Back in the wild and woolly '80s, Troma used to pump out a 55 gallon drum of b-movie cream on what seemed like a regular basis. Is it just me, or have the godfathers of irradiated gore and odd looking tits calmed down since then? The last officially made Troma production I can think of in recent years was Citizen Toxie, which my addled, cobweb ensconced brain seems to remember coming out looooong ago, and even then only after years of delays. Maybe the b-movie money just isn't there anymore, or maybe the painful influx of Troma wanna-bes has somehow banged up Big T's bottom line. Whatever the case, I think there need to be more Troma original productions on my NetFlix queue and less cheap-o DVD releases of crappy non-Troma horror flicks that nobody gave a Jell-O mold of Oprah's hairy ass about to begin with. This all somehow relates to today's Tromatic return to “greatness”, Poultrygeist.

A pair of humping high school graduates are unknowingly gang groped by ghouls in a graveyard in our opening scene, only to be interrupted be a fat psychopath with an ax in one hand and his fake rubber dick in the other. He doesn't attack them or anything but the gal, Wendy, is understandably disturbed and opts to leave with her geeky boyfriend Arbie close behind. The loony goes back to flogging Flipper when the kids leave, snorting on the nerd's discarded mighty-tighty-whiteys until one of those aforementioned zombie arms decides to wear the weirdo for a sleeve. What's that mean? Let's just say the perv gets a whole lot of decayed arm meat pounded into a very uncomfortable place... and no, not the back of a Volkswagen.

“One college semester later...”, the burial ground on which these naughty exploits occurred has been bulldozed in favor of being the site for the newest American Chicken Bunker fast food restaurant. ACB is like KFC, only with the distinctly military motif you'd expect from a place whose founder is referred to by a military rank and isn't just some old plantation owner frying up chicken in between swiggin' mint juleps and beating servants with his belt. Protesting the ACB is a gang of militant lesbians, foppish neo-hippie butt-wipes, intoxicated frat guys, kids whose parents probably/hopefully work for Troma, and random extras wearing outfits even the Salvation Army wouldn't accept. The group call themselves C.L.A.M., of course, which stands for Collegiate Lesbians Against Mega-conglomerations. As you can imagine, their protest signs have such witty puns as “We <3 Cock” and “She <3's Cock”. It also turns out that young Wendy is one of these Collegiate Lesbians, which sucks for poor Arbie whom Wendy promised to return to after college, vowing it would “never change her”. Yeah, advanced educations or not, college is the doom of all relationships. This is why I dropped out... well, that and I never attended class, didn't do my homework, and wouldn't stop “accidentally” letting my junk hang out while talking with my Psychology 101 professor on her lunch breaks. Damn campus security and their tasers...

To get back at Wendy (as outlined by a somber little song and dance number), Arby gets a job at ACB. His name is Arbie, her name is Wendy, and it's a movie about fast food. Somebody prep the emergency room because I'm gonna need stitches for this splitting side of mine. Har Har. Eventually, amidst the dance numbers, lesbian softcore, geysers of blood, talking sandwiches, trademarked Troma chunky green vomit spew, necro-bestiality “love” scenes, diaper fetishism, and jokes about pretty much every race, religion, and political position under the sun, the titular undead fowl does start taking its revenge in appropriately violent, over-the-top fashion... by which I don't mean that a guy who looks like Rocky comes in and starts arm-wrestling people to death Fly remake style. That is an interesting concept though, so I'm theoretically copyrighting it right now for use in that movie I'll never get around to writing. Hands off!

The mutant demon Native American minimum wage earning fat food worker chicken zombies go about butchering every last motherclucking human in the place using gruesome gore methods that are too numerous to go into detail about here. Suffice it to say that any gore whore looking for some blood-soaked mayhem free of meddlesome pixels and computer nerds will feast heartily at the bountiful Thanksgiving buffet of Poultrygeist. Many characters die, a buttload of offensive material goes on, and eventually it all ends. And I think most Tromaphiles will be perfectly content when it’s all said and done.

The line reading is decidedly smooth, especially given the number of syllables being thrown around. Could it be? Did these people actually PRACTICE THEIR LINES BEFORE FILMING?! Wow. It doesn’t quite fit with the traditional Troma acting style of “so bad it’s hilarious”, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. And Kate Graham, the chick who played Wendy, is amazing. She can act, she can sing, and she's cute to fuckin' boot. If I weren’t already engaged, I’d track her down and brainwash her into being my wife. Even though I thought the song and dance parts were funny, much like Nudist Colony of the Dead, they start to feel a bit too numerous and long winded about 35 minutes in. When I find myself groaning, “Can we just get to the zombie chickens already?”, that’s where the biggest negatives of my review come in.

As is Troma style, the cast is made of mainly of social stereotypes, each with their own cultural one-liners. For instance, one of the women working at ACB is a Muslim named Humus (that everyone keeps calling “Hamas”) who makes lots of terrorist jokes. Sensitive people who dislike racial humor, well, you're shit out of luck. Lloyd “Uncle Lloydie” Kaufman of course makes his presence known as a mysterious stranger in a chicken suit who may or may not be a time traveling hallucination (or the Ghost of Christmas Future) related to Arbie. For anyone curious, Troma mainstay and all around tub o' guts Mega Herz also makes his mandatorily grotesque guest appearance in a scene that I won't spoil, but will simply call appropriately Tromatizing. And that clip of the car flying through the air and exploding that Troma's used in almost every movie since The Toxic Avenger? Yeah, she made it to the party too, which gave this old Tromavillian’s thumper a grin. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a lot of fun and the book of Poultrygeist has made its way into the Troma Bible to be studied and scrutinized by future historians. I may not like the long gaps in between releases, but the House of Toxie can take all the time in the world if they’re going to put out quality tastelessness like this. Excelsior and shit!