Sunday, August 9, 2009

Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006)



If you are having a horror moviethon with a group of fellow enthusiasts or just need to 'clear the decks' after watching a poor horror movie, then pop a Troma movie into your DVD player. It really serves as a great mental palate cleanser. Well, cleanse is not an appropriate word, as there is nothing 'clean' about this movie. Troma really has cornered the market on funny/gross/tastless/outlandish/sometimes horrifiying content in their movies and their latest feature really serves as another solid example of this in their canon.

It involves a fastfood chicken franchise built on sacred burial ground and the resultant wave of chicken/hominid zombies which wages a very messy assault on the employees therein. It comes packed to the gills with buckets of blood/fluid splatters, piles of dismembered limbs, reams of crude jokes and gags, and handfuls of bared breasts. It never terrifies, as Troma is never one to take themselves too seriously. Per their norm, they are too busy trying to get to the next sight gag, deluge of blood, or shot of gratuitous nudity - often some delightful combination thereof. The acting is amateur at best, budget is obviously low, and again these are known factors when sitting down to watch a Troma feature. The new aspect that Troma reveals with this movie is several musical numbers. Now I know what you might be saying, "Karl, Fuck that shit, I hate musicals!" or possibly just wretching uncontrollably at the mere mention of the word. Well, there are only a few songs, and they are suitably crude and funny, per Troma's gutter levels of taste. I actually enjoyed them.
I know! It seems like crazy talk, but I speak the truth.

So with all the given pros and cons that Troma brings to the table, this one rates a solid 3 Georges.

1 comment:

Jay Clarke said...

Yeah, saw this at After Dark a few years ago, seeing the reactions on my friends' faces (some of which were Troma virgins) during certain parts was as fun as the movie itself. A riot.