Troma’s long-anticipated comeback movie on the good work recently done by the studio – the self-reflexive TERROR FIRMER and the pleasing CITIZEN TOXIE – and emerges as what might be their best ever movie. Never straying far from the toilet and full of the kind of shit / ass / tit humor you would expect, POULTRYGEIST is nonetheless a surprisingly amiable blast.
The setting is, of course, Tromaville, proudly proclaimed to be the Bulimia Capital of the world. In a pre-titles sequence that accurately sets the tone, a pair of teens eagerly dry hump in an Indian burial ground. Within a few minutes, ageing but mischievously young at heart Troma honcho Kaufman gives us boobs, anal fingering from a zombie, knicker sniffing, an axe-wielding peeping tom masturbating and a guy getting his guts ripped out through his ass. You know straight away that you’re in for fun times, and the rest of the movie does not disappoint.
Said Indian burial ground is subsequently bulldozed and stupidly replaced with a newly built American Chicken Burger, a fast food chain owned by “The General”. He’s a lot like K.F.C.’s The Colonel, albeit with a diaper fetish. A protest group quickly emerges to voice their anger at this development : that’s C.L.A.M. – Collegiate Lesbians Against Mega Conglomerations. The couple we saw at the outset have gone their separate ways : nebbish Jason Yachanin discovers that his girl (Kate Graham) has been led astray at college by some hairy-arm pitted dykes and is now a lipstick, left-wing lesbian liberal. He gets a job on the counter at American Chicken Burger in a bid to win her back, not banking on the fact that the restaurant is cursed : chicken monsters, a chicken-zombie plague and cinema’s grossest ever toilet scene (involving an extremely obese man and lots of spraying shit on the walls) soon follow.
Aside from being the first musical to ever feature songs merrily using the word “cuntface” and the phrase “eats snatch like a pro”, POULTRYGEIST is a consistently funny movie. Kaufman’s ever-eager desire to undermine political correctness here results in a wealth of Muslim / terrorist jokes, fat guy jokes (try not to heave at the toilet’s eye view shot of his crusty fat ass), vomit jokes, gay jokes (“How can I ever love someone who wants me to eat cock?”), Tom Cruise gay jokes (“I’m gay, as queer as a well known Hollywood Scientologist actor!”) and jokes involving people having anal sex with raw chickens. The regular gross-out skits run alongside a predictably very broad satire of the fast food industry, reflective of Kaufman’s long-held contempt of big business as a whole. Characters are named after Taco Bell, Denny’s, et al., and the absurdist premise is milked for all its worth (yes, there is a choking the chicken gag…).
It’s fair to say that any movie featuring a green chicken monster with punk black hair and pointy teeth hatching in a shit filled toilet would be worth a look regardless of what else it featured…but lifting POULTRYGEIST way above most of its kind is an appealing, spirited cast. There’s the expected Troma cameos from the likes of Debbie Rochon, Ron Jeremy (who’s very funny as a ACB customer) and Kaufman himself (“A turd is a turd, it’s still just a shit” he proclaims before dancing an Irish jig while showing his ass in a thong). It’s the leads who stand out : Yachanin is a likeably goofy hero with a pleasing Seymour Krelborn-quality. Particularly good is the sexy, very appealing Graham, who not only has fabulous small perky breasts and a lovely singing voice, but displays terrific comedy timing throughout. Perfectly in the spirit of the piece, she steals every scene she’s in and has an especially adorable comedy “run“. She is Troma’s best ever female lead.
The musical numbers are delightful and wittily executed, though you end up wishing there were more of them. The movie, however, is busy with activity, from an exposition-spouting talking burger to an assortment of objects being shoved up asses to an inspired spoof of Robert Shaw’s legendary USS Indianapolis speech from JAWS that involves the riotous phrase “Rooster. one footer…”. Kaufman’s movie parodies are notably funny in POULTRYGEIST : he finds time to crudely skewer JERRY MAGUIRE (“You had me at ‘shit-covered mongoloid’”) and THE EXORCIST via THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (“The box office power of Mel compels you…!”).
It climaxes with an extended, gore-filled set piece of erupting mayhem in the restaurant that’s full of old-school eye-popping, head-pulling, testicle-eating splatter make-up effects and is probably the highpoint of Troma gore to date.
With a marvelous title song, a lot of really good gags and a splendidly flippant, off-handed cynical ending, POULTRYGEIST is a real gift for long-term Troma fans. Quote the lines (“That reminds me…I must get a tampon!” / “He’s turned into a blackened Cajun chicken!”), buy the soundtrack and, most of all, watch the feature-length DVD making-of documentary. The latter, included on the superb 3 disc release, is an astonishingly honest and unflinching account of a very, very miserable shoot in which scheduling horrors, no money and the wildly unpredictable, often heartless behavior of Kaufman (bravely allowing himself to be seen as an on-set tyrant prone to bizarre preoccupations) contributed to a consistently low morale. Somehow, that misery does not show in the movie itself, which is huge fun.
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
