Review #142: Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006)

This review was originally written in October 2021.

October 2021 Horror Movie Review #28- Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006)

It's going to be hard to talk about this movie without comparing it to Mulva: Zombie Ass Kicker, because it's very clear that the creator of Mulva was trying so desperately to make a movie like this. I'll actually double back and change what I said about Mulva: it wasn't "intentionally bad" like I said it was, because I don't think it was trying to be "bad". It was just trying to be a particular thing, and that particular thing was also very, very bad. Because in a similar way, Poultrygeist was trying to be a particular thing, and although it is also very bad, I think it succeeded far and above more than Mulva did, at being what it wanted to be.

Poultrygeist is a disgusting movie. No other way to put it. It's crass, it's graphic, it's vulgar, it's racist- it's offensive in a dozen different ways. The plot makes almost zero sense, it's a musical for some reason, and the characters kind of just do whatever the scene calls for rather than having a strong consistent throughline (for the most part, anyway). I would never recommend this movie to anybody because of how absolutely disgusting it is. However, the biggest difference between this and Mulva is that this movie (as gross and misguided as it is) at least put a lot of work and planning into becoming what it is, and it was made by someone who's clearly made a ton of films exactly like this for years and years. (Is it fair to compare the two when Lloyd Kaufman had been making feature films for twenty years and Chris Seaver probably wasn't even twenty years old when he made Mulva? Maybe, maybe not.)

One good thing I will say about Poultrygeist is that it definitely does have some genuine laughs in it. They weren't common, maybe like two or three in the whole movie, but they were there and I could tell they weren't just a fluke- some degree of intelligence went into the script. However, it's not enough to paper over how incredibly disgusting this movie is. The zombie plot doesn't actually get going until about an hour into the film, and one of the characters is a time traveler or something but it has zero explanation or impact on the plot? I can tell the people making it had a BLAST, and I guess that's the important thing, but seriously, this movie is gross.

Overall Rating: 3/10 Talking Grinders

Almost Cameo: Apparently, Trey Parker and Matt Stone were cast to play Arby's parents, but the scene was ultimately cut. I'm conflicted on whether that would have made the movie better, or made South Park worse?