Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, a film directed by Troma's Lloyd Kaufman, opens in theaters this weekend. Which is kind of weird, because it already opened in New York a couple of Christmas seasons back, and then had a belated general opening last year. Apparently the always-innovative Kaufman has decided to keep opening it at periodic intervals until somebody notices. (We noticed, Lloyd. You can stop now.) What's also unusual about Poultrygeist is that, by making a film about "chicken zombies," Troma has opted to make a movie that will probably not be the worst movie of its kind ever made. With the Toxic Avenger series, Troma all but cornered the market in bad franchise films about a superhero born of toxic waste. No sorrier examination of the phenomenon of fat guys going nutzoid exists than Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid; all surf Nazis films are surpassed in lousiness by Surf Nazis Must Die. But without having seen Poultrygeist--a state of virginal innocence that I fully intend to maintain for the remainder of my days on Earth, so that it'll be a fresh experience for me if they want to show it to me in Hell--I feel confident in my belief that his film will pale in ghastliness to the immortal Blood Freak, co-directed in 1972 by Brad F. Grinter and the picture's star, Steve Hawkes. Lloyd is getting on in years and has been at this a while now, and certain things benefit from the enthusiasm of youthful amateurism.
The film opens with a monologue delivered by Grinter, seated at a desk, smoking, and creepy enough that Larry Flynt would decline his offer of a lollipop. Looking seedy and pissed off--maybe he didn't want to appear on camera but had no choice but to jump in when Brando pulled out at the last minute--he stresses the instructional nature of the passion play we are about to behold. Enter Hawkes as the burly, massive-haired Herschell, who crashes a pot party held by the well-tanned Ann (Dana Cullivan) and settles in for a good, all-night theology discussion. Unfortunately, the combined power of Ann's sultry wiles and her addictive wacky weed prove too much for Herschell, and he's soon violating his Christian vows right, left, and sideways. Blood Freak is available in an impressively bonus-packed DVD from Something Weird Video, and it would be wrong of me to give away too much of the plot even if I understood it, but suffice to say that after Herschell, his internal defenses weakened from too much free love and hemp, takes a job as a test subject for some pointy-head scientists working on an experimental turkey-breeding drugs, it's only a matter of time before crazed bloody homicides and a big papier-mache bird hand are in his future. The trailer below can give you a hint of the awful wonders that are to come in this film, which is unusual for its mixture of proselytizing for the Christian-message market and its unrestrained use of the blood pump. This is especially notable in a scene involving a circular saw, for which the filmmakers hired the services of a man with a false leg. The scene is all the more remarkable for how unconvincing it is, due to the man's agonized screaming, which is not of Actor's Studio quality. I guess that if you're making a Christian poultry zombie splatter flick on a very tight budget, you figure you can't just say to the first one-legged man who shows up at the audition, "Listen, physically you're what we're looking for, but we're going to hold out for a one-legged guy who really needs the fifty bucks and who can act!" But still...