The Possible Inspirations for Poultrygeist

While watching and reviewing one of the most bat-shit insane movies out there, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, I realized something about the film. There are so many scenes and qualities this film shares with other notable horror movies and I don’t look at it as stealing but rather ‘homaging.’ In fact, a diehard horror fan will spot these similarities quite easily but figured that I would take the liberty into pointing them out since it’s an interesting topic of discussion. I’ll also state that I am not going to state the obvious tributes like Night of the Living Dead but rather the obscure ones that I found. Whether or not these are just coincidence or on purpose, I’ll never know unless Lloyd himself speaks up.

So here are the films that (probably) influenced Poultrygeist:

Night of the Creeps
The characters throughout this film are all named after respectable horror directors in the field such as Raimi, Cronenberg, Hooper, Carptenter and Landis. Considering this movie was almost like an all-in-one horror movie it would make sense to name the characters after the director.

Poultrygeist does the same since it’s mocking the fast-food industry and the controversy, so it names it’s characters after notable fast-food establishments like Arbie’s, Denny’s, Taco Bell, Wendy’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken. It’s all done in a satricial way.

Dreamcatcher

In this Stephen King adaptation, Jonesy and Beaver pick up a lost tourist in the woods and while housing him in their cabin he runs to the bathroom and shit out an alien. The two friends break into the bathroom after suspecting something is wrong only to find the fat tourist dead, on the floor, and blood and shit all over the bathroom and an alien in the toilet.

However, in Poultrygeist, an obese customer rushes to the bathroom with his meal to take a shit. While doing so he unwillingly craps out a giant egg and lands on the floor of the bathroom, spewing out liquid shit from his ass. Later, Arbie and Denny break into the bathroom only to find the walls covered in feces and a mutant dead bird in the toilet.

The Blob (1988)

In this classic remake, a grill cook decides to help out his fellow waitress by taking care of the clog that’s preventing the water from draining while she serves the food. Suddenly the Blob shoots out a tendril, grabs his face, and in a steam messy of blood spray it pulls his body down through the drain. The waitress then sees the cook’s foot jolt back and forth in the drain as blood sprays everywhere.

Here, Paco Bell is pissing in the meat shredder out of an act of revenge but then a mutant dead chicken pushes him into the shredder. The Muslim cook, Humice, sees Paco Bell’s feet jolting up and down as the blades are shredding him; blood is spraying everywhere of course.

From Dusk Till Dawn

In the Rodriguez/QT movie the character Frost, after killing a few vampires, stops to tell the group of survivors how he managed to pull himself through Vietnam while Sex Machine slowly turns into a vampire off to the side. Before Frost has a chance to finish Sex Machine attacks and bites him turning him into one of the vampires.

In Poultrygeist, Denny regains is story of chicken trauma to the group while General Lee Roy, after being bit, slowly turns into a mutant zombie chicken. Before Denny could have a chance to finish, Lee Roy bites his head off and turns him into a zombie chicken. The group even gathers around Denny in a semi-circle for the story.

Little Shop of Horrors

During the last few scenes of this move, Audrey II decides to take matter into her own hands and turns against Seymour and while doing so he sings a musical number entitled ‘Mean Green Mother From Outer Space.’

Aside from resembling this in the sense that it’s a horror-comedy musical, in the ends scenes the zombified-mutant-chickenized-older Arbie takes matters into his own hands and sings a song called ‘Murderous General.’

These are all the influences that I have found just based on my first viewing and I am sure there are the obvious ones and some that I have overlooked. ‘Coarse, I still enjoyed the movie I think these little horror movie nods made it worth the watch… if not the greasy fried chicken.