A group of bizarre Satanic worshippers kidnap a fiery young waitress and plan to offer her up as Satan’s mate. During the black magic ceremony, a live chicken is sacrificed but unfortunately for all concerned, the ceremony is interrupted by the waitress’s friends and Satan is forced to possess the now undead chicken. The evil chicken then goes on a bloody rampage where neither friend nor foe is safe.

If you like crazy horror films, this premise might sound like a bit of a daft laugh. Well, I am sure that was the film makers’ intention. Writer and director Sam Drog would presumably like you to picture “The Evil Dead”, crossed with the hyper rabbit from “Monty Python And The Holy Grail”. Whilst “Zombeak” has elements of both, unfortunately it has virtually none of their atmosphere, humour or horror.

The film was made on a tiny budget, is very poorly lit so that most of the scenes are dim and hard to make out. The sound seems to have been badly dubbed on at the end; it is in synch but is muffled and occasionally horribly distorted when the action heats up. The acting is abysmal and the special effects are at best home-made.

Can anything good be said about the movie? Well it is mercifully short (70 minutes including the credits). The idea of a rampaging zombified chicken in a cramped house is actually quite funny (in my head, at least), and the execution of the chicken is reasonably successful. Well when I say successful, I mean it lurches athletically from victim to victim pecking their eyes out.

It does at least have a modicum of character, thanks to the strange Cartman-esque warped laughing/crying noises it makes. Most of the time it is not on screen but you and the characters can hear it rushing around in room above or in the wall cavities. With a bit more money and some 100 watt light bulbs, it might just about have worked.

With the exception of Melissa K Gilbert (who cunningly plays “Melissa”), the actors are uniformly terrible, but then their material is utterly hackneyed and bland. Melissa strikes a reasonable pose as a cross between Buffy and cheerleader Claire from “Heroes”. She is physical, cocky and has a screen presence. Again, with a better script she might have shone.

The disk has a few trailers but no other special features unless you count a few half-funny out-takes that intersperse the closing credits.

“Zombeak” (certificate ‘15’) is released on the MVM DVD label is out now, priced £5.99 or less from www.culttvstore.com