Movie Review: Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead

As Troma Entertainment, Inc attempts to play the part of clever satirists against the "fast food nation" (aka the United States), the only group being truly mocked is the American people.

Director Lloyd Kaufman's (The Toxic Avenger, Tromeo and Juliet) 2006 production, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, is equivalent to watching X-rated versions of the Discovery Channel and Food Network combined. Its gruesome, grotesque, and goary demeanor are subject to taste – bad taste that is.

Needless to say, I was forced to watch about 75% of this movie with my head turned the other way and having to mute the volume because the visual atrocity of the film was only heightened by its equally unpleasant sound effects.

The film portrays a young student's struggles upon returning home after his first semester in college. Arbie comes back to his hometown searching for the native american cemetery where him and his high school sweetheart shared a sloppy sexual encounter the previous year. Instead he finds that it has been demolished in order to erect the popular fast food chain, American Chicken Bunker. His life is further complicated after finding out that his girlfriend, Wendy, has transformed into a left-wing, liberal lesbian who now devotes her time to protesting corporate America. Arbie decides to work for the exact cause that his ex-girlfriend so solemnly rejects as a way of channeling his anger. Arbie's new minimum wage career at American Chicken Bunker gives everyone, including the audience, an exaggerated and unwanted look at the fast-food industry.

If Kaufman claims that the, "... giant, devil-worshipping conglomerates today control the food and media we consume and its the media that perpetuates the hegemony of a restaurant industry that is literally killing us and turning us into McNugget craving zombies," then his film is what is killing the intellect of the American culture and mindset. It is a true insult if he believes that his depiction of a popular social topic would cause any sort of enlightenment to today's society.