Jun
15
I first discovered Troma movies when I was about 13. I’d recorded all three “Toxic Avenger” films when they were shown on the USA Network — in reverse-order for whatever reason — and watched them in one marathon, commercial-heavy, edited-for-TV sitting. Without the overabundance of nudity and graphic violence, they’re not quite as entertaining as the versions I now own on DVD. But they had an impact on me nonetheless.
The cheapo effects and criminally bad acting and clunky camerawork are enough to challenge the average movie-goer’s suspension of disbelief. But that’s sort of the point. Troma movies are intentionally god-awful. That they can be so craptacular and still entertain is the magic behind Lloyd Kaufman’s ouerve.
But not all Troma movies are gems of the grindhouse circuit. The ones I have are almost all exclusively produced in-house. Their negative pickups — with the exception of “Cannibal: The Musical” (directed by Trey Parker!) and “Bloodsucking Freaks” — are movies that aren’t films you watch, but power through. You think you’ve seen some bad movies? Pfft. I’ve seen some bad movies.
At any rate, “Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead” is not a bad movie. It’s not a bad movie in the sense that I found a lot to like about it. Judging the film by its visual treatment, its performances, and its plot is what elitist film critics would do. They’d be missing the point. Director (and Troma co-founder) Lloyd Kaufman has a style all his own. He rejects the overly polished and focus group-approved conventions of today’s big-budget films. There’s a quick and dirty charm here, a true wit at play.
The film’s about a fast food restaurant called American Chicken Bunker that opens on an old Indian burial ground for deceased poultry. Protesters outside the establishment aren’t happy about this new fast food franchise desecrating the graves of dead chickens. High school grad Arbie (Jason Yachanin) decides to put in for a job at the establishment to get back at his ex-girlfriend Wendy (Kate Graham), a protester who went off to college and came back with a girlfriend of her own. Contaminated food begins to mutate the restaurant patrons and protesters alike. Arbie and Wendy quickly find themselves in the fight for their lives against man-eating, beak-mouthed chicken zombies.
And it’s a musical.
I’d always wanted to see a musical in which the actors can’t really sing, the choreography looks like it was made up as they went along and an entire number is done topless. Apparently so did Lloyd Kaufman. After watching the tired and unimaginative “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” last Christmas, I was happy to see a horror movie musical that actually had fun with the songs. They didn’t treat them like something they had to get through to move on to the next scene.
The movie also gives Kaufman 90 minutes to put as many sacred cows through a meat grinder as he can. Troma has never been easy on Corporate America, and “Poultrygeist” stays true to Tromatic form. Fast food franchises and the military industrial complex are the film’s biggest targets. But where Morgan Spurlock couldn’t shut down the McDonald’s, and Michael Moore couldn’t bring an end to the Bush Administration and by extension the Iraq War, Kaufman’s learned to stop worrying and love our screwed up society. It’s his muse. If we lived in a Utopia, there’d be no Troma films. And who’d want to live in one then? Well, most people, probably. But I wouldn’t be among you.
-Brad Lohan
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