It\u2019s a chicken! It\u2019s a man! It\u2019s … a movie about a half-chicken, half-man murderer at Heritage Village?<\/p>\n
\u201cChicken Head,\u201d a horror-comedy mockumentary from Corin Nemec, is being filmed around Pinellas County. Most of the scenes were filmed this month during a weeklong shoot at Heritage Village in Largo.<\/p>\n
Tara Reid (\u201cAmerican Pie,\u201d \u201cThe Big Lebowski\u201d) and Jason London (\u201cDazed and Confused\u201d) are expected to complete additional scenes this spring at the Pioneer Settlement, another living history museum and park nestled within St. Petersburg\u2019s Boyd Hill Nature Preserve. Sabrina Nemec, Corin\u2019s wife and an executive producer on the film, said producers are still working out the details of Reid\u2019s contract.<\/p>\n
The plot centers around a film crew that visits the secluded fictional swinger community of Gallus, Florida, while making a documentary about the infamous (also fictional) Chicken Head murders. Will they meet a feathery end in their pursuit of movie magic?<\/p>\n
Nemec directs and stars in the film alongside Keith Coogan (\u201cAdventures in Babysitting,\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t Tell Mom the Babysitter\u2019s Dead\u201d) and David Faustino (Bud Bundy on the Fox sitcom \u201cMarried\u2026 with Children\u201d). It also features Kayla Becker, who started her career as a sports broadcaster in Orlando before joining WWE as Kayla Braxton.<\/p>\n
Nemec (\u201cParker Lewis Can\u2019t Lose,\u201d \u201cStargate SG-1\u201d) wrote the script with Matt Florio and leads a cast and crew of about 50. He would \u201crather not say\u201d how big the budget is, but promised the film will look like it has over $1 million to work with.<\/p>\n
Originally, the story took place in one cabin, Nemec said. He had previously scouted Heritage Village for another project and realized it might be a great fit for \u201cChicken Head.\u201d<\/p>\n
He called on his friend Robert Blackmon, a board member of the Pinellas County Historical Commission, to be an executive producer.<\/p>\n
Heritage Village is a living-history museum and park with dozens of restored buildings across 21 acres. With access to an entire Old Florida town \u2014 including a general store, train station and cabins \u2014 Nemec was able to consult Blackmon and expand the story.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe came in like the Archangel Michael,\u201d Nemec said.<\/p>\n
Blackmon is a real estate investor and former St. Petersburg City Council member. After his run for mayor in 2021, he shifted his focus to historic preservation. He won an award last year from Preserve the \u2018Burg for his work to restore a Standard Oil station from 1926.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been trying to do stuff that\u2019s fun and meaningful,\u201c Blackmon said. \u201dIt\u2019s a very low-budget film with a pretty good cast, and a pretty off-the-wall plot. The guy who made the Chicken Head costume is the main puppet maker for the Muppets.”<\/p>\n
Maybe \u201cChicken Head\u201d could be the next cult classic.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, this is completely selfish, because I need to get to more horror cons,\u201d Keith Coogan said while waiting for hair and makeup. \u201cI do see the shirt with Michael and Jason and Freddie and Art (the Clown) and Chicken Head.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coogan said the genre reminded him of real-life body horror that emerges during one\u2019s teen years.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou confront your own mortality, but you live through it on the screen,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re all going to die, and we don\u2019t have to be so serious about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blackmon is already picturing \u201cChicken Head\u201d tours at Heritage Village, which could expose more people to Florida history.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fun to see something that we\u2019ve done in our backyard. And we\u2019ve had a real problem with movies in Florida since there\u2019s no longer any incentives,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s really cool that Corin is paddling upstream, a well-known career actor trying to bring movies back to Florida.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a chicken! It\u2019s a man! It\u2019s … a movie about a half-chicken, half-man murderer at Heritage Village?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[100635,70359,4085,596,202,204,203,199,201,200,100634],"class_list":["post-222140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-chicken-head","tag-heritage-village","tag-largo","tag-pinellas-county","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tara-reid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222140","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=222140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}