{"id":193091,"date":"2026-03-16T04:47:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T04:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/193091\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T04:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T04:47:08","slug":"feathers-fly-as-chicken-head-movie-descends-on-largo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/193091\/","title":{"rendered":"Feathers fly as \u2018Chicken Head\u2019 movie descends on Largo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Smack in the middle of a card table set up in the far corner of the Heritage Village parking lot is a gigantic, fully-feathered chicken head. The head is four feet tall, and it looks angry. It looks like the rooster from hell.<\/p>\n

Which is entirely appropriate, because said head is a costume piece for Chicken Head, a horror movie spoof in production on the grounds of the leafy Largo park and open-air history museum. The head\u2019s proud creator guards it like a government secret, and politely asks that it not be photographed by the media \u2013 no spoilers, you know.<\/p>\n

This, though, can be said about Chicken Head: It\u2019s an independent film written by actor Corin Nemec (I Know My First Name is Steven, Stargate SG-1, Parker Lewis Can\u2019t Lose) and screen scribe Matt Florio. They also play the lead characters, a pair of documentarians named Skip and Todd (of \u201cSTD Productions\u201d) who stumble upon the legend of a half man, half chicken who has terrorized a small Florida town for years.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Filmmakers Corin Nemec, left, and Matt Florio.<\/p>\n

Their financial benefactor Darryl (David Faustino from Married \u2026 With Children) is not pleased that the tale of the \u201cChicken Head Slayer\u201d has taken the team away from their agreed-upon documentary project, about the high suicide rate among dentists.<\/p>\n

Skip and Todd, however, can\u2019t be swayed. They know a good story when they smell it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to go there, we\u2019re going to spend the night in the cabin the Chicken Head was born in,\u201d Nemec explains. \u201cAnd as we go out to record this documentary, it turns out that the Chicken Head is real.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt turns out that every July 20 he returns to finish murdering the rest of the townsfolk.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Actors Kyle Grooms, left, and James Logan.<\/p>\n

Chicken Head is a fully-fledged Florida production, top to bottom. Nemec, who moved to Belleair Bluffs from Los Angeles in 2022, has written several scripts with Florio (from Miami and, more recently, Tampa). They\u2019re both producers on the project, with Nemec as director.<\/p>\n

Also in the 24-member cast: Jason London (Dazed and Confused), another Pinellas transplant; Keith Coogan (Toy Soldiers, Don\u2019t Tell Mom the Babysitter\u2019s Dead), who lives on Florida\u2019s east coast; and St. Pete acting mainstay Paul Wilson.<\/p>\n

Zack Gottsagen (The Peanut Butter Falcon), longtime WWE broadcaster Kayla Becker and Tara Reed (American Pie) also appear.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s quartet of backers includes real estate developer (and former St. Petersburg City Councilmember) Robert Blackmon. He is officially an executive producer.<\/p>\n

Nemec describes the movies as \u201cexperimental. We crushed a lot of genres together: The horror comedy genre, the mockumentary genre and the found footage drama \u2013 the footage that they\u2019re shooting for their documentary becomes the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of Chicken Head is being shot after dark, when the piney woods draped with Spanish moss on Heritage Village\u2019s 21 acres take on the desired spooky vibe.<\/p>\n

\"\"On this day, however, the crew (most of them are local, too) are filming a brief slate of daylight scenes. Coogan, who\u2019s playing documentary crewmember Gus Jensen, is the center of attention as Nemec directs him \u201cflying\u201d a camera drone (there\u2019s an off-camera drone operator doing the actual joystick work).<\/p>\n

\u201cI read this script and in my mind I couldn\u2019t not see it with traditional, master, over-the-shoulder closeup coverage,\u201d Coogan says once the shot is successfully in the can. \u201cWe\u2019re doing anything but that. It\u2019s now all security cameras, Go-Pros, drone shots \u2026 that visual language we\u2019re used to in reality game shows and sporting stuff. It gives us a lot of leeway to improv.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coogan, whose previous horror work was an episode of Tales From the Crypt and the 2000 thriller Python (\u201c130 feet of Terror,\u201d he laughs), is a fan of the genre, and he\u2019s of the mind that \u201cscare pictures\u201d (to use old-time Hollywood parlance) are always best when they\u2019re self-aware, with healthy dollops of humor.<\/p>\n

Cue the theme from Chicken Head.<\/p>\n

His grandfather was Jackie Coogan, an early child star (he had the title role in Charlie Chaplin\u2019s film The Kid), who\u2019s probably best remembered for his portrayal of Uncle Fester on TV\u2019s The Addams Family.<\/p>\n

Jackie Coogan was also famously married to Betty Grable. \u201cHe was her first husband,\u201d says his grandson. \u201cAnd when they separated and she left him for Harry James, my grandfather never listened to a jazz record again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Both Nemec and Florio refer to the \u201cfound footage\u201d technique used in 1999\u2019s The Blair Witch Project as an element in the Chicken Head production saga.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically,\u201d Florio explains, \u201cwe\u2019re taking elements of Blair Witch \u2013 cameras in the woods, it feels like it\u2019s real \u2013 but we\u2019re putting The Office in it. So now we have all these goofballs, and they all have their own personalities, and they\u2019re all running for their lives in the woods.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cameras that are used throughout this entire movie are all practical cameras that exist within the movie. We\u2019ve already established that these cameras exist in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the camera angles, our cinematographer is peeking around the trees and stuff \u2013 it makes it feel like you\u2019re literally going through the movie with these characters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cast and crew work through a late afternoon rain shower to finish the daylight scenes on this day\u2019s schedule (nearly all of Chicken Head is being shot in the seven days the County has allowed them use of Heritage Village). The rest of the cast trickles in. Tonight, they\u2019ll most likely be here until 3 or 4 a.m., shooting in the woods and inside several of the old-Florida buildings on the property.<\/p>\n

It has to be dark as pitch for the Chicken Head to emerge, and wreak havoc.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people watch this thing,\u201d says Florio, \u201cthey\u2019re going to be like \u2018This is so ridiculous! But it\u2019s hilarious.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

From left: Writer, director and actor Corin Nemec, actor Jason London, executive producer Robert Blackmon and actor Keith Coogan.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Smack in the middle of a card table set up in the far corner of the Heritage Village…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-193091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}