Poultrygeist

Poultrygeist

Directed by Lloyd Kaufman

When I was younger, I used to eat a lot of McDonalds. I had it so often, they knew me by the sound of my voice at the drive through. I loved me some big macs. I also loved some chicken nuggets, double cheeseburgers and all other varieties of value menu items. I would order so much food, and then I’d sit around, pleased as punch with all the food I had ingested. I’d sit there, full and happy, staring at empty wrappers, guzzling down watered down soda and then the next day my body would hate me for it, This is kind of how I feel about Troma movies at this point, let me explain.

Before popping in the Poultrygeist DVD, the last real troma movie I had seen was Toxic Avenger 4, and I saw that when it came it out, so we’re talking almost 10 years here. In high school, as much as I loved junk food, I had another love, and that was b-movies. I was a Troma freak, I met Lloyd Kaufman (The president of Troma Films) a few times and even got to dress up as Toxie for one of their Montreal events, I was on cloud 9. But as my taste for junk food evolved, I guess so did my taste in film. Again, I’m not saying that I don’t watch B-Movies anymore, but I’ve seen so much of them in the last several years that most of them just don’t do it for me, just like when I have McDonald’s now, which I still do, It’s no longer this grand feasting, but instead a guilty pleasure that I keep to myself. Here lies the main problem with Poultrygeist.

Troma, like McDonalds, hasn’t really changed their menu. Sure they offer a few variations now, in the flavor of the added musical performances, and a slightly heavier emphasis on the “we did this with NO budget.” Mindset that Lloyd Kaufman has been writing about in his books and talking about in seminars, but other than that, Poultrygeist suffers from the same cheap, gore, naked boobs and fecal humor it did ten years ago, and it isn’t that it’s a bad thing, we all need a guilty pleasures, and Troma is one of the greatest guilty pleasures, I’ve just had too much of it in the past and now I’ve been decensitized to what make these movies so watchable in the first place.

The greatest thing about the blu-ray edition of this disk is the special features, if you love Troma, this disc is jam packed. Not only is the movie

included on there, they also threw in an entire, feature length documentary, following the full shoot of the movie; tantrums, sleeping on the floor, cheese sandwiches, and church basements galore! As well as out takes, trailers, interviews, and the usual Troma disc stocking stuffers. Where the disc suffers though is in the transfer of the film itself. I was genuinely excited to see what Troma would do with the high def format but instead was let down to see that the transfer was grainy and mucky, which made it look essentially like a DVD release at a hitched price point.

If this movie was released ten years ago, I would have gladly sat in my basement alone, with twenty dollars worth of junk food and gorged myself in both fast food and Troma’s authentic blend of film making, but as it stands now, I’m eating slightly healthier and staying away from sub budget shock fests. Now if you don’t mind I’ve got to go watch The Room and eat this baconator sandwich.

– Jon Morrell