PLUCKED! (1967)
(a.k.a. DEATH LAID AN EGG)
Article #532 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 8-30-2002
Posting date: 1-22-2003

A man who is married to a rich poultry rancher plans to run away from her with his girlfriend; he also murders prostitutes for pleasure.

Between the two titles and the description above, you might think you’ve stumbled upon a weird one here. And you’d be right; what with the jarring soundtrack, jagged editing, bizarre situations and continual obsession with chickens, you would be excused from thinking that you had actually run across some pointless, self-indulgent art film rather than a horror-thriller. That’s what I was beginning to think, anyway, but amazingly enough, it all starts to fall together within the last twenty minutes, and the less I say about it the better, as some of the plot twists and revelations are delicious indeed. I ended up admiring the sheer audacity of the work; it actually had managed the trick of holding my attention through a fairly long stretch of film where very little seemed to be happening, and though your mileage may vary, it worked very well for me. Still, I will say this is one of the weirdest ones to come down the pike since THE RAPE OF THE VAMPIRE, though this movie (unlike that one) actually has a payoff.