Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006)

Episode 141, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd

Craig: And I’m not speaking to you.

Todd: This is gonna be a short episode, isn’t it? Oh, man. I am you know, I actually texted Craig earlier this week and asked, if he had seen the movie, and he said, not yet. And I said, I figured as much because I hadn’t gotten a text from him yet that said, I hate you.

Craig: You were right.

Todd: Yeah. I’ve been threatening to do a trauma movie here for quite some time, and Craig had never really seen a trauma movie. We did Death by Temptation, a few weeks ago, and that was produced by Troma, but it wasn’t really what I would call a Troma movie because it was just the financing, that they helped out with. They didn’t really have anything to do with the production, and, they released the movie. So, this movie that we’re doing right now was my choice, is 2,006 Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. If you can’t tell from the title what kind of movie this is, or if you don’t know Troma, you might be a little surprised. So I’m gonna go into my little rant here, my little spiel here about Trauma. Trauma is a if if you haven’t ever heard of Trauma, Trauma is a independent movie studio that started back in, late seventies, by 2 guys named Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Hertz. And they went on to become responsible for at least a couple of the more iconic characters that we have. Most notably, I think everybody probably knows the toxic avenger. The toxic avenger was one of their breakout success movies. It’s kind of a superhero movie about a nerd who falls into a vat of toxic waste and becomes this, yeah, this mop wielding superhero. And, it was even made into a cartoon back in the eighties or early nineties, I guess. So, a lot of people have heard of the Todd avenger, maybe through the cartoon or just from pop culture, but it maybe never even seen the movie. This movie studio, it is as punk. It’s as punk as film really gets, I would have to say. Lloyd Kaufman is pretty much the spokesperson for this this whole thing. He’s directed almost most of the trauma, you know, produced films and he has a real sensibility about him to just make movies that are entertaining, movies that are never boring, and most of them are built around exploitation is is putting it mildly. It’s basically shock and fun and tons of comedy, mixed in with whatever genre he’s doing, whether it be a war movie, whether it be a horror movie like we’re talking about today. Whenever you see a trauma movie, you’re gonna see extreme. You’re gonna see extreme everything, but I would say from my point of view, it’s always a lot of fun, and it’s always tongue and cheek. And it’s super campy, but it’s campy in a way that just really works for me. Trauma’s got a lot of fans around the world, but I have this feeling that Craig’s not gonna be one of them.

Craig: Nope. Probably not.

Todd: Alright. Before I turn the mic over to you, I just have to say I have to put this out there. I saw my first trauma movie when I was maybe 10 or 11 years old. My dad rented the Todd adventure for me, and we both watched it together. And I don’t know who is more horrified by that movie, my dad or me. I’d never seen anything quite like it. It is super campy, but it’s also really gory. And it was kind of a horror comedy before we had a lot of horror comedy. And the kind of horror comedy that it is, is a little different from the kind of horror comedy that I think we’re used to where we’re cracking jokes and we’re making fun of the genre. This really just mixes in a lot of dumb juvenile humor with extreme gore and violence. And, that’s it’s so funny to imagine that there’s a Saturday morning cartoon that came out of that movie. But as a kid, it freaked me out. The movie freaked me out. It really stuck with me, and it wasn’t until later when I got to be a teenager and I got a little more interested in film and I started to seek out other others of Troma’s films, I started to really get a sense of their sensibility. And like I said, it’s punk. It’s total punk. These guys have been thumbing their nose at the establishment, Making these movies regardless get a huge cult following. Most of their movies, are produced for like a half a $1,000,000 and, not all of them are successful, not all of them make their money back. In fact, most of them don’t, but they still manage to have this cult following around the world. So to the point where people will work on their movies for free. And that’s the only way they can get them done so cheaply is so much volunteer slave labor on these things. They they’re truly labors of love no matter what you may think of them. So, Craig, what did you think of them?

Craig: Okay. So if I were a straight white 13 year old boy having a sleepover with my buddies and we were like maybe sneaking a couple beers out of our parents’ fridge or something, this movie would be awesome, because every line is a dick joke or a poop joke or a, I don’t know. And there’s, like, boobies bouncing around and that great. Okay. See, like, here’s the thing. I don’t know how to approach this because I really didn’t care for it. But I get what they were going for and I feel like they totally accomplished what they were going for. So, how can you really be critical when they succeeded in what they were going for? I mean, it’s meant to be raunchy. It’s meant to be stupid. It’s meant to be it’s not meant to be taken seriously. And so, I get it. I get what they were going for. It’s just it’s so it’s so stupid. Like, I could like, I could just feel my brain cells jumping ship, like If If if I were a recreational drug user, like, maybe this would be a lot of fun. I don’t know, but, I don’t know, Todd. Like, I I’m kind of at a loss for what to say.

Todd: This is so funny. I feel like I finally broke you. Because you and I are usually on the different sides of this. You know? You’re usually the guy who says, I love the raunchy stuff. I, you know, I I am I’m a kid at heart, and the juvenile humor doesn’t bother you as much as it seems to bother me. So I don’t know. I just have this big space in my heart for this kind of movie when it’s done right. And I just think it’s really funny that you you dislike it so badly.

Craig: Oh, gosh. I don’t know. I don’t wanna, like, I don’t wanna be a stick in the mud. I don’t wanna make it seem like I’m, you know, some kind of pretentious ass who can’t appreciate a good dick joke. Like, I like a good dick joke as much as anybody else. That’s great. But when it’s an hour and 45 minutes long and like, literally, literally, every single line is some kind of dick joke or or Racist. Yeah. Racist, homophobic, and I’m not seriously, I’m I’m not. I I really am not sensitive about those kinds of things. Like, when it’s in good fun, which this is, I you know, I think it’s in good fun. I don’t think that these people are, you know, legitimately yeah. They are trying to be insulting in a in a certain way, I guess. But But

Todd: not in a mean spirited way.

Craig: Not in a mean spirited way.

Todd: That’s right. South Park kinda way. Right? I mean, we poke fun at everybody sort of thing.

Craig: But, like, times a 100, like Yeah. I don’t know. I I just and and I like, I’m I’m trying to take notes over this movie and I’m, like, what am I supposed to write Todd? Like, when when every single line is a joke, like, I can’t keep track of all that. Like, I don’t even know I don’t I don’t even know what to single out, like, oh, and then there was this funny part. No. It’s not like, oh, and then there was this funny part. It’s like the whole movie is a gag. Like, the whole movie is a gag and it’s fine. Like, honestly, like, I should probably save this to the end. Like, this this feels like a wrap it up kind of statement. But and I’ve said this before. If you’re a fan of ours and you’ve listened to our especially our older episodes, you’ve heard me say this before. If I were having a Halloween party and I had a TV set up in every room, this would be a great movie to have on in the background because it’s so ludicrous and you could watch a minute of it and laugh, or you could see what was going on on screen and be like, wow, that’s crazy and ridiculous and that’s fun, but to sit down and watch it for an hour and 43 minutes or however long it was, It it was a little much for me. And, you know, I’m I told I told my partner. I’m like, I have to go watch a movie about zombie chickens now, and he was like, okay. Whatever. And then I was watching it, and he was walking, you know, back and forth through the living room where I was watching it. And, like, he would just see the things on the screen, and he would be like, oh my god. What are you watching?

Todd: He wasn’t compelled to sit down and stay?

Craig: No. And and this morning when I was getting ready to do it, he’s like, are you excited to talk about your zombie chicken movie? And I was like, I don’t know. And he was like, well, make sure that you talk about the butthole shooting out the poop part. And I was like, oh, you mean that one part? No. Like, that happens, like, 14 times. It’s not like that. It’s just one time. Like, that is a major motif in this movie. It is a close-up of a butthole shooting out diarrhea. And and, like, of the hour and 43 minutes that this is, that probably takes up a good 10 minutes of it. That’s probably true.

Todd: There’s a lot of fluid happening in this movie. You know, I think the very first time I saw this, I, I do remember it feeling awfully long. And I don’t know this time around if I was just in the right mood or if because I knew the general story arc and I knew what was coming more or less. I mean, I only saw it once before. It’s not like I’ve come to this movie again and again. Right. But I remembered it it it just seemed like the quintessential trauma film for us to do because it it kind of is is is distilled purely unadulterated trauma stuff. And you’re right. It’s a gag a minute. Not most of their movies aren’t like this. I would say their later movies have become like this. And I think it’s because they’re competing against a society that’s really crept up and and and done what they were doing much better than they ever did it. And so they’ve just gotta go ultra extreme in order to compete anymore. If you look at South Park, for example, and and there’s actually a big trauma connection between, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and they they were big fans of trauma. And they approached Lloyd Kaufman, to help them with, fund one of their very first films before they were doing South Park, called Cannibal the Musical, which is a fine little movie and it’s a trauma trauma movie. Lloyd Kaufman didn’t direct it, but it’s, very much a precursor to what South Park would eventually become in their irreverence and their kind of humor, their tongue in cheek nature. But they kind of took what trauma used to do and did it considerably better, a little more sophisticated if that can be I don’t really consider South Park sophisticated, but it’s it’s got its own sophistication, you know.

Craig: Yeah. It’s a little smarter. It’s a little more it’s a little more on the pulse of contemporary pop culture and stuff.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Seriously, like, I get what they were going for. And I’m not gonna say that it wasn’t funny. Like, it was funny. It was funny, but, like, I teach high school, and I I hear this stuff, you know, in the hallways and and when kids think I’m not listening, and it just strikes me as juvenile. And, like, you mentioned, Matt Stone and Trey Parker. Am I mixing up their last names?

Todd: I don’t know. You got it.

Craig: They were supposed to be in this movie. The main character, Arby, talks about and excuse me. Like, I am a public school teacher. I don’t use these words. But they were supposed to play his retard parents.

Clip: It’s you ditching me for college. I’m not ditching you, RB. And I think you should come with me. There’s still time to apply. Wendy, my mom’s a retard and my dad’s blind. I mean, how am I supposed to take care of them if I’m off somewhere getting smart?

Craig: And, it just didn’t work out, like, for whatever reason. So I I know that they’re fans, and, you know, they’re smart guys. You know, they’re Oscar nominated guys, and they know what they’re doing. And so the fact that they draw inspiration from this type of thing, I get it. I get it.

Clip: It’s just,

Craig: it’s it was just a little much for me. It’s just a little much

Todd: for me. It’s overload. It really is overload. You gotta know what you’re getting into with this movie, and I told you not to read anything about it.

Craig: I probably didn’t want you to know what you were

Todd: getting into. That’s that’s my fault. But, we really shouldn’t go beat by beat through this movie. I I don’t think. It’s like you

Craig: said You can. You can.

Todd: It’s there’s too much. There’s too much going on. So let me just give a quick overview of what the plot is, and then we can kinda talk about some different points and and pick out the things that, you know, we do like. I mean, there’s gotta be something you liked about this movie.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. There there are some things.

Todd: So, basically, it starts out. There’s an ancient Indian barrel burial ground, in Tromeville, which most of their movies take place in Tromeville. And there’s a guy and a girl in there. A guy’s name is Arby and the girl’s name is Wendy. Later on, we’re gonna get a manager named Denny, a dude named Paco Bell, a guy named Carl Junior. This is the level of humor we’re dealing with. Right? Because all this takes place about a fast food restaurant that gets built upon this ancient Indian burial ground. So it’s clear that they’re poking fun, and they do do a lot of poking fun at different horror movie tropes throughout the movie, but definitely not in a sophisticated way. It’s very much, in a punch in your in your face, you know, kind of way. They’re dry humping in the cemetery. Yeah. Actually, we gotta talk about. This is this is yeah. I like this scene.

Craig: I would say that this was my favorite scene of the movie and it did a good job of setting up for what was to come. But I could have just seen this scene and been done and that would’ve been okay. But, no, I did like this scene. So but I would much prefer to hear you talk about it. Oh my gosh.

Todd: Alright. So, anyway, Arby and Wendy are recent graduates from high school, and they’re making out and, he says a lot. I think it was hilarious. This is some Oh

Clip: my gosh. RB, you’re the best dry humper in school. Thanks, Whitney. That’s what the guys on the basketball team say.

Craig: Yeah. That was funny.

Todd: Anyway, she ends up taking off her shirt, and they’re gonna go all the way. So they’re they’re banging there in the cemetery. And at the same time, all of these zombie arms start popping out of the ground and start clawing at them, but they don’t notice. Big gag is, oh, Arby, your hands, it feels like they’re everywhere kind of situation. Mhmm. 1 of the zombie hands pokes a finger right up his butt and, it it breaks off his butt. And But they’re interrupted. This whole scene is interrupted by a guy with an axe. And I think all the zombie arms retreated to the ground at just that moment. And this guy with the axe comes against him and she screams. Oh, you’re thinking he’s coming to murder them. And she’s like, what’s that in his hand? He says, you you mean the axe? And she says, no the other hand. And he’s jerking off with his other hand. And in the movie, you know, you’ll see male anatomy or representations of male and adably quite liberally through this movie as well as female anatomy, and, they run off, basically. And the next scene that we get is of the American chicken bunker restaurant on the site of this ancient burial ground. And there’s a big group of protesters out there protesting, corporate America in general. I guess, in their small town, this chicken chain came in, and they’re afraid it’s gonna push out mom and pop. It’s kinda like the Walmart protest thing. And, you know, that’s sort of the thin thread of social commentary that this movie is built on is this anti corporate conglomerate message. And he comes back and, to that site, and I don’t know why he thinks he’s coming back to the why he’s coming back to the site. He wants to revisit the memory or something, but he’s surprised to find that there’s a chicken shack there. And, he sees his girlfriend is in the protesting group, but she’s making out with another girl, and that shocks him. And it turns out that she’s a member of CLAM, the college the college lesbians against mega conglomerations. And he gets so upset by this, that he goes into song. And so this is a musical as well. I I you probably weren’t expecting that either.

Craig: That was the only thing actually that I did know because the only thing that I did, like, usually when I’m preparing to take my notes, I go to the IMDB page and I write down the title and I look into see what year it came out and I look to see what it was rated and how long it is because I wanna know what I’m in for. But right there underneath, All That is always the you know, what genre it is, and it said comedy horror musical. And I was, like, really? Musical? And, and it is. You know, there are several, songs. I’m surprise. I’m a big fan of but, and this song like, they’re they’re bad like, they’re badly written, but it’s funny. Like, it’s it’s a funny kind of take on a movie musical. The lyrics are so silly and stupid and and raunchy and and dumb, but fun. I actually enjoyed the musical numbers, I have to say.

Todd: Yeah. Me too. You they do feel like they were written by, like, 12 year old boys, though. Right. The words. I think the music that itself could have actually been pretty good if it if it hadn’t all been put together with, you know, a synthesizer and a computer more or less. Right. The sound quality of it all is kind of, it’s just a poor mix. It’s it’s it’s poor orchestration and all that, but but, the the the songs are pretty solid for what they are. Right?

Craig: Well, and that’s the like, I the lyrics, though they are dumb, they are funny. And I think that the the fact that they are set to music because it’s it’s it’s very much in keeping with the rest of the movie, like, the the lyrics are are what you would expect to hear in any of the dialogue, but because it’s set to music, it just ups the camp. When I rolled out of

Clip: bed today, little did I know Wendy was gay. She dumped me for some hippie. Oh. Oh. With hairy pits and a sudden nose, she eats a snatch just like a pro in a Jenna Jameson like dyke porno.

Craig: So none of them are amazing singers or anything. Like, they’re fine. They can carry a tune. It’s fine. But, like, they’re, like, production numbers, like song and dance. Like, so you’ve you’ve got topless lesbians doing kick lines and, you like, all like, all kinds of crazy crazy stuff, and and that was funny. I yeah. I I I seriously, I’m sitting here feeling bad about being too critical of it because honest to God, like, they they knew what they were doing. They this is the type of movie they were trying to make.

Todd: And they do it very competently. Yeah. Right.

Craig: So just because I didn’t care for it doesn’t that doesn’t amount Todd much, you know. If this is the kind of movie you’re looking for then, man, you’re gonna get your money’s worth. Well, you know, that struck me

Todd: more than anything else this time around watching it is I was kind of in awe at the whole thing. And I know a little bit about the production history. And this movie was a bitch to make. This script had been around for years and they were should be re written by several trauma employees. The final version of it, I think ended up getting written by the guy who’s a longtime trauma editor, who edited this film. Lloyd Kaufman directed Todd and they actually had a really hard time raising money for it as they often do. Kaufman and Hertz both pitched in their own money as well as, dipped into some retirement savings in order to fund the movie. And sent out a call, and people from all over the world quite honestly, like, over 300 cast and crew members descended upon this place where they shot it. And all of them worked for free. I mean, most everybody in this movie worked for free. But the conditions were horrible because, you know, the they’re they’re cheap, you know? They’re

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: Cheap. And everybody had to know what they were getting into. Think they rented out. They used they shot all this at an old abandoned McDonald’s somewhere near New Jersey, or New York’s New York upstate. And then, nearby there was an abandoned church that they rented out and there were 70 people staying in this abandoned church while they were shooting this movie and only had one working bathroom. And they all people were dropping out left and right, but, you know, there’s a hard enough core group of people who wanted to do to be a part of a trauma film that they stuck through it and did this. So, you know

Craig: And and I I respect that, you know, like, that’s cool. When people get together and have a a common vision and and, you know, they wanna get something done and they’re willing to put in the work for, you know, peanuts or whatever, like, that’s cool. So I I have a lot of respect for the people who were involved, and I can only imagine that this was really super fun to work on. I mean, not fun to be living with 70 other people in an abandoned church with only 1 bathroom, but, to, you know, to be putting something together and and just having a good time, like Yeah. That’s that’s that’s awesome. Yeah. So cool.

Todd: And coming around to my point, you know, it doesn’t look like a movie done by a whole bunch of volunteers on an absolutely shoestring budget. The effects in there more or less are quite good and abundant, all practical. It’s shot on film. I thought actually the acting, I mean, it they’re all hamming it up. They’re all Yeah. Purposely hamming it up, but but that can also flop. Not everybody can ham it up well. And I felt like more or less everybody was doing a quite a damn good job. Like, I felt like you could probably take any one of these actors in this movie and maybe put them in a legit film and they would be able to hold their own.

Craig: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I agree. And another thing that I appreciated about it was that, you know, they they’re they’re making they’re indiscriminate about who they’re making fun of. You know, they’re making fun of kids. They’re making fun of gays. They’re making fun of black people. They’re making fun of, people with this. Yeah, Islam. They’re making fun of people with disabilities, but they have a diverse cast and Yeah. It it it seems like everybody’s in on the joke and it’s just in in good humor, you know. It’s it’s it’s not mean spirited. Like, I didn’t count or anything, but I specifically remember, you know, that there’s there’s one cast member who is clearly, really has a physical disability and is in a wheelchair and, like, they’re they they just pop up in and out and and despite the fact that the movie is is throwing around the word retard and and talking about, you know, people with disabilities and stuff, I didn’t get the sense that they were legitimately being disrespectful. I just thought that they were playing with these, gosh, I don’t know. You you know, they were they were trying to be

Todd: Subversive subversive comedy.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah.

Todd: Yeah. Yeah. It’s what it is. You know, like we, you know, the court jester is the only one who can get away with, you know, making fun of the king. You know, comedy is always kind of been in that realm and that’s why we can, kind of, forgive. We’re we used to be able to. Let me put it that way. It seems like recently, we’re having a really hard time with this. Yeah. And and I don’t wanna go off on another tangent, so I might just end up editing this out later. But, you know, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen, comedians in cars getting coffee with Jerry Seinfeld on, on Netflix. But, you know, he he talks with different comedians of different eras and that seems to be this common thing that keeps popping up. It’s about how it seems like comedians can’t even do their jobs anymore because Yeah. This subversive comedy just get completely gets taken seriously and comedians can’t explore dangerous territory because then they get raked over the coals and you know kicked off a projects and whatever you know they’re sort of their lives ruined by the social media mob who you know somebody was offended by something. And now I know don’t get me wrong I mean I think I’m not one of these guys that says PC culture is terrible because I think there’s a reason for it you know we don’t wanna make fun of people and stuff But there’s a certain point where it feels like the pendulum was swung just a little too far and, we’ve lost a little bit of what we were able to give to, you know

Clip: I yeah.

Todd: Accept. You know

Craig: what I’m saying? I totally know what you’re saying and it is kind of a tangent, but I think that it’s worth talking about. And I think that a lot of that comes from the fact that everything is filmed today. Like, you’re on camera all the time and it’s very easy to take things that you see in a video clip out of context.

Todd: Mhmm.

Craig: And comedians, it’s it’s kind of their job to make fun of people and and to make fun of themselves too and and I get it, you know, there are just jerky people who are legitimately nasty and mean, but then there are also people who are just trying it’s kind of the difference between laughing at somebody and laughing with somebody and Yeah. And this movie, you know, it Todd didn’t see it it didn’t at all seem mean spirited to me. Even though, you know, the language is coarse and, it describes or excuse me, it portrays some people in negative light, but it’s just for comedy, you know, like, we know that not all lesbians are militant, you know, protesters or whatever. Like, we know this. We’re we’re not stupid, but it’s a stereotype and it’s kind of funny to exploit. You know? And and in the and in the way that they do it, you know, like, that that group clam or whatever. Like, it’s it’s so silly. It’s so silly, but it’s funny and then and then, you know, so you’ve got a group of militant lesbians. Have them all take their tops off and do

Todd: a A dance number. Rubbing up against each other, making out, like, for, like, no lesbians ever. Right.

Craig: It’s not real. Like, oh, no. I get what you’re saying, and and I I wasn’t I wasn’t offended. They’re making gay jokes and and the one of the jokes okay. So, eventually what happens in this movie is because they built this chicken shack on, an ancient Indian burial ground, they the gay Mexican, cook, ends up jerking off into the food grinder, sloppy Joe, which they call a sloppy Jose, which is which is also his name. He’s Jose Paco Bell or whatever his name is. And then he comes back as a sandwich as one of those sloppy joes, and he talks to

Todd: Arby, who has Arby has gotten a job here despite his, his former girlfriend.

Craig: Right. Who’s a militant lesbian now.

Clip: Now there is some bad shit out of your way, honey. Oh, my Todd. What? By building an ACB on sacred ground, the general united 2 of the most disenfranchised races on the planet. Displaced Native Americans and the billions of chickens sent Todd the concentration coops. There hasn’t been such a lethal combination of chicken and Indians since Tanjuri was introduced to the American people. If you fail, the virus will spread, and those of you aren’t infected will be relocated to free range white meat reservation coupes.

Craig: And so eventually, there are zombie chicken eggs that start to hatch and, like, there’s all this craziness that goes on. But things like Denny, who is the manager, is black and he real he he he speaks in kind of that really super super stereotypical, like, plantation kind of accent. Mhmm. And and then when he dies and comes back as a Chicken. A zombie yeah. As a as a zombie chicken, one of the girls is, like, oh, no. He’s come back as a spicy Cajun chicken zombie. A black and chicken. Blackened. It’s so it’s so not PC, but that’s clearly what they were going for and it’s funny. I mean, if you have an open mind and a sense of humor and if you are not a racist, it’s funny.

Todd: So anyway, yeah. So you’re right. And so, everybody’s kind of eating this food which is clearly disgusting. They’re putting together this meal for this really, really rather large man. And I have to talk about this guy. His his real name is Joel Fleischicker And I think this was the last movie that he was in, but he is kind of an in joke with Troma films as well. If you go to his IMDB page, you’ll see he is an actor, but he has only been in Troma movies. And Lloyd Kaufman cast him as the big morbidly obese guy, this guy, in all of the movies. And this guy, bless his heart, has no problem playing this role and being made fun of in all these movies and, has become pretty endearing character, person to a lot of Trauma fans. He he’s had a lot of fans over the years. He has one of the more disgusting scenes in this movie where he he eats one of these eggs, goes into the bathroom, brings his food into the bathroom with him. His stomach is upset and, proceeds to basically shit a lot. That’s putting it mildly.

Craig: It’s so gross, like, and, like like, they’re we get camera angles from inside the toilet

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: And it’s just this big gross poopy butt Craig. Like, like, I don’t really need to see that. Falls forward and it’s like spraying

Todd: out his butt all across the walls and stuff. And and I mean, he’s naked. I mean, they don’t use clever camera angles to conceal anything in here. If anything, they’re just shoving the camera right where you don’t want it to go. And Arby goes at one point into the basement and has an encounter with a mysterious man who looks exactly like Arby except he’s older. And this is Right. Lloyd Kaufman actually doing a cameo.

Craig: Oh, is it? Mhmm. Oh, that’s funny. I didn’t know it. Yeah. And he That’s funny.

Todd: He’s so goofy. And it’s it’s funny. One of the I I think one of the gags that really works in this movie is Arby is so stupid. Like, everything just goes right over his head. And, basically, he starts telling Arby his own story, and it absolutely mirrors Arby’s story. He is Arby of the future.

Clip: You look young. I was young once, full of hopes and dreams until tell me. Hey. Who’s telling this story, schmuck? I was gonna go to college, get a degree, but mom mom was a retard and dad got blind and had to support him. So I took this shitty job at American Chicken Bunker and been there ever since. But I don’t mind. Another 13 years, and I’ll have enough money to be reunited with my best girl at college, Wendy. I had a girlfriend named Wendy, but now she’s a lesbian. Aren’t they all?

Todd: You think he’s maybe like a ghost or a spirit? At least that’s sort of how it’s presented. Like, Arby’s getting this vision of how he could be if he keeps working at the chicken shack. There’s even a musical number about it.

Craig: Which I really liked. It’s funny. I didn’t I didn’t know that this guy was the director. I just thought that he was the best actor in the movie. But, no, yeah, I liked I I liked that that scene, and it’s funny, like, everything again, we are just, you know, skimming the very top of this, because there’s so much that goes on. Like, RB is his job is he’s the counter girl. So He wears

Todd: a he has

Craig: to wear a skirt like stockings. And, like, when he and his older self are doing this number together, like, this song and dance number, like, they keep flipping up the backs of their skirts to reveal that they’re wearing thongs. Like, it’s just their butts and thongs and, it it was a it was a funny song, like, the oh, gosh. It’s it’s funny. It’s so silly.

Todd: And and, if you’re looking at the background throughout the whole thing, especially down here in the basement, like, for example, there are all these boxes stacked up. And if you’re really looking carefully, you see all these funny labels on the boxes like like, chicken parts, or, beaks and wings, or Vietnamese children, or German style Luftwaffles. Just all these it’s like Mad Magazine.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah.

Todd: The movie’s kinda like, an over the top Mad Magazine in a way.

Craig: That’s a good comparison. And I loved that magazine when I was an adolescent. So, really, maybe I would have liked this movie in those days too.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: I’m just far too I’m far too mature for it now. I’m far too Listen to you

Todd: suddenly. Sophisticated. I’m I’m gonna I’ve I’ve got this on record that you said this, and I’m gonna be playing this back in a

Craig: future podcast. Just so you know.

Todd: Basically, what ends up happening is other people start eating this tainted chicken. The the guy named Carl Junior, he gets oh, jeez. I don’t even remember how it goes down, But this woman this poor woman, whose name is Hummus.

Craig: Hummus. I

Todd: keep calling her Hamas. She’s the Muslim joke, of the movie. And this was not long after 911. Right? This would have been 2006. So they had to poke kinda fun at that as well. She gets blamed for everything that happens because she happens to be there when people are dying. So she’s blamed for the Mexican, but then they’re gonna cover it up anyway. And then she’s blamed for this this this Craig. Carl I don’t remember exactly what happens to Carl, but he’s feeling ill.

Craig: Yeah. Get your get your bleep button ready.

Todd: Oh, that’s right.

Craig: He a zombie chicken. That’s right. And it, like, clamps down on his wiener. And and And he comes to the monster. Yeah. He he runs out into the kitchen. He’s like, get it off. Get it off. And Hummus, like, tries to use a A mop. A mop handle to, like, smack it off, but it doesn’t work. And, so the guy turns around and bends over. It’s like, do something. So she takes the mop handle and shoves it all the way through his butt out through, apparently, his wiener and Which pops

Todd: through a chicken off.

Craig: So it comes all the way out. So it looks like a big wooden wiener sticking out of the front. And I thought he was dead for a while, but he’s not. And and like it’s just the little things like he thought he was dead and then he’s not, and he wakes up and he says something like, look at the size of my wood cock or something like that. And, like, it shows that the tip of his penis is, like Still. On the yeah. Is on the tip of the handle. And then later, he comes back as a zombie chicken, and he’s walking around with that giant wood cock.

Todd: And it and it gets stuck in a piece of equipment so he can’t get down the hallway. That’s what saves the rest of them. It’s Oh, it’s so silly. It is silly. Oh, anyway, when he’s coming out, I think he sprays a whole bunch of goop all over, you know, blood. Again. Whatever disgusting stuff is always spraying over everything. Sprays all over the chicken and taints it. In the meantime, the restaurant gets visited by the colonel. So there’s a colonel type character who found

Craig: Well, it’s the general. The general. The colonel. He’s the general. Alright.

Todd: He’s the general.

Craig: And he has a whole song and dance number, and it’s kinda funny. And it’s about, like, the he’s singing with the the militant lesbians, and they’re singing about, you know, like, corporate America and how it’s destroying the mom and pop shop shops and stuff. And, but the the funny thing, you know, he gets he gets in there, and, like, these deaths are happening all around, and he just keeps wanting to, like, keep them quiet, because it’s the grand opening, and there are these protests going on, and so there are reporters all around. So he just wants to keep everything hush-hush. Eventually, you know, after, the wiener spray gets all over the chicken, his big idea is to just take all these buckets of chicken out there and give them to the protesters and the reporters, and so they’ll get hooked on them, which works. But, like, the chicken, once it’s been contaminated, is just disgusting. Like, it’s covered in, like, this green slime and, like, it’s got these boiling pustules that are, like, popping and, like, squirting juice out and stuff. The people are eating the chicken and somebody’s like

Clip: Hey, general. Where are these tiny little bumps all over my chicken? Those, those are our new flavor pods.

Craig: Oh, flavor pods. I had difficulty watching this movie because there were several times when I literally thought I might throw up. Like Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Like, when they were eating when they were eating this stuff, and it was so gross, I can watch Freddy Krueger disembowel somebody and have no problem, but watching these people eating this disgusting Todd, I almost couldn’t handle it.

Todd: What Todd, he feeds some Todd, Wendy’s Wendy’s friend, what was her name?

Craig: Nikki. Nikki. The lesbian. But she’s not she’s not really a lesbian. It was a trick all along. She was Yep. In it with the general

Clip: Yeah.

Craig: To just bring publicity to their grand opening or whatever.

Todd: That’s the big twist. Yeah. And then pretty soon, basically, the whole everybody’s infected. And so, then we just get this back to back big gory mess. This was just a major practical effects extravaganza with all these sight gags and all these, creative ways in which these zombie chickens were, these people who had turned into zombie chickens were taking at taking each other out. I mean, there’s so much stuff. But like a guy, like, suddenly grows breasts all of a sudden, and when they take a shot That

Craig: was my favorite one.

Todd: Their 2 eggs, and these two little chicks pop out of the eggs and a zombie chicken starts feeding the chicks. Yeah.

Craig: Oh, there was all kinds of stuff that, like, an old lady zombie chicken and, like, seriously, like, these are just people in moderately good makeup, beaks and feathers, like, they’re half zombie, half chicken. Like, this this old lady who we’ve seen from the beginning, but now she’s a zombie chicken, she peels this guy’s face off, and then she sits down across from her husband and she says, I know it’s full of fat, but I just love the skin. She starts eating his face.

Todd: That honestly is the part that almost made me wanna vomit. It’s the little

Craig: things. And just, like, silly things, like, some of the peep most of the people have turned into zombie chickens, but some of them haven’t. And so the zombie chickens are are, like, chasing and killing the ones who aren’t. And then, like, there’s one point where this male zombie chicken is chasing 1 of the lesbians and, she happens to be a very buxom lesbian, and she gets up and on the table, and, like, her boobies are shaken, and she notices shaking her boobs. And he starts dancing Todd. And then we just cut away.

Todd: I was like, wow. She figured out how

Craig: to get away from that. It was so weird.

Todd: There’s no shortage of boobs in this movie.

Craig: No. All kinds of things going on. The the employees turn into the zombie chickens. You’ve got the cage the blackened Cajun chicken guy, and then the general turns into, like, this great big like, first, he turns into a great big giant egg, and then he hatches out, and he’s this great big zombie chicken. And so they’re fighting all these folks and, eventually, they Carl with the mop penis, he attacks, but they get him down and, Arby’s like,

Clip: I know somewhere deep within the bowels of this creature you become lives the soul of the beautiful racist animal inbred trailer trash I know and loved. So please tell us, how do we stop them? Whiskey. Carl, I need you to focus. 1st, tell me how to kill them and then I’ll give you a drink. Alcohol, RB. Alcohol. Fine. Be an asshole.

Craig: And so the gag is that alcohol is their weakness because alcohol is the weakness of Native Americans. Like

Todd: Oh my gosh.

Craig: It’s so wrong. It’s it is. It’s so wrong. At some point, he Arby Arby doesn’t get it because he’s so daft. But and then some more things happen and, like, eventually, RB and Wendy, yeah, get cornered they get cornered by a keg and Wendy’s like, look, Arby, beer. And he’s like, now is not the time. And then he goes into this whole monologue where he reflects back on hearing all of these things, and it culminates in him saying, oh, yeah. Everyone knows Native Americans are fucking drunks. And then and then when it cuts back from his monologue, she has already tapped the keg and killed all the zombies or, like, the ones that were attacking them. So alcohol is their weakness because they’re Native Americans. And, yeah, again, it is so bad. And and there there’s even a joke where, like, yeah, obviously, that’s their biggest weakness. I mean, unless we have some smallpox around, like It’s horrible.

Todd: It is horrible. But then he does you know what? He turns to the camera, and he says something very PC.

Clip: I mean, as soon as the Indians were tricked into becoming addicted to the white man’s fermented beverages, it’s felt disaster for these proud, proud people.

Todd: Anyway, then some random woman runs in and says, oh, my little girl is gone. Well, help me save her. And they’re like, we have to save the little girl, the little crippled girl. And the guy’s Arby says, oh, she’s crippled too? And the woman says, if that’ll help And so they end up, in the basement of the back in the basement of the chicken hatch, and it’s like an alien knock off. Like, they’re down there, and suddenly there are all these chicken eggs, and it’s all spooky. And they find the little girl down there and they’re confronted by the giant chicken again. The giant chicken’s coming towards them. There’s another song number and dance number. And just as he’s about ready to strike, he starts farting and all making all

Craig: these strange

Todd: noises and he explodes. And it turns out that he couldn’t handle Mexican food.

Craig: Right? Because he ate the Mexican guy. Oh, God.

Todd: So so bad. So, yeah. So they’re all dead. There’s a big song and dance number. Paco Bell has saved the day.

Craig: The only thing I I I feel like we can’t before all this happens, Mickey, the faux lesbian, she thinks she’s gonna escape by putting on the chicken mascot suit and she goes out and we don’t really know what’s happened to her and then she comes back and she’s in the chicken suit, but then when Wendy takes the chicken suit off of her, she’s a chicken zombie, and then she tries to bang, Wendy with a chicken weiner. Like like, she, like, she unzips her pants and pulls, like, this chick it’s like a a huge wiener with the chicken head. At first, RB thinks that, like, they’re just getting it on and he’s all mad about it, but then he comes back and, he sees what’s going on and he grabs the chicken winger, the chicken wing chicken penis, and he’s like How do I get you up? Now I will get you up. And eventually, the chicken, like, I’ll just say vomits on him. But, at least it’s clever. You know? That was that was clever. I I enjoyed the chicken wiener part. Yeah. I’ve been Sorry. Yeah. Once he’s

Todd: once he’s done, he just stands up, forgets about his girlfriend. Says, well, I guess my work here is done.

Craig: Alright. Okay. So right back to the so the guy explodes and then they they get away.

Todd: Yep. And, the next scene we see is of RB in the car and his girlfriend is driving, Wendy, and, the little girl is between them and they’re it’s it’s blue outside and they’re they’re talking about what their happy life is going to be. Oh, but the

Craig: the the reas wait. Hold on. The reason that they got away is because Hummus decided that she was gonna sacrifice herself to get rid of all the zombies and it turns out she’s actually like a white Playboy model with a bikini with a bomb strapped to her back. And so when Arby and Wendy and the little girl run out, the the whole place explodes and Hummus, has sacrificed herself. But the chicken zombies are dead and it’s all good. And so then they’re in the car and they’re driving.

Todd: He gives the girl a beer to calm her down. And, as she’s drinking the beer, she starts making all these noises. And, she vomits up an egg. And they’re like, oh, no. And they veer their car off. And this last scene is a big fat joke. It’s a joke, if you’ve ever seen any trauma movie that was made since Sergeant Kabukiman NYPD, which by the way is one of my favorite trauma movies, and it’s also probably the closest thing to a mainstream acceptable movie that they’ve made. Anyway, they shot this, the stunt for this movie of a car that totally flies up in the air and flips over then explodes. And that was a really expensive stunt for them, and so the movie that they did later, they just reused that footage. They worked it in. And as a kind of in joke, ever since then they have tried to work this footage into all of their subsequent movies even when they’re not even driving the same. Actually, they’re usually never driving the same car, but it’s a huge joke. And that’s how they end this movie, which is pretty funny if you follow Troma that they would actually end the movie with that that stock footage.

Craig: It’s funny because I I didn’t know that, but I assumed that that was the case. I assumed that they just pulled this footage from a different movie because Yeah.

Todd: You could tell. Yeah.

Craig: It doesn’t look anything like the rest of the movie. Yeah.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: So that flips over and explodes and

Craig: Never been dead too. Yeah. Yeah. And then there’s a then there’s a fun Poultrygeist song with a little bit of Michael Jackson thriller choreography.

Todd: Yeah. What a movie,

Craig: Yeah. I I don’t know. I mean, again, every time we watch one of these bad movies, it’s always so much more fun to talk to you about it than it is actually to watch it. But I don’t know, you know, it’s it’s an oddity, you know, and and maybe not really in the world of trauma, but this is the only one that I’ve seen. So, it was an oddity for me and it’s just one of those things like I I’m glad I saw it because

Todd: You’re a completest.

Craig: I mean, I can I mean, now I can say I’ve seen 1 and I’m not dying to now go out and you know review their catalog or anything, but it was different? Did I enjoy it? No, not really. Can I appreciate what they were trying to do and can I say that I think that they succeeded in what they were going for? Absolutely. It’s juvenile. It’s dumb. There are certainly entertaining moments. I particularly enjoyed the musical numbers. There were parts of it that totally grossed me out and made me wanna barf, but, you know, I think that’s what they were going for, and so, you know, I’m I’m not gonna say that it was terrible because I think that they legitimately accomplished what they were trying to accomplish, and so I commend them for that. It’s just not my it’s just not my bag, you know. Yeah.

Todd: I’m gonna go out on a limb here and I’m gonna say that maybe this is possibly the best movie they’ve ever made. Wow. Because it is so competently done. It’s so funny. It’s well Todd. And set aside the fact that the humor is super juvenile, and that it’s super gross, visuals and things like that. The special effects are quite good for the most part.

Craig: As Fun.

Todd: As far as practical effects go, you know, they work. They there there’s loads of them in there. The movie pulls no punches in either direction. It’s not mean spirited, I think, at all, like you said. I think it’s just meant to be funny, and l think it is funny. It’s not everybody’s brand of humor. It’s not what, it’s not even normally what I particularly like. I just think this combination kinda works for me. I’m not always in the mood to see something like this, but, when I am, this movie really kinda really delivers the goods on all counts and manages to not be boring at all. I I wasn’t this time around, I really wasn’t checking my watch. I really wasn’t trying to see how long it lasted because I truly enjoyed almost every minute of this movie. I can’t say I enjoyed it, like, that not gleefully enjoying it, but I could say that it kept my interest. Is is that a better way of putting it? It kept my interest

Craig: for Sure. Fair enough.

Todd: Yeah. Every bit of runtime. It feels like they’re half a1000000, they milked it for what it was worth. Sadly, l don’t think it made very much. Maybe it made a lot more on DVD re release, but in the theaters it only made like $22 or something like that.

Craig: I read a funny story about how some guy went to a video store and and bought what he thought was going to be a DVD, laser cleaner. And for some reason, whatever reason, this movie was what he got. And he thought that it was so profane that he threatened to sue. But, apparently, it was, like, just a mix up. I you know, the the DVD cleaner was, you know, packaged, and and somehow it just this movie got in there, and so nothing came of it. But, like, this guy was just incensed. Like, he thought that it was, like, triple x horrible.

Todd: Can you imagine this guy who was so incensed when he actually sat through it for

Craig: Yeah. Right. Right.

Todd: 40 minutes. Oh, my Todd. This is horrible. I’ve gotta watch more. This guy wouldn’t have gotten past the first five minutes if he thought it was really that terrible. Sounds like he’s trying to get some money. Yeah. Well, Craig, I’m I’m glad to finally introduce you to Troma Films.

Clip: Oh, thank

Craig: you. What a movie to

Todd: do it on. They’re most extreme, I think, really. They’re most extreme. No. It’s it’s pretty representative of their as a whole.

Craig: Well and and to to be fair and to be honest, I’m glad that I know now. You know, I’ve known about them for a long time, but I’ve never seen any of their movies and now I’ve seen one and honestly, if this is really representative and maybe, you know, one of the best represent representations of, what they do, at least now I know. I like to learn things.

Todd: You are a lifelong learner, a student of film. Welcome to poultry guys. Alright. Well, it has been a lot of fun talking about it. Thank you guys so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend. You can find us everywhere fine podcasts are sold or given away for free. And, you can also find us on Facebook where we have a page. You could like us there. Let us know what you think of Trauma Poultry Guys. What is your favorite trauma movie? I’d actually be really interested to hear that from our our listeners. You can also go to our website, 2 guys.redfortynet. Todd, where we have a huge back catalog of a 139 episodes. Holy crap. Yeah. We’re really we’re packing them in. So we got a 139 more plus in the future, hopefully. And, if you have any requests of movies you’d like us to do for one of those, please send us a message. Until next time. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.