Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead

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Oh, Lloyd Kaufman...What would we do without your Troma Pictures and your Toxic Avengerses and your Classes of Nuke 'Em Highseses? As much, much younger people, we at the Here Be Spoilers Podcast used to enjoy your kookie hijinks, goofy songs and disgustingly graphic gore. To be honest, we still sorta do. And we can't help but notice, Lloyd...Lloyd? Are you still listening? As we were saying, Lloyd, we couldn't help but notice that the quality of the dialogue is improving. But that's about it.

Such is the case with this episode's movie, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. It's the story of a man and the love he has for a woman, and the love she has for another woman, and the Native American spirit-possessed zombie chickens who want to kill all of them and their friends in a fast food restaurant that is built on an ancient burial ground. You know...That old story.

The man, such as he is, is recent high school graduate Arbie (Jason Yachanin), who is quickly established as a talented dry-humper by his girlfriend, Wendy (Kate Graham), as they vigorously make out in the aforementioned burial ground as the movie opens. As things get more intense, they decide to forego clothes and just have at it. As they do, a number of hands pop out of the ground and begin to grope both of them, and neither appears concerned, even when one of the mysterious hands sticks a finger in Arbie's butt so deeply that it breaks off inside. Arbie's cool with it, and it seems to help his mood. Said mood, however, is quickly destroyed when Wendy spies a man (John Karyus) with an ax in one hand and his junk in the other. The axe hand isn't too busy, but the other is going to town, ruining the passion for our two teen heroes. Wendy runs off, Arbie yells at the guy for screwing up the moment, and the guy keeps crankin' his hog, choosing to sniff Arbie's left-behind underwear over Wendy's. Strange dude.

Four years later, Arbie visits town and finds an American Chicken Bunker restaurant opening in the same location. He also sees that there is a huge protest being organized by a lesbian organization called C.L.A.M. (Collegiate Lesbians Against Mega-conglomerations), of which he discovers Wendy is now a member. As is Wendy's new girlfriend, Micki (Allyson Sereboff), who is prepared to kick Arbie's ass. Arbie, distraught that his former girlfriend now prefers women, storms into the store, demanding a job from the manager, Denny (Joshua Olatunde), who hires Arbie as the new "counter girl". (He assures Arbie this is just a "term of endearment," but when Arbie is given his uniform, it is clearly a Girl Scout-sort of uniform with a tutu and, for some reason, a thong.) Thus Arbie enters the world of fast food!

Our heroes...?

Among his new co-workers are Jose Paco Bell (Khalid Rivera), Humus (Rose Ghavami) and Carl Jr. (Caleb Emerson), whose love of cooking chicken is matched only by his love of having sex with those chickens before they are unthawed and fried. Also, Carl Jr. looks like Screech from Saved by the Bell. And his buttcrack ends somewhere between his shoulder blades. We wish we didn't know that, but he has a tendency to display entirely too much bike rack throughout the movie.

Anyway, Denny opens the store, and their first "customer" is Crazy Ron (Ron "The Hedgehog" Jeremy), who comes in to yell a dire warning to everybody there. It's mostly incoherent, and we have speculated that Ron Jeremy had not been cast in the movie, but just happened to be there and thought he was in a real restaurant, and when this happened, director Lloyd Kaufman had the camera roll anyway, hoping to catch something he could use. But other than Ron, nobody else wants to come in, and Denny is distraught, worrying he has thrown away his grandmother's money on a place nobody wants to go to.

Remember to che your food.

In the kitchen, Paco is preparing some of the meat (grinding chicken heads and claws into a meat-like paste) while Humus does her hourly prayer by the time clock. When Paco decides to add some "spacial sauce" (yes, it's exactly as gross as you are imagining), a frozen possessed chicken attacks and pushes him into the grinder, spraying the kitchen, and the praying Humus, with blood and entrails.

At the same time, American Chicken Bunker owner General Lee Roy (Robin L. Watkins) arrives with several dancers and the company's mascot, a guy in a chicken suit, to see how the opening is going. He and Denny go into the kitchen and discover Humus and a gooey pile of Paco meat. They tell Humus to clean up the mess, and the General suggests turning the Paco meat into Sloppy Jose sandwiches, one of which gets possessed by Paco's spirit and begins to dispense wisdom to Arbie. He also demands that everyone say Paco went on vacation. Arbie, who had been in the basement storage area talking with the guy in the chicken suit (Lloyd Kaufman) about the General keeping chickens in concentration coops and how the building this restaurant has angered the Native American spirits buried here, returns and asks where Paco is. When he is told Paco took the day off, he accepts this almost immediately, despite the enormous pile of ground meat and guts with a Paco name tag on the floor.

Paco?!?

In the basement, Carl Jr. starts having sex with a frozen chicken. Really, there's no subtle way to say it. And he is really enjoying it. At least until it bites onto the end of his penis and refuses to let go. Screaming, he runs back up stairs, just as Humus has finished cleaning the kitchen area until it is spotless. Carl Jr. runs in, chicken still attached to his business, and sprays blood, gore and something green all over the place, including onto a row of buckets filled with fried chicken. He begs Humus to help him and falls over. Humus grabs her mop and rams it right into Carl Jr.'s butt, forcing it out through the other side, ripping off the tip of Carl Jr.'s penis with the end, where it sticks.

When Denny and the General return, they see the mess, blame it on Humus, and then take the buckets of fried chicken out to the protesters outside. Micki and Wendy start creaming at the General right away, but after trying the chicken, Micki changes her mind and suggests everybody eat the chicken, even though it is covered with green goop and bubbling yellow bits that, as you will recall, came from Carl Jr.'s body. Ick. But they crowd agrees and mobs the restaurant, including a guy named Jared (Joe Flishaker), whom Arbie believes is the guy from the sandwich commercials that lost a lot of weight. Jared demands food, and Arbie delivers, including a veiny egg that Jared scarfs down immediately. Jared reacts poorly and has to rush to the bathroom, where he straight-up wrecks the toilet (and walls and ceiling...you get the idea), and a smaller, skinnier version of himself escapes from inside.

Triangle of Power!

Arbie checks on Jared and discovers the horrible mess just as Denny comes to check on Arbie. Disgusted, he tells Arbie to clean up the mess, and he does, but not before performing a too-long musical number.

Wendy, now finding that her girlfriend has given up the fight against conglomerates, is conflicted, unsure whether to return to Arbie or keep fighting the restaurant. However, the decision is taken from her control when she discovers that Micki was planted in the C.L.A.M. organization to trick them into becoming advocates. It turns out Micki and the General were lovers all along! Wendy forces the General to eat some chicken, and he immediately has a bad reaction, running to the bathroom, where he lays an egg, after which it hatches and the chicken inside attacks him. He bites its head off, gets sprayed with its green blood, and turns into a murder chicken himself. Then he hunts down Denny, whose head he rips off. Dick move.

Mom? MOM?!?

Out in the main partof the restaurant, the customers and other employees have turned into chicken zombies, and it looks like Arbie, Wendy, Micki, Humus and a priest (Brian Cheverie) are about to die when the mascot shows up, strapped with an M-16 and ready to take down some murder chicken zombie people! He shoots zombie chicken General and then pulls out more guns (which he stores with the kids' meal toys), and tells Arbie that the two of them are the same person, but he, the mascot, is the older version. Almost immediately after, Denny comes back to life as a zombie chicken and bites off Old Arbie's nose, turning him into a murder chicken, as well.

But now that Old Arbie is a zombie chicken, will they survive? Will Carl Jr. return, waving his mop handle penis around? Will Wendy's running ever stop being funny? Will Arbie figure out a way to avoid the fate that his older self fell to? And how will they keep the zombie chickens outside from coming in?

You'll have to tune in to find out!

Derek thought this one was okay, but not great. As with any Troma film, you have to watch it for what it is, which is a low-budget trash flick. And on that score, it does its job. There are some dialogue highlights that really help it along.

Larry has an unhealthy appreciation for this film. Even taking Derek's advice about seeing it for what it is, Larry's enthusiasm for it is disturbing. It's very worrying, to be honest. We're thinking of having him committed.

Jake agreed that it wasn't terrible, especially because some of the jokes in the dialogue, but he also thinks there were too many poop jokes. (On this point, all three agree.) He also enjoyed the ending, which was quite a twist.

So put on your tutu, chug some meat steroids, and listen this week's episode!