Director/Screenplay – Genoveva Rossi, Producers – Genoveva Rossi & Dave Stein, Photography – Brandon Ascari, Special Effects Supervisor/Makeup Effects – K.J. Hopkins, Puppet Designer – Rocco George, Production Design – Rocco George & Genoveva Rossi. Production Company – Cluck, Cluck Productions.
Cast
Genoveva Rossi (Lisa Ciccone/Suck-a-Rena/Madame Sterling), Edward X. Young (Edwin Price), Dennis Carter Jr. (Richard Donahue), Rocco George (Vinnie/Father Bill/Store Clerk/Alexander), David Naughton (President Robertson), Lloyd Kaufman (Himself), John Dugan (Prime Minister Dugan), Veronica James (Kadrolsha Ona Carole), Brendan Fletcher (Peter Frampton), Artie Pasquale (Tony Big Fish), Bradley Creanzo (Vegan Bounty Hunter), Jody Hill (Deanne Demko), John Link (Plucky Price), Bob Socci (Victor Smooth), Jeanie Jeffries (Herself)
Plot
Earth comes under invasion from space chickens. Collaborating with regular earth chickens, the space chickens quickly rout humanity.
Genoveva Rossi is, if you are to believe the biography that she herself wrote at the IMDB, “one of the best-known cult film stars in the world” and a horror icon. I do have a bit of a problem with someone self-describing themselves as a horror icon and cult star – despite Rossi supposedly being ‘a horror icon and the best known cult star in the world’ (a beat I cover with regularity), hers is a name I’ve never had to type up on the credits for a film before this, for example, let alone even a name I have heard before watching Attack of the Killer Chickens: The Movie!.
Rossi has appeared in over 100 films and tv roles but a reasonable percentage of these are also uncredited roles, which usually mean parts as an extra. Nevertheless, she has a fair body of acting work since the early 2010s. Besides directing, writing and co-producing Attack of the Killer Chickens: The Movie!, Rossi also plays several roles in the film, including the heroine Lisa and the director who appears in the introductory segments. Rossi had previously directed the basis of this as the short film Attack of the Killer Chickens (2015).
The 1980s brought a fad for Deliberately Bad Films and then those with Deliberately Ridiculous Titles. Troma Films is one company that seems to specialise in these particularly when it comes to Deliberately Ridiculous Titles. Seemingly in homage, the film features a visit to Troma headquarters and get in a cameo from Troma head Lloyd Kaufman as himself, who is targeted by the alien chickens because of having directed Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006).
Invading alien chickens
There is not a single actor present in Attack of the Killer Chickens: The Movie! who seems to be taking the film seriously. However, when you are a no budget effort with a ridiculous premise, this is an approach that only conveys a cynicism – I mean, if the filmmakers aren’t treating their own film seriously, why should an audience invest the slightest in what is going on?
There is zero effort being made at any kind of believability when it comes to the effects where the chickens are just hand puppets and in some scenes what look like people in costumes. The attacks consist of people being pecked by the puppets and come without any gore effects or even credibility on the parts of the actors. Occasionally, the film does get by on a certain “Am I really watching this?” element – like when it comes to chicken sex scenes (yes, mocked-up porno scenes between chicken puppets) and human-chicken sex scenes, which result in giving birth to a human-chicken hybrid.
The film appears to have been made without a script. Often the actors give the impression they were roped in and asked to ad lib on the spot – especially the scenes that seem to take place at a convention and include Brendan Fletcher and others where it looks exactly like Rossi and her film crew buttonholed a bunch of people in a hallway and got them to improvise a response to the idea of killer chickens.
