Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead

2006 horror comedy musical

Rating: 15/20 (Libby: 18/20; Fred: 17/20; Carrie: 19/20; Josh: didn't rate)

Plot: A fast-food chicken franchise builds on a Native American burial ground. Amidst protesters, those Indian souls take possession of the foodstuffs and eventually the workers and customers. Poultrygeist!

What a terrible punny title. The intention with our little bad movie club, obviously, is to watch a bad movie and make fun of it. Troma doesn't make unintentionally bad movies exactly. They understand their capabilities and the filmmakers are proud of what the disgusting and sometimes downright tasteless stuff they put on screen. And sometimes, as is the case here, they sneak in a movie that could actually be described as good. This accomplishes everything Lloyd Kaufman and his writers set out to do. Josh put it best: "Fun for the whole family: racism, sexism, fat people, geeks, lesbians, h[censored], [censored], handicaps [almost censored that one, too], white trash, rape, shit, vomit, and boobs." And, of course, a whole lot of cock. It's trashy, often looks stupid, and could possibly offend hippies, animal rights activists, Native Americans, liberals, black people, people with good diets, Middle Eastern peoples, women, and really anybody else. This pulls no punches, unapologetically and gloriously. And yes, there is the "choke the chicken" that you could have predicted before the movie even started. At the same time, there's some shrewd satire about our appetites as a society, both our literal appetites and our entertainment appetites, as well as some expected and bitter swipes at the (admittedly, fish-in-a-barrel-y) fast-food industry. The jokes are stuffed into this thing, and while a lot of them are terrible--some funny because they are terrible--a lot of this made me laugh the kinds of laughs that you almost hate yourself for. And did I mention that Poultrygeist is a musical? Because it is! With some standard musical choreography! The songs are good enough to sound like something from Rocky Horror and the lyrics are funny enough. The real fun begins when the mayhem does, and there are a few lengthy sequences where Kaufman and company are very obviously just seeing how many different ways they can think of for a zombie chicken to kill a human being. The violence is nearly orgasmic. Unfortunately for a lot of viewers, they'll miss out on the berserk zombie chicken mayhem because they'll turn the movie off during an extended scene where a bulbous man with gastrointestinal issues makes a mess of a bathroom. That's if they got past the creatively juvenile use of a Native American zombie finger in an opening scene featuring a guy with something other than an ax in his other hand. No, you don't want to know. This is a movie that surprises from its beginning to its end, and you might have as much fun watching it as it looks like the people who made it must have had. It's a real blast but definitely not for everybody. I wouldn't recommend it to my mother-in-law, for example.

Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: Surf Nazis Must Die!

1987 surf nazi movie

Rating: 7/20 (Fred: 12/20; Libby: 12/20; Carrie: 6.5/20; Josh: did not rate)

Plot: Gangs struggle for control of beach territories following an earthquake. The titular Nazis kill the wrong old lady's son, and she decides it's time to take the Nazis out, just as surfing Hitler realizes his dream of being "Fuhrer of the whole beach."

We went with Troma for our Sunday night bad movie viewing "pleasure," and although it's got a great title, some ridiculous characters, and a sex scene that involves what I'll describe as butt gnawing, this isn't one of their better efforts. In fact, there was really only a little bit of effort involved, I think. First, I want to point out that that poster is a little misleading. You don't get to see any surf-sawing action. There's some violence, but there's not all that excitement, and aside from an only slightly-doughy throat cut, a decapitation, and a scene where a boat splits open a Nazi noggin, it doesn't have quite the gross-out buffoonery of other Troma classics. It does have some of their typically great writing though. ("Slime-sucking neanderthals." "Take the head off a honky at 20 paces.") Peter George directed this, and he's only got one other film to his name--an adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Young Goodman Brown." That doesn't seem quite right to me. The characters are interesting enough that this movie really could have been a lot better. My friends and I liked the grandmother, played by Gail Neely who was in a Naked Gun sequel, Earth Girls Are Easy, and a bunch of Philips Milk of Magnesia commercials. Hitler (Barry Brenner, a coroner in both Maniac Cop and Maniac Cop 2) had a disappointing mustache, but Hook and the demented Mengele were both fun characters. There's even a Clockwork Orange reference in there. Of course, there's also a ton of surfing montages and barely any plot at all, both which can be frustrating. This isn't higher echelon Troma, but there's enough in there to make fans of the company happy enough. There's also plenty for you history buffs out there! 

Weird thing I noticed: Graffiti on the wall saying, "Give a hot beer injection to a lifeless corpse." Is that a reference to something or a non sequitur?

LolliLove

2004 mockumentary

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A prospective Hollywood power couple decides to help the homeless by giving them lollipops with the husband's paintings and inspirational slogans on the wrappers.

I'm not sure there was enough of an idea here to comfortably stretch this into a twenty-minute short film. And that's a problem since it was stretched into a feature-length film. Director Jenna Fischer co-wrote and starred in this with her then-husband James Gunn, a guy who reminds me of David Arquette which caused me to spend the majority of the movie wondering why she married somebody who reminds me of David Arquette. Their rapport on the screen wasn't too bad, at least not as bad as it must have been in their real lives. There are a handful of funny moments, but so much of this was a little too obvious. They're shallow, and they're kind of stupid. The audience figures that out pretty quickly, and then the movie just keeps going on and on and reminding us of those two things. Judy "Kitty" Greer is in this, and there are enough humorous ideas--more than a few improvised, I reckon--to keep this entertaining enough for the duration.

Released by Troma, a company that James Gunn worked for.

This is only the second time I've mentioned David Arquette on this blog.

Tromeo and Juliet

1996 Shakespeare adaptation

Rating: 13/20

Plot: See Romeo and Juliet but with more perversity. Or maybe less. Shakespeare was a pretty randy fellow.

 A first shot of what I believe was a hanged squirrel, Lemmy from Motorhead reciting the bard, nipple piercing, severed wiggling fingers, comical fart sounds, the "king of cold cuts," comical spousal abuse, lesbian cooks, outlandish dream sequences with penis monsters going "Rarr!", crossbow grenades, punk rockers, heads meeting fire hydrants, people carrying lizards inexplicably, guys in cow costumes, a meat factory, glass time-out rooms, bread thieves, pink bondage devices, meat hook suicide attempts, Hitler head bludgeons, guys pissing on other guys, car accidents, more severed limbs, more comical fart sounds, opium dens, hermaphroditic pig people, projectile vomit, exploding heads, incest, and a dream sequence with a spontaneous pregnancy featuring popcorn and rats that is the nuttiest thing I've seen in a long while. This ain't your English teacher's Shakespeare. There is some Shakespearean dialogue juxtaposed with the modern (well, then modern) urban slang, and that's pretty jarring. There are some lines that could be from the play. It's been a while since I read it.

"My name is Capulet. I got a corn nut for a dick. My name is Capulet. My asshole's full of worms."
"What do you think about my milkman costume, Juliet?"
"Get ready to die!" "It happens to everyone sooner or ladder." (Context is probably important for this one.)
"Now you've gone too far! Goddamn heads bouncing off of cars while families are singing 'Found a Peanut'!"
"I'm going to wipe you off the face of the earth like a piece of shit from God's ass."

A couple of those could be straight from Big Willie. That Lloyd Kaufman--independent film production company Troma's version of Shakespeare--sure is a goofball, and the ratio of gags that work and those that don't probably isn't all that good. However, there are so many ideas here that there is enough that works, and if you like John Waters or his imitators (like Lloyd Kaufman, for example), this might appeal to you. Troma fan will recognize a lot of the company's movie posters and a few costumes at a party which is either a nice touch or really cheap. If it's the latter, it matches the rest of the movie. This is not a great movie and feels much longer than it actually is, but it's kind of a cute bit of filth if you're into that sort of thing.

I might never hear "Found a Peanut" the same way again.

Period Piece

2006 thing

Rating: 4/20

Plot: None.

I guess we'll put this in the mondo film or shockumentary genre although it's not a documentary. It's not exactly scripted either though, and it doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm not sure who I should blame for this--Johnny Knoxville, Pink Flamingos, Tom Green, Harmony Korine? All of them. Maybe I should just blame Giuseppe Andrews, the "film's" "director" who, in a brief introduction to this, said, "Well, it's a hard film to synopsis." He also referred to it as a "grenade of wild images, dialogue, and sound" when he could have saved a lot of words and just said described it as "inane garbage." I probably should have heeded the warning at the beginning of the film--"Warning: This film contains senior citizen nudity and dead pigs." Or maybe the appearance of the guy on the cover four-and-a-half minutes into the movie, completely naked and simulating a sex act with an invisible woman should have had me reaching for my remote. This movie feels like somebody flinging feces at you, just shocking scene after shocking scene. It's got a very middle-schoolish "look at what I can say on your television" kind of humor. Or, more accurately, "Look at what I can get old people to say." You get people shooting up in a car wash; all kinds of scenes with people, including a guy in a coon skin cap, having sex with a teddy bear; clowns on stick horses; plays with stop-motion animated tater tots which, of course, evolve into tater tot pornography; smoking pigs; a puppet; a guy eating his own armpit hair; characters pantomiming the cutting and eating of flatulence with a plastic knife and fork. I don't mind experimental movies, and shocking things don't bother me. This is just 80 minutes of pointless nonsense, and 80 minutes which, by the way, seems a little longer than Gone with the Wind. I can't think of any reason why anybody reading this should see this movie. Well, unless you're into tater tots or naked old people. Or stuffed animal snuff films.

I do wonder if Campbells appreciated the (I assume) free product placement in a scene where a can of clam chowder was used to sodomize a teddy bear.

The Toxic Avenger

1984 superhero movie

Rating: 9/20

Plot: 90-pound weakling Melvin works as a janitor at a health club, and he's endlessly teased and terrorized by the beefier and more attractive clientele. One day, they pull the ultimate practical joke--throwing Melvin in a barrel of toxic waste. It's hilarious. When he emerges, he's transformed into the titular superhero and starts mopping up crime all over town.

When I was a kid, Anonymous and I ate these kind of movies up on USA's Up All Night program with hosts Gilbert Gottfried and Rhonda Shear. And that other woman who was there before Rhonda Shear. Actually, very late at night is the only time this kind of movie would be appropriate. It's only late at night (very very late) when this kind of trash is funny. And this is the lowest form of trash, from the (intentionally?) awful acting to the gross-out effects to the cringeworthy attempts to be humorous. Anonymous and I missed out on some of the more gruesome effects since the USA Network apparently doesn't think there's a time late enough to show watermelons with wigs on them being run over by a car. I liked the low-budget effects; it's a good mix of bizarre and just plain icky. Nobody will accuse The Toxic Avenger or its makers of being intelligent, but there are times when you've watched too many dark and slow Hungarian movies or Czech Holocaust comedies and need something that's just the right amount of stupid. And The Toxic Avenger has that.