Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)
Director: John Hughes
Screenwriter: John Hughes
Starring: Steve Martin, John Candy

You’d be hard-pressed to name a more beloved Thanksgiving movie than the late John Hughes’ Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987). For many, the film has a virtual monopoly on the holiday’s cinematic canon (sorry, Charlie Brown) and endures as quintessential post-feast viewing. And, while Hughes’ other holiday flicks such as National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989) and Home Alone (1990) would go on to become living room mainstays in their own right, the king of crowd-pleasers’ first foray into holiday fare remains his most timeless. 

The film stars Steve Martin and the late John Candy as an oddball pair of unlucky travelers determined to make it home for Thanksgiving—in spite of the gamut of transportation delays thrown their way. The two are total opposites: Martin plays Neal Page, a prickly, Scroogean advertising executive who wants nothing more than to be left alone, while Candy plays Del Griffith, a chatterbox shower-ring salesman who Neal can’t seem to shake. Needless to say, Neal and Del’s perceived incompatibility makes for some delightful screwball comedy as they continually find themselves stranded. 

Anyone even marginally familiar with Steve Martin or John Candy’s work can see how inspired their casting was for a film with such a premise. These guys are their characters, and their characters are them. Their chemistry is palpable even as Neal’s standoffishness increasingly and hilariously chafes up against Del’s inability to take a hint. Hence the litany of endlessly-quoted one liners—some scripted, some improvised—which have cemented themselves in the American pop-culture lexicon (“Those aren’t pillows!”). 

And yet such iconic moments were ultimately conjured by Hughes’ brisk and gratifying script, as well as his willingness to let the performers make it their own. As Kevin Bacon—who has a brief cameo at the beginning of the film as the guy Neal races to hail a cab during rush hour—once recalled, “He wasn’t precious about his own dialogue. He was precious about his characters.”

One might recall the motel scene—in which Neal ruthlessly explodes on Del, only for Del to soberly reaffirm his security with himself, with all his idiosyncrasies and eccentric tendencies—as one of many in the film that cracks you up while tugging at your heartstrings. This is where the film hits a sweet spot: one where farcical comedy is balanced seamlessly with sincere emotional drama. Martin and Candy elevate the latent sentimentality in Hughes’ script to surprisingly moving ends, and Hughes relishes in it. Perhaps more so than National Lampoon’s and Home Alone—both of which Hughes wrote, but did not direct—Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ direction seems to be in perfect harmony with its performers, mining Martin and Candy’s brilliance for all it’s worth.

Above it all, Neal and Del’s ultimate connection—one between two lonely men who, under different circumstances, would likely remain total strangers—is what maintains the film’s continued resonance. We care about these characters because, in a way, they are us. Perhaps even more so today than in 1987, the tedium of our routines so often alienates us from our neighbors. It would not be difficult to imagine a contemporaneous version of this film sending up the impersonality of ridesharing and the gig economy. (When was the last time you made meaningful conversation with your Uber driver? What if you were now stuck with them?) 

Underneath all the film’s warm-and-fuzziness is a sort of universal truth, an exercise in empathy that has maintained its potency. As Hughes once said about the film: “I like taking dissimilar people, putting them together, and finding what’s common to us all.” These themes are not new, but they are universal—and when delivered skillfully and sincerely, comedy can become quite affecting. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is one of those films that feels like a rarity in big studios’ output today and yet timeless nonetheless, which is perhaps why it is remembered so fondly. This is a comedy that set a standard for the genre—even if, at the end of the day, it was all in the holiday spirit.

Score: 19/24

Written by Connell Oberman

You can support Connell Oberman in the following places:

Twitter: @ObermanConnell
Instagram: @connello_22
Substack: ConnellOberman

Thanksgiving (2023)
Director: Eli Roth
Screenwriters: Jeff Rendel
Starring: Patrick Dempsey, Nell Verlaque, Addison Rae, Rick Hoffman, Milo Manheim, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Gina Gershon

There were quite a few issues with the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez exploitation double feature ‘Grindhouse’ from 2007, with Rodriguez’s film Planet Terror admittedly being the superior film to Tarantino’s Death Proof, which whilst not awful, is certainly his worst film so far. What was possibly the best part of both films were the opening few minutes, which contained mock trailers for exploitation horror films before the main feature. Out of these came Rodriguez’s Machete in 2010, which somehow has become Danny Trejo’s modern day calling card, and Hobo with a Shotgun starring Rutger Hauer in 2011. Now, twelve years after the last feature-length version, and sixteen years after the fake trailer short film first aired in the double bill, Eli Roth brings us Thanksgiving, a pure exploitation slasher flick of the greatest kind.

Following a massacre at a Black Friday sale at RightMart, the next year’s thanksgiving is rightly looked to with apprehension. Demonstrations to close down the store, comments towards the store owner’s daughter, Jessica (played by Nell Verlaque), and the return to town of her old boyfriend, Bobby (played by Thomas Brooks) are just small parts of it. The more pressing issue is that someone has stolen an axe from a mock-up of John Carver’s ancestral home, and there are a load of masks of his face being handed around for the upcoming parade. Someone is back for revenge, and this time there will be no leftovers. So says the tagline.

The poster designs for Thanksgiving have shown clearly where the film’s interests lie, as four are variations of old slasher posters, from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) to Halloween (1978). The original Grindhouse short was very much a love letter to these films of the seventies and eighties. However, it would be remiss to say that Thanksgiving is simply an 80s tribute, because whilst there are moments (even referencing slightly lesser known entries like Prom Night and even Happy Birthday To Me), there’s as much praise given to the neo-slashers of the modern era. The slick stylings of Kevin Williamson-penned slashers like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer are front and centre, and Roth’s swift direction and Rendel’s dialogue make it clear that this is a modern film which isn’t interested in replicating the crackly quality of the 80s, as the film Abrakadabra (2018) did to stylistically replicate the 70s giallo. There’s as much tribute paid to old schlock like My Bloody Valentine and New Year’s Evil (80s slashers, after Halloween, took any national holiday they could to make a film around) as there is to Happy Death Day. Thanksgiving is traditional in sentiment and tropes, but modern in its slick execution.

It is precisely this balance that makes Thanksgiving so fun to watch. Yes, it’s violent to the extreme, with gnarly gore and twisted deaths, and if that’s not your cup of tea then the film won’t be for you, but this amount of red meat is to be expected of Roth, who has never shied away from ripping off body parts for the past twenty years. Yes, the formula is baked into the film’s very existence, and Roth never tries for a single second to step away from it. It is cliched to the hilt, shining its axe blade to a finely honed edge of horror formula. Yes, it never for a second tries to do a single thing which might be considered new or innovative or interesting from a standpoint of pushing things forward.

Yet that is the exact point of the film. This is a love letter to all of the teen slasher’s history, from Blood and Black Lace’s giallo beginnings to the most recent Scream films. The characters are stock but well acted, music by Brandon Roberts in the now-traditional orchestral stylings that Marco Beltrami used to great effect in Scream doing its job, and everything slots together nicely in the final product.

There’s a strong anti-capitalist message which comes and goes in varying strength depending on when the plot calls for it, and the clunkiness of its execution in this department isn’t going to score it any points, but there is, at least, something in there. It doesn’t simply use teen technology as a joke, although it also doesn’t put its full weight behind using it to give the message of the viral nature of crime and the desensitisation to violence as it seems to think it is doing. Perhaps this would be explored in a sequel, as the film certainly leaves enough scope and enough lingering doubts as to warrant it. There are no loose ends, but there’s a feeling that things aren’t all said and done.

For the most part, however, Thanksgiving does exactly what it says it’s going to. It gives a good, bloody slasher flick with confident writing and directing, and whilst it never achieves anything distinctly new, it is as monolithic a tribute to the slasher film as there ever has been, without going postmodern and meta to name-and-shame every film it stole a shot from. It feels very much like a film which heralds the end of an era for the slasher film, as the reboots of Halloween and Scream have seemed to begin to usher in a new wave of the formula. The film holds its axe high to the world and confidently, without shame, declares, ‘I am a slasher film, and I love it.’

Score: 18/24