http://10moviestosee.com

That’s the tagline listed for this Poultrygeist on imdb.com. And that really should give you a pretty good indication of what to expect from this movie, which is to say, nothing.

In Grade 9 English class, they teach you that when something is satirical, it’s generally presented in a way that is over-blown and offensive so that, in comparison, the point the creator is trying to make seems completely normal. Well, if that’s true then I have to ask, what was ‘point’ here? That fast food is bad? That’s it killing our planet and us with it? That teenage girls with their tops off are fun? Well, duh. I’m not actually sure that those are points that needed to made, or that hadn’t been made so much better — and with the possibility of reaching a much wider audience — before.
The plot of the movie, if one could call it that, is two fold. There is a boy named Arbie who pines for an old girlfriend named Wendy, who has gone off to college and become a lesbian with a penchant for ’causes’. One of those causes is the second story in this movie, a fast food restaurant built on an old Indian (Native American) burial ground. It’s called ‘American Chicken Bunker’ (snort) and it’s run by a man who looks remarkably like ‘The Colonel’ and is called ‘The General’. Arbie decides to go get a job at ACB to annoy Wendy but what none of them know is that the ‘curse’ of the burial ground is coming to get them in the form of zombie chickens. That’s right. Zombie chickens.

So… um… yeah. After lots of gross-out jokes, one of which includes a shot from *inside* the toilet when a man is having a significant bowel issue, and some fairly catchy songs, most of the town is transformed into flesh eating chicken zombies and Arbie, Wendy, Denny, Carl Jr., and Paco Bell (Are you getting it yet? They’re lampooning fast food restaurant names. Isn’t that funny?!?!?) are left fighting to save the town and/or becoming zombies themselves who are, incidentally, killed by alcohol. (Get it? Alcohol? Like how the ‘White Man’ conquered the ‘Indian’? Funny, right?)

As you can see, I wasn’t impressed. It’s true, I did my fair share of laughing, but since this was Troma’s first movie in a long time I have to say it disappointed, which is setting the bar pretty low, all things considered. It’s very unfortunate because director Lloyd Kauffman commented in the Q & A afterwards that they wanted people to go generate buzz and if there was enough buzz, they could get it released to theatres and actually make some money. So then I have to ask, why didn’t you make a more accessible movie? If you’re trying to reinvigorate your franchise, then why make a movie you know won’t reach — can’t reach — a larger audience, when there have been much more successful, much less offensive, Troma movies produced in the past? It’s very unfortunate that I can’t seem to find an answer for this. I admire Mr. Kauffman for continuing to make movies, much in the way I admire Dr. Uwe Boll, but when one man makes a movie that people simply don’t like and the other makes a movie that people *can’t* like, it’s hard to get behind this brand. I have a very high tolerance for gross-out humor and for political satire, but I just didn’t see where this was making any kind of political statement that it was important for people to sit through all the crap (literally and figuratively) to attempt to understand.

Bring back the Toxic Avenger, man. Now THAT was a movie that made a point. Well, not really. But it was SO much more fun, although it was diminished by its lack of zombie chickens.