The playfully named Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead doesn’t shy away from its Troma roots, and in fact director (and Troma president) Lloyd Kaufman seems intent on out-outlandishing their previous films, packing in more gross-out humor and satirical jabs than ever.
Consider the fact that the film opens with two high school students having sex on an Indian Burial Ground, when a zombie hand suddenly bursts out of the ground and fingers the guy in the bunghole, much to his delight (“Oh Wendy, it’s like you’re arm-bidextrous or something!”). And it gets worse from there.
Its main plot—which, as you can guess, is a fusion parody of Poltergeist and Night of the Living Dead—picks up one college semester after the opening sequence, where the high school sweethearts find their graveyard-slash-lovenest turned into another American Chicken Bunker. It’s a typical teen puppy love story: Guy meets Girl, Guy dry humps Girl, Guy goes all the way after graduation, Guy goes to different college than Girl, Guy finds Girl one semester later a liberal animal-loving lesbian activist, Guy applies to work at callous fast food restaurant as revenge. One of the film’s subtler jokes (and there aren’t many of them) is that all the main characters are named after crappy chain restaurants. There’s our undead-fighting hero Arbie (Jason Yachanin), his carpet-friendly girlfriend Wendy (Kate Graham), her new butch bunk-budy Micki (Allyson Sereboff). Then there’s stressed-out ACB manager Denny (Joshua Olatunde) and his employees: a gay Mexican named Paco Bell (Khalid Rivera), the poultry-raping yokel Carl Jr. (Caleb Emerson), and because there are no Muslim chain restaurants, the burqa-wearing butt-of-all-terrorist jokes is named Humus (Rose Ghavami). At the end of the day, all these people will have to defend the joint from customers turning into zombie chickens, and good ol’ Arbie even has to slay a were-chicken.
Aside from the pull-no-punches depiction of sleazy sex and gore which is a staple of Troma movies, Kaufman also inserts as much confrontational humor as possible, insulting Christians, Muslims, lesbians, liberals and right-wingers alike. Troma films are at their best when they have something to rally against—anything that can inspire anger, really, like jocks in Toxic Avenger or Ronald Reagan in Troma’s War—unleashing a fury of unfettered social commentary that is deliberately lost among all the blood and scat flying around. On that note, Poultrygeist would be the kind of satirical horror movie made by PETA activists on a bad day, if it didn’t spit on said activists just as hard.
Did I mention that it’s also a musical? Kaufman’s decision to have musical numbers was reportedly inspired by Takashi Miike’s Happiness of the Katakuris, but Miike’s influence on Kaufman didn’t end with its surreal happy-go-lucky song numbers. Kaufman, naturally, shares Miike’s perverse sense of humor; the kind that takes full delight in morbidity. You can either laugh along or risk hurling. The great thing about Troma is their spirit of independence, believing themselves to be held accountable to nothing and nobody. They’ve established a brand with a niche audience that understands what they do, which allows Kaufman to be daring (or perhaps, insane) enough to have a scene where an obese man eats his chicken while taking a dump, and includes a shot looking up the toilet bowl, feces shooting out the fat man’s butt in all its glory.
Like any Troma film, the novelty and the bad acting may wear thin after a while, but Poultrygeist has something noticeably insane every ten minutes or so to suck your attention back in. It’s a truly fowl film (sorry, couldn’t resist), but one that’s an absolute blast to watch if you can stomach it. Clearly Troma’s best success in years.
Side note: the press kit they sent me included an extra Kara-yolk-e DVD. I guess it’s so I can sing-along without having to watch the entire movie again. I’m still not sure if that’s a benefit or not. Still, very cool bonus. Perhaps they’ll package it with the DVD release.
