Welcome back to B-Movie Enema and the final week of Troma Month!

This month has been a fun one, hasn’t it? Whether it’s a love letter to Kaufman’s appreciation of William Shakespeare in the romance Tromeo and Juliet, or the earlier Tromaville kids run amok horror Class of Nuke ‘Em High, or the most Troma film of them all, Terror Firmer… It’s been a good time visiting these classics from the 80s and 90s master of gross-out comedy, horror, and comedy-horror, Lloyd Kaufman. But now, we bring things to a close with another dark comedy-horror from the man himself. However, this time, we have a bit of a twist.

This time we have a musical.

Yes, it’s Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. This time around, Kaufman has a little uncredited help from one of the co-writers of the film, Gabriel Friedman. Friedman would go on to be a producer for specials for the cable channels E! and G4, as well as for online series like The IGN Show. In fact, he mostly worked on a lot of specials and behind-the-scenes stuff, including making-of documentaries for Troma films like Terror Firmer and Citizen Toxie. His writing credits are mostly for Troma films like this one, Make Your Own Damn Movie!, the aforementioned fourth Toxie flick, and Lloyd Kaufman’s most recent, #ShakespearesShitstorm.

Like with Tromeo and Juliet, Poultrygeist was a movie that took years to go from conception to completion. It took roughly six years to get it released. Like all other Troma films, it was made on a shoestring budget of only $500,000. As was commonly the case, the film was mostly funded by Kaufman and his Troma co-head Michael Herz. However, to help out, Lloyd’s own wife, Patricia, dipped into the couple’s retirement savings account to kick in a little extra. Keeping the costs down, producer Andy Deemer opted to put ads out on sites like Craigslist and horror fan message boards to find production crewmembers. Some of the volunteers came from as far away as Sweden, Germany, and even Australia. It just goes to show you that people love Lloyd Kaufman and Troma.

As nice as it all that sounds, the production was plagued with one problem after another. Some of these problems had to do with malfunctions of practical special effects, shooting schedules going too long, part of the set being deconstructed before its needs were fulfilled, and, maybe one of the more uncommon issues for a Kaufman-led production, pay disputes with actors. All that said, the movie did finally get completed and did okay enough with an extremely limited theater run before getting onto home video where most of its popularity would be found. On IMDb, it currently holds a respectable 6.0/10 from nearly 10,000 user ratings. On Rotten Tomatoes, it does have a fresh rating with 64% of registered critics giving it a positive review.

One interesting controversy (for lack of a better word) from this movie that ultimately made national news concerned a man buying a DVD cleaning disc from a video store. The package containing what was supposed to be the cleaning disc was sealed. However, when the customer got home and put it into his player to clean it, the disc actually contained Poultrygeist. This “horrified” the customer. He told the news that he found what was on screen from what he thought was a cleaner was “disgusting” and even went so far as to call it a “triple-X” film. No charges were filed over whatever might have been illegal, but since it was pre-packaged from a distributor in Oakland, California, neither the video store nor Kaufman and Troma would have had any liability anyway.

While there are a few recognizable faces from previous Troma movies like Debbie Rochon and Ron Jeremy (who appeared in last week’s Terror Firmer as Casey’s disfigured and fucked up father), what is going to be mostly recognizable in this movie that takes place at a fast food joint are the names. Each of the main characters possesses a name based on a fast food joint. So, with that, let’s dive into this big conclusion to Troma Month!

Right out of the gate, we get jokes and we get sex. The jokes surround the setting – the burial ground of the Tromahawk Indians. Inside, all the headstones make references to various Native American peoples like the Indian Chief from the Village People.

As for the sex, we meet Arbie and Wendy, young lovers who are kind of doing it. Wendy comments on how Arbie is the greatest dry-humper she’s ever been with. Arbie says that’s what everyone on the basketball team says too. But then it dawns on him… If he’s the best dry-humper Wendy’s ever been with, who else is she dry-humping? He gets over it when she takes off her bra and decides they can go from dry-humping to wet-humping.

It should be mentioned that Arbie is definitely playing outside his league. Wendy’s a cutie. He’s not bad, but he’s kind of dorky and he’s kind of dim-witted and overly emotional. He cries over the thought that she’s headed off to college and will be surrounded by lots of hot guys with trust funds and whatnot. She says he can go to the same college she is, but as Arbie puts it, his “mom’s a retard and my dad’s blind.” That means he’s gotta stay behind to care for them.

What they don’t realize is they are being watched from the bushes. When Wendy thinks she heard something in the distance, Arbie says that there’s no trouble here and hasn’t since those kids got decapitated there not that long ago. As they fuck on some graves, zombified hands from the Tromahawk tribe start to push out of the ground to get their opportunity to feel some hot, young, ALIVE flesh. One of the zombies even puts a finger up Arbie’s asshole.

They were being watched after all. The gravedigger was watching and masturbating. When he is discovered by the lovers, they run off. One of the zombies shoves a fist up the gravedigger’s ass and rips his innards out.

Sometime later, the Tromahawk Tribe Burial Ground was completely excavated. All that remains is the broken down sign. What’s in the graveyard’s place is another American Chicken Bunker, a fast food chain that specializes in lamb chops… Nah, I’m fuckin’ with ya. It’s a chicken shack. Lloyd Kaufman used an abandoned McDonald’s to shoot the movie. If you remember what McDonald’s looked like 20 years ago, you see it right away with the doors.

Arbie arrives at the American Chicken Bunker and is confused by the lack of a burial ground. What he finds is a collection of protesters. They are protesting the chicken shack by combining both the loss of the sacred burial ground and the “genocide” of chickens. A group of collegiate lesbians are also protesting with the larger group. One of those collegiate lesbians happens to be Wendy.

Arbie tries to reconnect with Wendy and says he knows a cemetery they can go to pick up where they left off. However, Wendy says she’s now with a woman, named Micki, and breaks up with him. To get back at Wendy and the other protesters, he decides he will get a job at the American Chicken Bunker.

Speaking of the American Chicken Bunker, there’s trouble afoot. You see, you mess about with a sacred Indian burial ground, especially in a movie, you’re going to get some bad business going down. Then, when you do that shit in Tromaville? Oh, forget about it. You’re totally fucked. So, yeah, in a box of 100% USDA Grade Tolerable Chicken (seriously, get used to that concept the way things are going in 2025 and beyond with all the cutbacks), shit starts smoking and glowing.

Also, I love Sloppy Jose.

Also also, I’m not sure I love the quality of eggs we’re getting at these prices and in this economy. I prefer my eggs to not look like how my testicles feel. Wait… Is that a good visual to give the readers? Should I maybe try to downplay I have weird balls? Meh… Fuck it.

Anyway… Arbie goes inside and asks Denny, the American Chicken Bunker manager, for a job. He repeats that his mother is a retard and his father is blind and he’s just trying to make his way through life. He’s instantly hired. We meet the other employees at the restaurant. There’s Paco Bell, a gay line cook. Carl Jr is another cook who has a fetish for chicken carcasses. Then, there’s Hummus. Denny initially pronounces it “Hamas” much to her disdain. After flipping out, Denny calls her an affirmative action hire.

Damn… Between Hamas, DEI, eggs, and bird flu probably turning chickens into killer zombies, I didn’t quite expect this movie to be so topical nearly 20 years after its release.

After opening the restaurant, one of those veiny, Geoff’s balls-lookin’ eggs ends up on Jared from Subway’s plate. Wait… Gotta back up here. The first customer who came barging into the restaurant was Ron Jeremy warning them of their location being built upon an Indian burial ground. After a frantic few moments of trying to get the workers to hear him out, he calms down and orders a Sloppy Jose meal. Another guy came in who Arbie recognized as Jared, the guy who lost all that weight eating those sub sandwiches. He’s even managed to keep off the weight! I bet Lloyd Kaufman really enjoyed how history would play out for Jared from Subway.

Anyway, Jared eats one of the cursed eggs. Instantly, it makes him have to drop a massive dump. He shits his brains out and calls out that he’s turning into a shit geyser. Wendy tries to show all the atrocities this restaurant is causing to the customers while Jared is shitting his brains out. Arbie gives an impassioned speech to Micki about General Lee Roy, the founder of American Chicken Bunker, and how he rose from a rank-and-file member of the Georgia KKK to founding one of the largest restaurant chains in all the world. He then suggests they should just all fuck each other. They do, but it’s all a daydream Arbie is having and he’s not actually fucking Wendy, he’s fucking his cash register. In front of everyone.

Wendy walks out saying that she can’t love anyone who wants her to eat cock.

Meanwhile, in the bathroom, Jared’s ass catastrophe finally comes to a conclusion after fountains of poop sprays out of his body. Something he crapped out crawled back up into him and when it busts out of his belly, he’s now a skinny man, much to Jared’s glee. If you ask me, that’s a great way to diet. Just shit it all over the walls and entirely out of your body. Any day now, my own ass disaster from Taco Bell will help me shed a hundred pounds off my body.

Now, I mentioned earlier that this movie is a musical. It’s not exactly a typical musical. I mean, no shit, right? It’s Troma. But for real, 30 minutes into the movie, there have only been two songs. There was one when Arbie discovered Wendy had switched teams. That was a song about getting revenge, not so much on Wendy, but all the people who she hangs out with now. The second song is slower and melodic. It’s about how much Wendy and Arbie miss each other. The chorus of the song is about how much they miss getting their salads tossed. Now, the second act is where the songs start to come a little faster and more often. The songs are actually pretty well written.

I want to bring this up again because it’s the one thing that makes this movie stand out. Each of the movies this month has had an element that helped it stand out as something kind of special. I have more to say about this movie as a whole, but the musical element is the standout. Plus, the songs are being performed by the actors, Jason Yachanin (Arbie) and Kate Graham (Wendy) are the ones who perform the most on the soundtrack. They are pretty good, especially in “Slow Fast Food Love” where they perform a kind of sweet duet.

Later, General Lee Roy arrives to celebrate the opening of the new restaurant. He is taken aback by the protesters in the parking lot. The General says that the bodies from the burial ground have gone to a better place. Well, we see Hummus just tossing their decayed bodies into the dumpster out back. When Micki and Wendy confront the General, he makes his plea to the people and kind of wins them over with some good ol’ fashioned generosity.

After cleaning up the shit that was Jared, Arbie hopes to find a napkin to clean the shit off his hands. That’s when the American Chicken Bunker chicken mascot arrives to give some sage advice. When he takes off his costume, not only is it Lloyd Kaufman but it’s also someone with a suspiciously familiar story to Arbie’s. I think this is the closest Troma will ever get to The Shining. Old Arbie says he has always worked here. He never intended on being here his whole life. Someday, though, old Arbie will finally have enough money to reunite with his gal Wendy at college. Old Arbie then warns young Arbie to get out as soon as he can and not waste his life as a fast food jerk.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen of the restaurant, Paco is grinding up some chicken feet. As he does that, Hummus has taken a break to pray to the east. Paco decides to really stir some shit up by masturbating into the grinder and mix his essence with the food. A little monster chicken, which we only see from its point of view, sneaks up behind him and pushes him into the grinder, covering Hummus with his blood and stuff.

Denny and General Lee Roy initially blames Hummus for killing Paco. However, upon seeing a chicken carcass curiously attached to the on/off switch of the grinder itself, General Lee Roy begins to agree with Hummus. When Arbie comes back from the store room, he asks where Paco went. The General says he went home for the day. Arbie looks at the pile of goo that still has Paco’s nametag on it. He looks at Hummus who is trying to gesture to put it all together. He looks at Denny and the General. He looks at the pile of goo. And it keeps going around in circles like that before Arbie just shrugs and says, “Okay!” and carries on like nothing is out of the ordinary. The General then says it’s time to serve up some Sloppy Joses even if Paco is ground up into the meat.

Once she’s alone in the kitchen, Hummus says the chicken has declared Jihad on them!

Arbie is at the counter when a priest returns his Sloppy Jose saying there is a penis in it. He tells the priest that he’s entitled to a free Sloppy Jose and goes back to the kitchen to make it for him. When he scoops out the meat onto the bun, Paco talks to Arbie. Paco warns Arbie about how the American Chicken Bunker is cursed by evil spirits. Arbie must stop the spirits by way of their one true weakness…

But before Paco can tell him what that weakness is, the General comes into the kitchen with local reporters. To prove the sandwiches are good at ACB, he eats the Paco Sloppy Jose.

Elsewhere, Carl Jr. is taking a chicken carcass, the same one that killed Paco, on a tour. In the stockroom, he decides to fuck the chicken carcass. It bites his dick off. He’s sprayed by his own dick blood as well as a green goo. When he gets into the kitchen, Hummus tries to help Carl Jr. by hitting the chicken monster with the mop.

I think… technically… Hummus ends up killing Carl Jr. You see, she tries to help by smacking the monster chicken with the broomstick. However, it’s not doing much. Oh, and she also knocked out Arbie with the mop too. Carl Jr. turns around. When she sees his ass, it gives her an idea. She crams the broomstick up his butthole and all the way out his dick.

I guess it also killed the chicken monster thing, but it definitely also killed Carl Jr.

Arbie tells Denny and Hummus that what’s happening is a cursed haunted chicken thing. They realize that Carl Jr. isn’t quite yet dead. Arbie says they need to take him to the hospital to save his life. However, with so many protesters and news people out front, if they see them carrying a guy with a mop shoved up his ass, it will ruin him. Instead, he decides to take everyone outside chicken to feed them. That chicken, though, has a bunch of green goop and guts in it.

At first, it looks like Micki is going to refuse the offer from the General. However, she takes a bite of the chicken and says the chicken is delicious. Confused, Wendy tries to understand why she is betraying all the protesting and stuff. Micki says that the chicken is so good that she can see the soul of America. It turns the whole crowd protesting ACB around and they hungrily eat the chicken and go into the restaurant to get more. The whole thing was a setup by the General. Micki was bought and organized a fake protest to get publicity that he could manipulate onto his side when she turned the protest in favor of him.

Everyone who ate the chicken he offered is now throwing up green goop. The General says that they only serve good food. So Wendy offers up a challenge. If it’s really that good, the General should take a bite himself. He does and, at first, he spins it by saying he loves the food and he feels great. But that’s when he suddenly needs to take a shit. When he does, he leaves something unexpected in the toilet.

Soon, the egg hatches into a gooey little chicken monster.

The chicken monster attacks the General. It tries biting him on the face, so he gets the creature back by biting its head off. Its green blood shoots all over the General. He then begins to have convulsions.

But that’s not the only problem…

Yup… zombies. More, specifically, the angry Indian spirits are reanimating the dead and turning them into chicken zombies. Carl Jr. was first. The General then turns into a big chicken monster and tears Denny’s head off.

So now anyone and everyone who ate chicken are chicken zombies and they are feeding on those who haven’t eaten the cursed chicken. It’s madness in the restaurant. Some are tearing the head and the spine of people off their bodies. Some are deep frying people’s faces. One guy gets his balls ripped off and deep fried. Some are getting their eyes ripped out and put into cartons like eggs. One chick got her fake tits ripped out of her chest. One guy is chopped up on the counter by the employees. One lady gets her face ripped off. Another guy gets his face shorn off by the slicer. One girl lays an egg. Eli Roth gets his spine ripped out (for real, it is Eli Roth). One guy grows eggs for tits and they hatch into little chicks.

Unable to escape the restaurant, the zombies are about to close in on Wendy, Arbie, Micki, and Hummus when Old Arbie comes to save the day with a machine gun.

Oh, well, never mind, I guess…

Outside, a whole shit ton of infected chicken zombies are slowly approaching. They try to figure out how they can escape. Wendy has a great idea… Just turn the Open sign around to Closed. And, yeah, the outside zombies, saddened by the restaurant being closed, decide to no longer try to get inside.

Carl Jr. returns and tries to kill Arbie, Wendy, and Hummus. Before killing him with a beater, Arbie makes a plea to Carl Jr. deep inside the demon chicken he’s turned into. Carl Jr. tells him the secret to killing the chicken monsters is booze. Thinking Carl Jr. is in need of his hooch, Arbie gives him one last drink but it ends up melting him.

Earlier, Micki attempted to escape to her car by using the mascot costume believing none of the demon chicken monster thingies would attack one of their own. However, she returns and she says they got her. And, yeah, no shit. They turned her into one of the chicken demon zombie thingies. But Micki has an extra superpower. When she attacks Wendy to turn her girlfriend into a demon chicken zombie thingy too, she has grown a chicken monster dick that she wants to use on Wendy.

Before he can kill the Micki monster, Old Arbie, now a thingie zombie monster chicken, attacks regular Arbie. Trying to save them, Hummus decides to drink a bunch of meat steroids. She grows a bunch of giant muscles. Buuut, she ends up blowing up like a balloon and dying (only to come back in the final moments to which she says there is no time to explain how she is still alive).

Remembering the whole thing about alcohol from Carl Jr., Wendy douses Old Arbie and Micki with beer from a nearby keg one of the people hanging out in the parking lot brought in while Arbie deduces all that he was told by the Paco sandwich, a drunken Native American outside, and Carl Jr. could mean only one thing – alcohol kills the Native American demon monsters turning everyone into chicken zombies. Except, you know, Wendy already beat him to the punch on that solution.

Wendy and Arbie are able to kill a bunch of the other zombies that are now flooding in thanks to one of the not-yet-dead chicken monsters inside flipping the open sign around again. Arbie, Wendy, and Hummus get cornered in the storage room by the General and a bunch of hatching chicken monster eggs. He is about to kill our remaining heroes when the General just… explodes. He ate Paco earlier and Paco blew him up from the inside out.

Hummus decides to sacrifice herself by first revealing that she is super hot wearing a bikini under her burqa and using the bombs she has strapped to her. She destroys the ACB and all the monsters inside. While driving off and reflecting on what they learned through this whole ordeal, a little girl they saved in the restaurant before escaping lays an egg. Arbie and Wendy scream and get into an accident that causes them to flip their car and explode.

Admittedly, there is a part of me that doesn’t like Poultrygeist as much as I think I really should. I think what kept getting stuck in my mind is how much lower in production value this movie felt compared to the other three I watched for this month’s slate of Troma flicks. Most of it took place inside this closed McDonald’s restaurant. It’s the front counter, the kitchen area, and the storage room. That’s it. Sure, there are lots of extras and people with speaking lines floating in and out of this movie, but it really doesn’t have the same look as the other Troma movies.

I thought about this throughout the movie and wondered if maybe Troma was a thing of the 80s and 90s. Now that this is 2006, was Troma out of its depths a little bit? Their small budgets would have a much smaller impact on quality in 2006 compared to 1996 and 1986. Some of the ideas felt more dated in 2006 than anything in the three previous movies. The lesbian liberals. The spouting of very 2006 slang and whatnot. Something felt off. I could easily say Poultrygeist finished fourth out of four this month.

But…

Here’s the thing – this does have some VERY good elements too. There are some great references to both Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead in the movie that I very much appreciated. There’s a good reference to Jaws when Denny tells a story about an incident that involved chickens in Indianapolis. The music is fantastic. In fact, I hardly talked about the music this whole month. Lloyd Kaufman often has a constant soundtrack playing under the movie. All of his movies have a killer soundtrack to them. The music in Tromeo and Juliet was wonderful. The songs in this musical are great. The theme song itself is amazing. Yachanin and Graham do a great job with their singing. The music is definitely a high mark.

Speaking of Yachanin, Arbie is among my favorites in terms of leads in the movies this month. He’s so dense that there’s this likable quality to his stupidity. The way Jason Yachanin plays Arbie is great too. He’s got this childlike wonder that does come off like a younger version of the public persona of Lloyd Kaufman. Yachanin is so funny in this movie that he rivals the greatness of Will Keenan in both Tromeo and Juliet and Terror Firmer.

Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead is not a perfect movie nor is it a perfect Troma movie like the others that preceded it this month. That said, I’m very pleased I watched it and enjoyed quite a bit of the movie even if it didn’t quite hit on all the cylinders I hoped it would.

Welp, it’s time I got on the first bus out of Tromaville and returned to the land of the, uh, non-Troma movies. There is no better place for me to go from here than back to the filmography of the great Norman J. Warren. Yup, I’m getting pretty near the end of the road for one of the favorites of B-Movie Enema, but we’re going to see it all the way through. Next week, join me for his VERY FIRST film! Yup, it’s 1968’s Her Private Hell.

Until then, maybe don’t eat the chicken made by a rank-and-file member of the Georgia KKK.