Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006)

Something I’ve thought of doing for a few weeks now was a running commentary of one of the movies as I watch it.  I’m not talking about an audio commentary.  I have nowhere that I would be able to record one of those in this house.  Add to that, I don’t have a particularly good radio voice.  I don’t want to irritate all of you with that experience.  Instead, I am going to do a written commentary as I watch this week’s Sunday “Bad” Movie, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.

Just a little bit of warning before I get underway with this post.  This will probably be a long one.  I’m sure I can get out a lot of writing in a commentary form.  If it’s “too long; didn’t read,” I completely understand.  I hope you’ll stick around though because I feel like this is going to be an interesting experience in the history of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  Without further ado, here is my written commentary for Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.

Poutrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead begins with the classic Troma presentation card.  That same card has been featured twice before in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  The first time was when Chopper Chicks in Zombietown was featured.  The second time was for the movie Monster in the Closet.  That makes this the third Troma film included in these posts.  It will not be the final Troma film featured.

Having seen the movie before, I can better appreciate how Poultrygeist’s opening scene sets up what the movie will be.  It introduces the characters of Arby (Jason Yachanin) and Wendy (Kate Graham), who are both named after fast food chains.  They are dry humping, and eventually having sex, in a Native American cemetery.  Whilst in the middle of making love, hands emerge from the graves and one puts a finger in Arby’s butt.  This is the kind of humor that will remain throughout the runtime.  It’s not particularly funny at all.  It more goes for the lowest level of sex and gross out jokes.  There is also a reference to the Native chief from The Village People being buried there.  References to well-known things will also be a big part of the movie.  At the end of the scene, a character enters the graveyard masturbating.  He ends up having a corpse sodomize him to death in a gory fashion, which helps to establish one of the other two main aspects of the film.  A lot of the movie will be bad humor and gore.  There’s still one more element to establish, but I’ll write about that soon.

After the opening title pops up, it is revealed that a new fast food restaurant called American Chicken Bunker has been built on the cemetery.  Many movies and television shows involve buildings that are constructed atop burial grounds.  Most notably is Poltergeist, a movie that is clearly an inspiration for the title of Poultrygeist.  Protestors are angry about the new chicken restaurant.  These protestors include Wendy, who joined CLAM (College Lesbians Against Mega-Conglomerates) while she was away at college for a semester.  The comedy in the movie is already wearing thin five minutes in.

Upon learning about Wendy’s experimentation at college, Arby becomes upset and breaks into song.  That’s right.  Poulltrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead is a musical.  A gory, unfunny comedy, with musical sequences scattered throughout.  Yachanin’s singing is mediocre, however the music gives a break from the obnoxious forwardness of the crude humor that has been present.  The crude humor is still present throughout the first song (Revenge is a Dish Best Served Fried).  That hasn’t changed at all.  Yet, in musical form, it feels less abrasive.  The music helps to make the jokes bearable, and there is some clever phrasing through the fast food puns interspersed throughout it.

There are a few more characters that get introduced in the next portion of the film.  Denny (Joshua Olatunde), Jose Paco Bell (Khalid Rivera), and Carl Jr. (Caleb Emerson) are all employees at American Chicken Bunker.  They hire Arby as a new employee and notice some strange things happening with the chickens and eggs that may or may not lead to danger later on in the film.  We are also introduced to Humus, the cook.  Each of the characters fits some sort of stereotype.  Most of them are racial stereotypes.  Carl Jr. is a southerner.

Ron Jeremy shows up for a minute to shout about how the American Chicken Bunker is located on an Indian burial ground, as if we didn’t already know that.  Thanks, Ron Jeremy.

One of the next customers is Jared (Joe Fleishaker).  He is Poultrygeist’s attempt at making fun of the Subway spokesman that many people have probably forgotten about in the eight years since this movie was released.  He eats one of the weird looking eggs that were found in American Chicken Bunker and needs to use the washroom.  When Wendy comes into the restaurant to confront Arby about working there, you hear Jared’s farting the entire time.  Is that funny?  Not at all.  What is even less funny is Arby’s fantasy about having sex with Wendy and her friend Micki (Allyson Sereboff), only for it to be revealed that Arby is sexing up a cash register.

Cut back to Jared who explodes in the bathroom.  Or, I should say, has explosive bloody diarrhea, poops out an unseen chicken monster, and has a skinnier version of himself tear out of his stomach.  I don’t know what to say about that.  At all.  I have no idea what I can possibly say about that.

Then my favourite song of the movie starts.  It’s called Slow Fast Food Love, and I’m sure the rest of the movie will be downhill from here.  This is only twenty minutes into the movie.  The movie is nearly a hundred minutes long.  I’m about a fifth of the way through.  There’s something about the music throughout Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.  The songs are more inspired in their humor.  There is some thought put into the entirety of every song that isn’t put into the jokes outside of them.  The songs seem carefully written.  And they are catchy, even if the singing is bad.  All of this is especially true of Slow Fast Food Love.  Instead of being the obvious sexual jokes, the song is filled with puns and fast food metaphors which make me chuckle.  Having Arby sing about wanting Wendy’s breasts, legs, and thighs is a much better joke than, for example, the humping of the cash register.  The song works, whereas the unsung jokes do not.

After the song concludes we are introduced to the human villain of Poultrygeist.  His name is General Lee Roy (Robin L. Watkins), and he owns American Chicken Bunker.  He also wants to sing a song.  We get a song almost right after a song.  This song is titled Generous General and is General Lee Roy defending himself and his corporation against the questions of the protestors outside his restaurant.  It’s a simple back and forth that moves the story forward in an entertaining but not completely pleasing way.  Like I said, some of the singing in this movie is bad, and Sereboff’s vocals might be the worst of them all.  Having her sing a portion of this song is irritating.

If you thought that Poultrygeist couldn’t get stranger, you’re in for a treat.  Arby meets a version of himself from the future, played by Lloyd Kaufman.  While that is happening, Jose Paco Bell is masturbating into some chicken slop in front of Humus.  An evil chicken pushes Jose Paco Bell into a grinder and he is killed.  Everyone accuses Humus of killing him.  The Arbys hear the sound of the death but do nothing about it.  Instead, old Arby sings a song.

Old Arby is Lloyd Kaufman, the guy in charge of Troma.  Aside from the two movies I’ve watched for the Sunday “Bad” Movies that he has produced for Troma, he was also in two other ones.  Those movies were Bachelor Party in the Bungalow of the Damned and Big Ass Spider!  Kaufman and Yachanin sing a song called Longing to Live/Waiting to Die.  The song has some Irish influence, I’d say, and isn’t too bad.  Again, the vocals aren’t great, but the song is still a good time.  The Arbys are talking about their troubles in life, their struggles, and their goals.  It means something and that’s all that matters.

General Lee Roy wants to keep the restaurant open after the death.  This leads to Arby selling Sloppy Joses, and talking to one in the kitchen.  The Sloppy Jose is actually Paco Bell.  Paco foretells what is going to happen because of the burial ground and the angry chicken, and right before saying how to defeat the evil, General Lee Roy eats him.  Okay.  So that happened.

The next scene involves beastiality and necrophilia as Carl Jr. decides to have sex with the raw chicken that killed Paco Bell.  Not that he knows it killed Paco Bell.  This doesn’t end well for Carl Jr. as the chicken attacks his penis in a wild display of blood and green slime.  Blood and green slime are a big part of the movie as can already be seen.  If you aren’t into that kind of thing, I think you should stay away from Poultrygeist.  That’s what a lot of it is.  This chicken sex does lead to one of the most interesting visuals of the film.  When Carl Jr. runs into the kitchen, making a mess of what Humus just finished cleaning, he demands help.  Humus shoves the mop handle up his butt and out his penis to remove the chicken.  We see Carl Jr. from the front with the mop sticking through his crotch and it is a well done practical effect.

Aside from being a disgusting gore-filled scene in the movie, the point of the Carl Jr. scene was to cause all of the fried chicken to get infected with the possessed chicken and burial ground evil.  The green slime and blood went all over some buckets of chicken that were soon to be handed out to the protestors out front of the restaurant.  As much as I dislike most of the humor and think the movie is crude just to be crude, there is a story being told and it’s told fairly well.  Each scene means something to the story and pushes it forward.  The songs highlight emotions and character stuff, but the rest of the movie still fluidly moves toward an endpoint.  That aspect of Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead is admirable even if I don’t like the movie as a whole.

This is about halfway through the movie’s full runtime and is the turning point of the film.  All of the protestors, except for Wendy, eat the chicken and go into the restaurant.  They are no longer raging against the corporate machine because the chicken tasted so good.  Micki is no longer a lesbian.  Instead, she is role-playing mother and baby with General Lee Roy.  The party doesn’t last long as everyone who ate the chicken quickly begins to throw up green slime.  To prove that there is something wrong with the chicken, Wendy coaxes General Lee Roy to eat some.  He immediately needs to use the washroom and he lays an egg in the toilet.

I would like to note that In the Hall of the Mountain King plays while General Lee Roy fights the chicken zombie monster thing that hatches from that egg.  This song is used in a large number of movies and television shows.  It’s always an enjoyable song and it gets stuck in my head for hours.  I love it though.

People begin turning into zombie chickens.  Carl Jr. becomes one.  General Lee Roy becomes one.  Strangely, nothing seems to be happening to Micki, even though she was the first person to eat any of the infected chicken.  The unnamed background employees even become chicken zombies.  Then the General Chicken decapitates Denny because why not.  I feel like the movie is going to devolve into mayhem now, for the remainder of the runtime.

In another interesting visual, the employee chickens cut up a random person into small pieces and serve him in a bucket to some other chicken people.  I say interesting in that I appreciate the reversal of positions between the people and chickens in the fast food setting.  It’s basically saying that what we do to chickens is as bad as what these chickens are doing to us.  That sentiment is true, though it’s not going to persuade me to stop eating chicken.

The four remaining main characters Arby, Wendy, Humus, and Micki try to escape but get pinned down by a restaurant full of chicken zombies.  Luckily old Arby shows up and shoots all of the chicken zombies.  As he is about to kill the General chicken, Denny shows up and bites off his nose.  Then young Arby kills Denny.  That’s about ten seconds of the movie.  And the characters aren’t even safe.  Outside, there is a horde of chicken zombies ready to enter the restaurant.  Wendy solves the problem by turning the open sign to closed.  The chicken zombies leave.

Old Arby calls young Arby a dumbass and dies.  Micki acts like a dumbass and goes outside into the horde of chicken zombies while wearing a chicken mascot suit.  She sees a Native American guy.  Carl Jr. chicken zombie is still alive, decapitates some woman whose daughter is missing, then fights with Arby.  Arby stops fighting Carl Jr. and demands to know how to defeat the monsters.  Carl Jr. says alcohol.  Arby kills Carl Jr.

This is becoming a lot of me just relaying exactly what is happening in the movie.  That’s because there isn’t much else to write about at this point.  Everything is plot right now.  There’s no depth to it.  It is death, fight, death, blood, fight, dumbass, death, and more blood.  The songs disappeared a long time ago.  Characters are dying all over the place.  And there’s about ten or fifteen minutes left.

Micki returns to the restaurant, finally having transformed into a chicken zombie.  I mean, she was the first person to eat the infected chicken.  She should have already turned.  She is more than the other chicken zombies though.  Micki chicken has a vagina that has a chicken head that comes out of it and tries to attack Wendy.  I guess that could be why it took her so long to transform.  Old Arby also turned into one of the monsters, and young Arby must fight both monsters while making sexually suggestive references like getting one chicken off and choking the chicken.

Why did Humus just drink a bunch of meat steroids, Hulk up, have her eyes pop out of her head, then fall on the floor?  That was odd.

So, Micki chicken and old Arby chicken are trying to kill Arby and Wendy.  Arby decides that’s the right time to flashback to a lot of stuff in the movie, including all the reasons that alcohol would kill the monsters, Wendy and Micki topless and making out, and two seconds before when Wendy and Arby stumbled upon a keg of beer.  It’s a humorous flashback, though it isn’t at all necessary.  I like the gag anyway.  Coming out of the flashback and discovering that Wendy killed the monsters is a good punchline to it as well.

The horde outside comes inside.  Arby says “Humus, didn’t you die?”  The response of “No time to explain” got a chuckle out of me.  In the final fifteen minutes or so, the movie has toned down the crude humor, and pushed forward these other jokes that work much better than the obnoxious poop and sex jokes of the rest of the movie.  I’m having a good time in the climax.

A song!  The three heroes find the child they were looking for and get trapped by a chicken monster in the storage room that happens to be filled with hatching eggs.  Arby confesses his love for Wendy.  She accepts it.  And then the chicken monster breaks into a song.  I think the song is Murderous General.  That means that the General Chicken wasn’t killed by old Arby.

Remember what I said about the crude humor being gone?  Forget that.  The General Chicken dies because he has gas, farts, and explodes.  And the day is saved.  Yippee.  At least one of the characters agrees with me that it was anti-climactic.  Oh, it was the Paco Sloppy Jose that made him fart and explode.  And now we get a bunch of sandwich jokes.  I am unimpressed by this scene.  So unimpressed.

It’s a good thing this movie is racist because when Humus takes off her robe, she is wearing a bomb.  You know, because she’s Middle Eastern.  She martyrs herself to destroy the rest of the chicken zombies while Arby, Wendy, and the little girl escape.  And we get to see an explosion.  And I’m pretty sure I just remembered what the final moments of the movie are.

They drive away.  The little girl lays an egg.  The car crashes.  It explodes.  Yeah, that’s what I remember.  The re-used car crash from Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D.  It’s something that Lloyd Kaufman apparently uses a lot in his movies.  I haven’t seen too many of his movies so I couldn’t tell you for sure.

The final credits have a song called Poultrygeist that I don’t really care for.  There are also clips of the chicken zombies doing the Thriller dance because a comedy with zombies has to include that.  It’s like a requirement.  And then we get a slowed down version of Slow Fast Food Love because it’s the best song in the movie and has to be used as much as possible.

Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead is done.  98 minutes of people making sex jokes and racist jokes and puns.  About half an hour of it was actually entertaining.  The other hour and eight minutes was tough to sit through.  I did it anyway, for this post.  I have no plans of ever returning to this movie.  Then again, that’s what I said the first time I watched it.

This is the longest post I’ve ever written for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I’m not sure it was a good idea to write about the movie the way I did.  Writing it while watching it makes the experience take longer.  When that is done with a movie that I don’t particularly like, it feels kind of excruciating.  I’ll have to think long and hard about if I’m ever going to do a written commentary on the movie again.  It seemed like a good idea when I started.  Now, I’m not so sure.  If you think it’s a good idea, put that in the comments section.

This is about to get longer because of these notes:

• Troma produced two movies that have previously been featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  The movies are Chopper Chicks in Zombietown and Monster in the Closet.
• This is Lloyd Kaufman’s third Sunday “Bad” Movie acting role.  The other two were Big Ass Spider! and Bachelor Party in the Bungalow of the Damned.
• Jamie Greco appeared in Poultrygeist.  He was also in Glitter. 
• Also in Poultrygeist was an actor named John Karyus who was in The Summer of Massacre.
• Casey Smith appeared in Poultrygeist and was also in New Year's Eve.
• If you want to see more posts like this, comment below.  You can also comment about whether or not you like Poultrygeist.
• Do you have suggestions for future Sunday “Bad” Movies?  Suggest them to me on Twitter or suggest them in the comments.