Ahhh ... Spring! A
time when flowers awaken from their chilly slumber, butterflies dance in the
warm breezes, when one’s heart turns lightly to dreams of love
and when the swallows return to Capistrano.
And here at Bobbie’s Moldy-Oldies, it’s time for the chickens to come
home to roost!
Our first taste in this Kentucky-fried film
festival is ZOMBEAK! (2006). Melissa (Melissa K. Gilbert), a terrible
waitress in a run-down diner, is about to get it on with her boyfriend, Bobby
Ray (Jason Von Stein), when she’s suddenly abducted by Satanists named
Vascara (Tracy Yarkoni), Levianthan (Daryl Wilcher) and Gideon (Adam
Morris). She’s taken by hearse to the
Satanist’s hideout in order to be impregnated with Satan’s child on
the one night he’s allowed to walk the Earth.
Bobby Ray, who’s not the brightest bulb in the marquee, along with the
diner’s owner Max (JimmyLee Smith), who doesn’t particularly like Melissa but
would love to kick some Satan butt, and Bobby Ray’s sadistic cop brother
Fasmagger (Nathan Standridge), are in hot pursuit. Bursting into the sacrificial room, they
interrupt the ritual, giving Satan no other choice than to inhabit a
sacrificial chicken. You heard that
right. A chicken. What ensues next is 70 minutes of pure
cinematic joy, with the evil chicken turning this one night into Hell on
Earth for both our bumbling heroes and the confused Satanists!
With a zero-budget look and feel, ZOMBEAK delivers the goods. How? Because
you can feel the real love the actors and it’s director, Sam
Drog, had for the story and their parts in it. Despite it’s bad special effects
and cheap, low quality 80’s CGI and it’s video camera look, it’s
surprisingly entertaining. With the
exception of Daryl Wilcher in the one scene where he has a coming-to-Jesus
moment while facing his imminent demise at the hands of the Satan-obsessed
chicken, the acting is below-par, with our heroine Melissa emoting
in one of the most annoying fingernails-on-the-blackboard voices ever
preserved on video tape. However, the
script is filled with brilliant one-liners like “Take that, you Kentucky-fried
piece of shit,” and “It’s our God-damned Christian duty!” The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) has no
listing for ZOMBEAK’s budget or box office but I’m guessing it’s not much. After all, what can you expect from a
zero-budget movie about a Satan-possessed chicken who wants to turn everyone
into zombies! And one that, to my
knowledge, wasn’t even released in America!
(I had to buy my copy from Amazon.com.UK.) However, if you love bad movies, I
recommend seeing ZOMBEAK. Official
trailer:
Next up is BIRDEMIC: SHOCK AND TERROR (2010). Now, don’t get your feathers ruffled
and cluck, “but she already reviewed that back in April of 2011!” No article about murderous fowl would be
complete without re-examining James Nguyen’s contribution to the genre. And, at the same time, comparing it
to the above movie. Let’s begin
with the stars of both ... the birds.
Nguyen’s low-resolution, badly animated GIF attacking birds
were without a doubt the worst I’d even seen ... until ZOMBEAK’s
blood-spattered feathered-covered sock-puppet came into existence. So, while Nguyen’s vicious birds were
non-existent, ZOMBEAK’s gore-covered bird was an actual prop. Well, sort of.
Next, let’s look at the human actors. Both movies were on an even keel with one
another and would do justice to any middle school play! With few exceptions, each was the only screen
credit to date for most of their casts. The
biggest difference is that in ZOMBEAK, the actors seemed to be having a great
time, while the actors in BIRDEMIC seemed uncomfortable and awkward. Now, on to the scripts. ZOMBEAK wins this category claw’s-down! While ZOMBEAK’s script was just as
nonsensical as BIRDEMIC, at least we didn’t have to listen to Nguyen’s
broken-English scripted lines. I know I’ll
never forget such BIRDEMIC-pearls as “I like you and because you’re so pretty
to me.” ZOMBEAK had a script
fairly brimming over with intended and unintended humor! The production values in BIRDEMIC were
better, but Nguyen took three years to get his work in the can. ZOMBEAK did it in 30 days. So, they are birds of a feather. BIRDEMIC: SHOCK AND TERROR trailer:
BIRDEMIC 2: THE RESURRECTION coming soon! (Or maybe not.)
Lastly, let’s examine POULTRYGEIST: NIGHT OF THE CHICKEN
DEAD (2006). Arbie (Jason Yachanin) and
this girlfriend Wendy (Kate Graham) are getting it on in an ancient Indian
burial graveyard. On the night before
she’s leaving for college. Promising to
be faithful to one another, they part. One
year later, Arbie returns to the scene of his first (and only) sexual encounter
only to be startled by the sight of an American Chicken Bunker restaurant
that has been built there. Meanwhile,
Wendy has become a “left-wing lipstick wearing lesbian.” Disillusioned, Arbie take a slave-wage job at
the restaurant. Among his fellow workers
are a gay Hispanic named Paco Bell (Khalid Rivera, who literally is turned into
a Sloppy Jose!), an animal-loving redneck Carl Jr. (Caleb Emerson), and a
burqa-wearing, bumbling Muslim (Rose Ghavami). Unknown to all is that the long-dead Indian
spirits lie uneasy and have begun to bring back dead chickens as zombie fowl! Add to the mix copious gore, nudity,
gratuitous sex, lesbians, fat people, slime, car crashes, political incorrectness
and men’s hairy butts. Toss in some
musical tunes with such titles as “Green Eggs and Pam” and “S-U-I-C-I-D-E” and
with lyrics like “my meat in your buns makes a special sauce” and you have the
first Troma film to get a theatrical release in the past 25 years!
Gross, perverted, disgusting, crude and outrageous do not
even begin to describe this latest product from the perpetually 8-year-old mind
of Lloyd Kaufman. POULTRYGEIST has
something to offend anyone...and everyone!
But, that’s what Lloyd does best, a fact made clear by the at least 15
minutes of bragging, boasting and product selling Lloyd does before the
movie even starts! Touted by audiences
to be the “best since Toxic Avenger,” it met with the highest acclaim of any
film in Troma’s thirty-five year history.
However, that didn’t translate into box office receipts. POULTRYGEIST had an estimated budget of
$450,000 but only grossed $22,623 in ticket receipts and ranks a low #85 in the
horror comedy genre. In other words, it
bombed. Why? Probably for the very same reasons it’s
beloved by its fans. Filled with “disgusting
low-ball humor” and described by IMDB user reviews as “perverse and childish,”
they still consider this to be, “a gross-out comedy/ musical/ horror film that
is so much fun, it’s hard not to love.” That
said, when the roosters come home to roost, they will not have to fight for
space in my Video Vault because POULTRYGEIST was sent winging its way back
to Netflix. IMHO, Troma laid an egg
with POULTRYGEIST: NIGHT OF THE CHICKEN DEAD. Trailer:
No article about fowl-based death would be complete without
a shout-out to that granddad of feathered mayhem that is BLOOD FREAK (1972). Billed as “the World’s
only turkey-monster anti-drug pro-Jesus-Gore-Film” it stars Steve Hawkes,
at one-time playing Tarzan in some Spanish movies until an accidental fire
on a set left his right arm and cheek badly scarred, as Herschell, a
biker who gives a lift to an ultra-religious young woman named Angel
(Heather Hughes). She takes Herschell
back home where he meets her sister, Ann (Dana Cullivan), who’s a druggie. Falling under Ann’s spell, Herschell allows
himself to be talked into smoking pot and getting hot with Ann. Then, while at work on a turkey farm, he’s
given the task of eating an entire cooked turkey. Unbeknownst by him, the turkey is laced with
a powerful drug that turns Herschell into...A WERE-TURKEY! Seeking blood, he kills several young women. Then, he cuts a man’s leg off in a
sawmill. Finally, he goes back home,
hanging his turkey waddle in shame where he has sex with Ann, who
ponders throughout the act about what their children will look like. Will God take pity on Herschell? Will Herschell’s new appearance get him
promoted at the turkey farm? Will the
narrator of this movie make it through all 86 minutes before hacking up a
lung?
BLOOD FREAK was directed and narrated by Brad
F. Grinter, a skinny chain-smoking cracker of a man with a hacking
cough and a bad Elvis haircut. His
primary job in this movie, aside from smoking up all of the tobacco industry’s
yearly crop, is to make rambling and nonsensical philosophical insights about
the movie and God in general. This movie
typifies zero-budget films. Bad acting,
bouncy camera work, laughable script, indifferent directing, bizarre plot and
possibly the only film to use the previously unknown “female Wilhelm Scream,”
it has everything required to leave generations of audiences scratching their
heads in wonder. But, wait! The Something Weird Video disc of BLOOD FREAK
comes with bonus material titled “Brad Grinter, Nudist”! Yep! That
walking, talking nicotine patch is a nudist!
And he lets it all hang out in this short. And that, dear friends, is the scariest part
of BLOOD FREAK! Trailer:
Well, it’s time for this old bird to fly the coop. I’d like to thank all of you for enduring
this four-piece chicken-McNugget movie marathon with me. And, I hope that, if you should decide to
watch some (or all) of the above-mentioned movies, you have more Yuks than
cluck’s! Gobble-gobble!
MSTjunkie
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