very simply, with the revelation that a killer with a very cool knife and a motorcycle helmet as a mask is murdering young women in Boston, taking off their heads, and dropping those heads in the nearest body of water (no matter how small).
Solving the case falls on Judd Austin (Leonard Mann), a detective with an academic background who traces all of the victims in one way or another back to a local night school. There, suspicion falls on a womanizing professor (Drew Snyder) who sleeps around on his research assistant and romantic partner, Eleanor (Rachel Ward), whose own death could be right around the corner.
I’m doing my best to stay as spoiler-free as possible here, not just because I think plenty of slasher fans still need to see Night School, but because the film is quite determined to be a whodunit in the classic Italian giallo sense. The kills are brutal and elaborate, the killer deliberately covered head-to-toe in leather and a gleaming black helmet, the knife and the headhunting a disturbing signature. Avergon’s script is well-versed in the trappings of exactly this kind of story, complete with red herrings galore. And yet, by the time it’s all wrapping up, there’s also the sense that the answer was right there in front of you the entire time, something the very best films by legends like Mario Bava and Dario Argento could also achieve.
But on to the restoration: Like the best of the gialli, Night School is also a beautifully engineered film full of colors and delicate camera compositions and sound design. The opening kill, which takes place on a playground carousel outside of a daycare, is rich in exactly this kind of thing, from the cityscapes that lead into the scene to the sound of a motorcycle slowly rolling forward, its engine already dead. Cinematographer Mark Irwin, best known for his many collaborations with David Cronenberg, paints the film in rich reds, absinthe greens, and haunting, chilled blue-white light on wet Boston streets, all of which are preserved beautifully by the restoration team at work on this one.
It’s a movie that very deliberately evokes a specific place – the aging streets of Boston in the 1980s, and the halls of relatively low-level academia – and then takes that place into haunted territory, saturating every frame with color and shadow that suggests a killer lurking just out of view.
Night School is not a massively gore-heavy film, but it does deliver the slasher goods with a series of tense, often unpredictable kills and body discoveries that range from the darkly comic to the flat-out jaw-dropping. That’s thanks to the sound design, the score, the editing from Robert Reitano, and more, all of which add to the film’s giallo soul.
In every case, the scene’s geography is outstanding, and it’s easy to see where the simplest possible kill shot might land, but the film never goes for the obvious. Throw in a surprisingly (for 1981, anyway) feminist bent to the storytelling and some very progressive moments for an early slasher film, and this one fits right in with Black Christmas and The Slumber Party Massacre as a film with depth you can just keep unpacking.
That depth, helped along by a load of featurettes and two new commentary tracks featuring members of the crew, is what stands out the most in this new 4K set. Night School may be a niche film recognized mostly by horror addicts and the slasher faithful, but it deserves to be something more, a landmark on the roadmap of slasher cinema history. It’s one of the best in the genre, and this restoration highlights, underlines, and shouts that from the rooftops.
Night School is now available in 4K UHD from Vinegar Syndrome.
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