Bryan Marshal plays the part of Dwight Sorrento, an ageing sixties pop icon who gets on the wrong side of animal protesters by fronting ads for Lik n' Chik, a fried chicken fast-food chain. He attracts the attentions of a spontaneously-combustible animal rights activist, Zeke, who goes on a crusade to kill Dwight for his part in the murder of his chicken brethren. In order to escape Zeke's assassination attempts, Dwight decides to fake his death which, as his manager Bryce (Martyn Sanderson) points out has another possible benefit - a money-spinning posthumous Dwight revival - after all, it worked for Elvis and Buddy Holly. Mysteriously, Zeke isn't fooled by this stunt and is soon paying unwanted visits to Dwight's hideout. Bryce hires a bodyguard, Colette (Ellie Smith), but they have trouble keeping one step ahead. It isn't always easy for the audience either.

Luckily, there are some funny moments along the way - most notably Colette's hyperactive, hyper allergic son who has a fascination with anything that can be of harm to himself or others; the sixties performance spoof featuring Marton Czokas as a young Dwight; and Zeke's bizarre chicken laugh. Local audiences will also get a few chuckles from performances by Dylan Taite, Alison Mau and a brief appearance from our own sixties pop icon, Ray Columbus.

But the fact remains that the plot is as holey as a month of Sundays. Virtually nothing is taken to its logical conclusion: much is made of Colette's stiff finger, but in the end it turns out she jammed it in a door; Vicky's (Dwight's daughter) quest to find her mother comes to a confused and unsatisfactory conclusion; and Dwight seems to have an amazing ability to recover from sunburn and a certain "growth" problem which has its five minutes of attention before being dropped from the plot altogether.

There's no doubt that La Hood's gained the technical and visual skills needed for feature productions. But on the plot front there's still the feeling that this film could have benefited from further development. As it is, this Chicken is undernourished.