Awfully Good: Troma's Poultrygeist

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

With talk of Peter Dinklage starring in a new remake of THE TOXIC AVENGER, what better time to revisit another Troma trashterpiece?

Poultrygeist (2006)

Director: Lloyd Kaufman
Stars: Jason Yachanin, Kate Graham, Multiple Cocks

A fried chicken chain builds their latest franchise on a Native American burial ground (when will they ever learn?!), which naturally leads to all the customers and employees being turned in to giant zombie chickens.

I can say this with the utmost of confidence: POULTRYGEIST is by far the best musical-horror-comedy about undead domesticated fowl ever created.

Even though he knew his time was up, Denny was just happy he wasn’t the first one to die in this horror movie.

This 2006 schlockfest comes to us from Troma Studios, in particular its founder and legendary director Lloyd Kaufman. If you’re a regular reader of this column, you’re no doubt familiar with Troma, fine purveyors of such B-movie classics like THE TOXIC AVENGER, TROMEO AND JULIET, and the still-timely SURF NAZIS MUST DIE. Their trashy, vulgar and politically incorrect movies have been shocking and awing audiences since the 1970s, even providing early playgrounds for famous filmmakers like James Gunn and South Park’s Trey Parker and Matt Stone. And POULTRYGEIST, in true Troma fashion, is so wild and crazy it makes the concept of “over the top” seem subtle.

In case you didn’t have a clue what kind of movie this is, it opens with two teens having sex in a cemetery while the hands of the undead rise up from the ground to grope and digitally penetrate them. An axe murderer is…uh, enjoying himself nearby, only to be interrupted before he can claim his latest victims by zombies who give him what can only be described as a violent colonoscopy that ends with most of his insides on his outsides.

That’s all within the first few minutes and it only gets better (or worse, depending on your taste) from there.

A look inside NRA headquarters.

The content is decidedly lowbrow and the comedy is stupid and sophomoric. (My favorite joke involves a man whose reaction to getting disemboweled by giant feathered zombies during his lunch houris simply, “This…restaurant…is terrible!”) But that’s exactly what it’s going for. Kaufman, who himself is a Yale graduate, is master of making material that’s both incredibly dumb and also sort of smart. I mean, it takes a really special kind of filmmaker to drop in a gag about noted American chemist Jacob Marinsky in to a movie with the subtitle “Night of the Chicken Dead.”

Much of POULTRYGEIST is an obvious satire on corporate greed and rampant consumerism. Kaufman takes pride, as he always does, at mocking the hypocritical elites who don’t practice what they preach. Even when he’s being offensive for the sake of it (of which there’s plenty in this movie), it’s usually in service of a greater message. Even the basic concept of two of America’s most “disenfranchised races”—Native Americans and the millions of chickens turned in to pink slime for McDonalds—coming together to get supernatural revenge on everyone… well, I think that’s something we can all get behind this Thanksgiving.

Yes, they’re also surprised the director of this movie has an Ivy League education.

However, I don’t want to make this sound like some misconstrued work of cerebral genius. POULTRYGEIST is almost entirely lowest common denominator, decrepit filth with comic levels of gore and blood and pus and slime and vomit and feces. There’s something for everyone!

Topless sorority girls
Graphic explosive diarrhea
A musical number that features topless sorority girls and graphic explosive diarrhea
A talking, homosexual Sloppy Joe
Unexplained time travel
Raw chicken sex
Diaper fetishism
A giant chicken-shaped penis that exists solely to make a “choke the chicken” joke

The initial chicken zombie massacre also has some of the most insane kills you’ll see in a horror movie. Even if the first half is off-putting or hard to get through, it’s worth sticking around for all the pecked-out eyes, face rips, fried testicles, and a guy who grows eggs out of his chest, which immediately hatch and feed on him. It’s gross and gory and surprisingly well-executed for a movie with this budget.

I…I don’t have a caption for this.

So Oh, did I mention this is also a full-blown musical? The characters randomly break in to songs about everything from college sexual experimentation to the fast food industry. Hell, even the main chicken zombie gets to belt out a tune about why he’s turning his victims in to the new white meat. The song-and-dance numbers don’t always work, but there are a couple bops in there.

Here's a blank template to Photoshop in your loved ones. You're welcome!

At the end of the day, POULTRYGEIST is definitely not a film for everyone. But as pure trash cinema, it’s a pretty good example of Troma doing what Troma does best. And whether or not you find this entertaining, you definitely can’t accuse it of being boring.