Quick Take
Cult movie studio Troma, which has helped launch the careers of Hollywood A-listers like James Gunn, filmed its latest low-budget shock-horror production, "Poultrygeist 2," in downtown Santa Cruz.
It’s late evening and a short-order chef flips another chicken patty on the flattop. He looks at the poster next to the bubbling fryer, which reads “The General’s Way to Make a Schicken [sic] Sandwich” with an illustration of two buns on top of a piece of meat.
Then the chef notices something out of the corner of his eye. A giant rat crawls across the ground, then stops to look at him with disgust.
But this is no ordinary rat.
It stands on its hind legs, revealing itself to be the size of a small child, and rips open its chest, exposing a series of monstrous teeth on either side of its rib cage. A fountain of blood explodes across the ground as intestines shoot out like tentacles.
“Cut!” shouts the director as the crew of “Poultrygeist 2” claps with congratulatory delight between laughs and slimy high-fives on the set of the latest movie filming in Santa Cruz.
For some, this would be an outrageous scene steeped in vulgarity and gratuitous violence. But for the film crew at the old Munch location on the corner of Pacific Avenue and Laurel Street downtown, it’s just another day on the set of “Poultrygeist 2,” the latest project from legendary indie film studio Troma Entertainment (or just Troma, as it’s known).
The king peddlers of “shocksploitation” films, Troma has launched the careers of some of Hollywood’s most influential creators, giving actors, writers and directors their first big breaks by either producing, distributing or casting their debut films, including some operating on shoestring budgets. Celebrated creatives like J.J. Abrams, Billy Bob Thornton, Oliver Stone, Vincent D’Onofrio, Kevin Costner, James Gunn and “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone can all trace their career lineages back to the bowels of the fictitious world many Troma films are set in, Tromaville.
Now, the 50-year-old studio has chosen Santa Cruz as its latest canvas for boundary-pushing cinema.
“Santa Cruz has the right vibe with the right people,” said “Poultrygeist 2” director Mercedes the Muse, who co-wrote the film’s script with husband Moses, who is also the film’s videographer.
Founded in 1974 by Michael Herz and “Uncle” Lloyd Kaufman, Troma began as a raunchy sex comedy production company. However, in 1984 it released the movie that made the company famous, “The Toxic Avenger,” which just experienced a remake/reboot starring “Game of Thrones” actor Peter Dinklage. Originally released online in 2023, the latest version of “The Toxic Avenger” had its nationwide debut in theaters on Aug. 29.
Throughout the years, Troma made a string of underground, low-budget, B-movie — aka grindhouse — hits like “Class of Nuke ‘Em High,” “Tromeo & Juliet” and “Terror Firmer.”
In 2006, the studio released “Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead” — a musical zombie comedy (aka zomcom) — to critical acclaim from outlets like Entertainment Weekly and The New York Times, the latter of which called it “as perfect as a film predicated on the joys of projectile vomiting and explosive diarrhea can be.”
So when Kaufman posted on social media last year asking if anyone wanted to make a sequel “on a micro budget,” Mercedes and Moses jumped at the opportunity — all while still wrapping up production on “Rise of the Super Tromettes,” which Troma released earlier this year.
“Everybody was weighing in and it got so many comments and so many likes,” Mercedes says. “But I know Lloyd and he likes scripts in his hands. He always says, ‘Anybody can have ideas,’ but he wants people to put in the effort and write something. So a month later I sent him a script and maybe a week later it was greenlit.”
Mercedes and Moses have deep roots in Northern California’s independent film scene.
They met 19 years ago in their hometown of Salinas while working together at Maya Cinemas. They quickly bonded over the finer things: punk music, underground comics and horror movies.
“We’re into trash with a message,” laughs Moses. “It’s too boring if it’s all message and too empty if it’s all trash. They have to be mixed together.”
Despite always wanting to make movies, Mercedes’ family wanted her to be the first in their bloodline to go to college.
“So I did go to college for one week,” she says.
She returned to the Maya and began working on guerrilla cinema with Moses. They formed the Underground Front, a self-proclaimed “cinema sex cult.” In 2008, Mercedes wrote and directed her first film, “My Night Job,” about a San Francisco sex worker caught in a destructive spiral. In 2014, the two were married, and three years later, Troma picked up their independent film “Rose and Victor: No Mercy” for home distribution.
Following the plot from its predecessor, “Poultrygeist 2” is about a fast food restaurant where a mutant outbreak occurs, sickening patrons and turning them — and restaurant employees — into chicken-human zombie hybrids.
Despite the original receiving a budget of half a million dollars, this one is being made on a meager $9,000. That’s less than 2% of the original budget of the original 2006 film. So in order to get the gore flowing, Mercedes and Moses reached out to past Troma regulars — both actors and their characters — for performances and practical effects. Fans familiar with the films will recognize some famous Tromaville characters, like Dolphinman (created by James Gunn) and Turkeyman (“Dolphinman Vs. Turkeyman”).
Mercedes has used creators and actors like Sadie Satanas, Layla Kaufman, Diana Martinez and Max Rock for makeup and practical effects before. They conjure gore from oatmeal, Karo syrup and J-Lube with food dye. Intestines are tubes covered in fake, rubber flesh in order to pump gallons of fake blood. Costumes are repurposed from Spirit Halloween or at-home, DIY outfits made by the cast and crew.
The DIY mentality of “Poultrygeist 2” is part of the appeal for Layla Kaufman (no relation to Lloyd). Kaufman plays one of the film’s main characters, the pimple-ridden Fry Girl, along with being a makeup artist on the set.
She started working with Mercedes and Moses in early 2020 when a friend sent her a wanted ad for actors for the pair’s 2021 movie, “Divide & Conquer.” In it, three female warriors are on the run and “kicking in the teeth” of every misogynist in Tromaville. Kaufman isn’t the only one doing double time on “Poultrygeist 2.” Several other of the film’s stars are also working behind the scenes as special effects artists, grips and whatever other job needs to be filled at the moment.
It’s a punk rock style that the creators thrive in.
“We can do a lot of damage with a little bit of money,” Moses says.
Fans of the first film can expect the sequel to not only push all the envelopes of trash cinema, but eat said envelopes, puke them up then set them on fire. Simply put, this movie goes bigger and bloodier than the first and is not for the faint of heart — or anyone who is easily offended.
“Poultrygeist 2” has twice the nudity and 10 times more blood, guts and ooze. Take the scene where a chicken zombie’s guts explode with 6 gallons of toxic green blood, or the 5 gallons of gore that is thrown at the protagonists during one of the film’s big fight scenes.
Then there are the more NC-17 scenes, like human egg-laying.
“There’s things in this movie I’ve never seen on film,” says Satanas. Along with being a special effects supervisor she also plays one of the main characters, Hen-rietta (who identifies as a chicken).
“Poultrygeist 2’ “is beautiful because it’s more sexy, filthy and guerilla-style than the first,” Layla Kaufman says with a laugh. “If Lloyd was on set, I don’t think he would live to the end of shooting.”
For Mercedes and Moses, it’s just another day’s work. The two admit they’re not trying to be purposely offensive. Drawing from their inspirations such as underground artist R. Crumb, punk bands and over-the-top gore movies like Peter Jackson’s “Braindead” (also known as “Dead Alive”), the couple finds humor in the absurd. The two often think they can always go further, and Mercedes even admits she’s often “hard on herself” for not going bigger and grosser.
Looking past the grindhouse nature of Mercedes and Moses’ films, there is an underlying theme of badass feminism. Sure, there might be tons of nudity, but the women portrayed use it for empowerment. They fight the patriarchy, kill the Nazis and destroy the misogynists all while wearing what they want, how they want to wear it.
So when the creative duo was fundraising for “Divide & Conquer,” they got an unexpected call.
“Lloyd liked the feminist aspect of it,” says Mercedes. “So he contacted us saying he wanted to produce that movie.”
Feminist aspects are woven into “Poultrygeist 2,” where the core of the cast is almost all women. Sidestepping the horror trope of the final girl barely surviving — think Sally Hardesty at the end of “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” or Laurie Strode at the end of “Halloween” — these women fight off the zombie chicken hordes in style.
Since “Divide & Conquer,” the creators have worked with Troma to make the grimiest, slimiest, sexiest grindhouse and exploitation films, carrying the production company’s legacy into its second 50 years.
And now, Santa Cruz gets to be a part of that legacy.
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