Happy Turkey Day!! Nothing celebrates that more than a horror film about a fast food chicken restaurant! In truth, my internal dialog of deciding what film I should review for Thanksgiving lasted all of five seconds. It was pretty much me thinking of Poultrygeist, deciding to do Poultrygeist, and then five minutes later realizing I could do Thankskilling instead but I had already committed my body to Poultrygeist.
I've brought up Troma films at least 20 times on this blog. If you're not familiar, or you're just joining us here at 30 Days of Plight, Troma is an independent film company mostly known for having made the Toxic Avenger films. They also put out some non-Troma Studio films such as Cannibal the Musical (a college film done by Matt Stone and Trey Parker). At its core, Troma carries a brand of low budget and offensive toilet humor that only a B-movie addict can love.
Truthfully, I forgot about how offensive this film really is at times.
The plot of Poultrygeist revolves around a fast food restaurant that is built upon what used to be a native burial ground and thus becomes cursed. Our main character, Arby (it's all fast food chain names and puns) gets a job there after he runs into his girlfriend protesting the chain. She had just left for college and suddenly become an overly political lesbian. That's kind of par for a teenage male. Do something dumb as an act of revenge in order to win love...
As the film rolls on, staff keep getting killed, patrons become chicken zombies, there are a lot of tits and gore, a gay character (Paco Bell) gets pulled into a meat grinder after jerking off into the meat and comparing it to an act of Che Guevara-esq rebellion, and we find out the protest and lead lesbian was doing it all as a ruse to promote the restaurant. That's a fucking long sentence of random shit.
Oh, did I mention this is also a musical? Because it is. The songs are actually well written even though the lyrics are middle school boy humor. In fact, as far as Troma films go, it seems like Lloyd Kaufman must've pulled some decent scratch together for this one. The costumes, effects, even the title sequence showed some backing and thus a greater sense of effort. This is not a slam on Troma's other films, it's just a big step up.
All in all, while I'm sure some of the things I brought up in this review have probably turned you off from ever watching it, Troma was my first and my continual personal motivation toward the idea that I could make a horror film. It's not about big budget, big effects, big names, big bullshit... it's about making something fun and having fun. I know from Lloyd's book that making a movie isn't easy, but these films make it seem attainable.
So I give Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead a solid 3 drumsticks out of 5:
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