POULTRYGEIST: NIGHT OF THE CHICKEN DEAD (2006)



A while back, I started blogging about the summer I spent working for Troma Films as a production assistant (and eventual second assistant director, co-screenwriter and co-star) of the company’s terrible, terrible superhero spoof, Sgt. Kabumikman, NYPD. One of these days, I’ll eventually continue that tale, but in a nutshell, Troma (which allegedly stands for Tits R Our Main Attraction) was founded in 1974 by Yale grads Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz to produce and distribute softcore sex romps and, eventually, their own unique brand of gross-out message movies, chock full of gratuitous monsters, violence, nudity and critiques of corporate malfeasance. The fact that Troma’s stayed in business for so many years as one of the only truly independent production companies in America would probably be more inspiring if their exploitation films weren’t so consistently godawful (despite the cult popularity of “hits” like The Toxic Avenger, Tales From The Crapper, Surf Nazis Must Die, etc.). Having watched (and even helped to create) hours and hours of the company’s poorly acted, juvenile and just plain ugly swill, I must say I was pleasantly shocked by the uncharacteristically high quality of the poopy jokes in Poultrygeist, the company’s most recent major release. Not only is the cast star-studded (well...there’s a cameo by Ron Jeremy and a hall-of-fame gross-out performance by Troma regular Joe Fleishaker), but the romantic leads (Jason Yachanin and especially the radiant Kate Graham) seem like honest-to-god actors...y'know, with actual careers ahead of them.  The script and direction are noticeably smarter and tighter than most past efforts, and best of all: it’s a musical, with song and dance numbers at least ten times better than Baz Luhrmann’s recent Oscar monstrosity. And why not?  After all, there’s no rule that says exploitation movies have to be terrible...just as long as they’re shocking, bloody and gloriously naked.

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As always, I’ll be polling you folks to determine my next Reviews By Request column. To vote, see the poll at the end of this review.

For all of my supposed affection for good trashy movies, I’m a little ashamed to admit that I’ve never seen a film made by Troma, one of the names to know in cinematic junk food. I’m not sure what took me so long. It’s not like I was unfamiliar with the work of Troma and its founder and chief spokesperson, Lloyd Kaufman, having seen boxes for his movies lining the shelves in the Cult section at the local video store. Hell, I’ve enjoyed the hell out of the Troma trailers that have becomes staples of Columbus’ Horror and Sci-Fi Marathons, such as Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD and Maniac Nurses Find Ecstasy (“filmed on location in the Republic of Hungary!”).

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Previously on My Troma Summer:
Part One, Part Two & Part Three

After consolidating all of Lloyd’s bizarre Kabukiman tangents into a more or less comprehensible outline, I delivered the document to Andy and began work on a new phase of my P.A. duties: setting up a production office for the movie.

The Troma building on 9th Avenue was far too cramped to house all the staff and activity of the upcoming shoot, so Andy, the intense, hyper-caffeinated first A.D., had secured two floors of a small brownstone overlooking a debris-strewn vacant lot several blocks away, and I’d been tasked with much of the grunt work involved in getting the satellite location up and running. I was happy with the shift from the constant squawking and ballbusting of the Hell's Kitchen hive to the quiet solitude of the empty production office, alone with my thoughts and the junkies shooting up in the lot next door.

Eventually, another P.A. showed up: an insanely hot, baby-voiced 19-year old girl with short-shorts and perky, untethered breasts poking out from a tight white Cocteau Twins concert T. “Hi,” she called out, stepping through the door with an uncertain expression. “Andy said you’d tell me what to do.”

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Previously on My Troma Summer: Part One, Part Two

My first few days as a barely-paid production assistant in Troma’s three-story walk-up Hell’s Kitchen “studio” were uneventful (and possibly carcinogenic) as my new drill sergeant, Andy, had me organize and inventory several piles of fake severed limbs and other junk in the building’s cramped, asbestos-y basement. After that was done, I was assigned to watch and transcribe every dreadful line of dialogue from one of the company’s recent releases, Fortress of Amerikka, for use by Troma’s overseas distributors (an exercise which at the very least taught me a valuable screenwriting lesson about NOT starting every other line of dialogue in a movie with “Listen,” as in: “Listen, we gotta get outta here.” “But those men will kill us!” “Listen, if we stay here, we’re dead for sure.” “I’m scared!” “Listen, Jennifer, you’ve gotta listen to me...” “Listen! Someone’s coming!”).

And so on.

Andy didn’t have anything in particular for me to do after the Amerikkka transcript was complete, so he decided to further indoctrinate me in the house style by sitting me down with another recent release, Troma’s War, which employed the signature Lloyd Kaufman/Michael Herz formula of sex, violence, sophomoric humor and paranoid, populist outrage against “the power elite” and all the other assorted scumbags, shysters and pests who plagued the lives of decent, ordinary people.

Of course, like many a populist, Lloyd himself lived much better than the working class heroes he championed, as I discovered when I was summoned one afternoon to the Troma kingpin’s spacious brownstone maisonette to discuss his upcoming production, Kabukiman.

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