“Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead” is a quirky horror film from 2006 produced by Lloyd Kaufman and the film company Troma Entertainment. The film tells the story of Arbie, a young man who works in a fast food restaurant called American Chicken Bunker. When the restaurant is built on an Indian cemetery, the chicken ghosts come back to life and start attacking the customers and employees of the restaurant.
The film is characterised by its absurdly comic style and its distinct taste for exaggerated depictions of violence. The plot serves as a pretext for a series of bizarre and lunatic ideas that provide the audience with a real feast for the eyes. Some of the crazy ideas presented in “Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead” are:
- Chickens that spray acid on their victims to cauterise their skin.
- A zombie chicken that hatches from a man’s stomach and then eats his intestines.
- A human chicken-egg hybrid that is born from a woman.
- A group of homeless people who occupy the restaurant and mutate into live chickens.
- A vocal performance by a human chicken parodying various songs.
These absurd ideas are staged with a lot of black humour and exaggerated violence to achieve the most shocking and at the same time amusing effect. The film is full of satirical elements and uses the plot as a platform to criticise society. Topics such as fast food, consumer culture and environmental pollution are taken up and presented in a grotesque way.
