El ataque de los pájaros

In this cheap (cheep!) 'animals attack' eco-horror, our feathered friends turn into feathered fiends: miffed at the way they have been treated by mankind, they swoop out of the sky to claw at people's faces and peck out their eyes. Intrepid TV reporters Peter (Christopher Atkins) and Vanessa (Michelle Johnson) investigate the terrifying phenomenon.

Deadly ducks, frightening flamingos, petrifying pigeons and ravenous raptors... gimme a break! Alfred Hitchcock might have succeeded in scaring audiences with his flappy critters in The Birds, but let's be honest, the word 'Beaks' doesn't strike the same kind of fear into the heart as 'Jaws'. That's because birds aren't as bowel-looseningly scary as sharks, as this film proves so well. Also - and this might be stating the bleedin' obvious - director René Cardona Jr. is no Hitchcock.

Cardona's film consists of a series of crappy bird attacks on a variety of unlucky souls, the birds launched at the actors and quickly flapping away, not looking at all menacing. There are a couple of hawks, which admittedly could do some damage, but most of the winged devils in the film are either doves or pigeons, which are pretty stupid birds with blunt beaks, but which somehow have the brains to use a door handle and peck through a wooden door (surely the pigeons could have got a couple of woodpeckers to help them). Oh, and there's a couple of tits: Vanessa's, when she takes a shower (although I suspect that Cardona used a body double for Johnson - I'm sure her's are bigger).

The acting is atrocious, Johnson so bad that she's in serious danger if those woodpeckers ever turn up. Cardona is a director capable of turning out reasonably entertaining trash (see Tintorera or The Night of a Thousand Cats), but this is not one of his better films, the film so weak that it doesn't even bother to come up with an ending, the belligerent birds suddenly stopping their pesky behaviour and returning to normal (I know the same could be said of The Birds, but, once again, I must stress that Cardona is no Hitchcock). Cardona also doesn't seem at all concerned for the safety of his feathered extras, the poor things hurled at (and through) glass windows and blasted by shotguns (they didn't look like fake birds to me).

2.5/10, rounded up to 3 for the gushing eye socket and some flesh ripping, the pigeons tearing at the victim's skin like flying piranhas (hmmm....flying piranha... now there's an idea).

Broadcast journalist Michelle Johnson (as Vanessa Cartwright) and cameraman Christopher Atkins (as Peter) stumble upon the story of the century - BIRDS, formerly our feathered friends, have taken a foul turn! They are attacking people all over the world! The cute shirt-shedding blonde couple track the mostly pesky pigeons as they make mince meat out of people's faces. As the attacks increase, you get less of Ms. Johnson and Mr. Atkins showing their chests, and more pigeon poking.

A real trouper, Mr. Atkins manages to utter the line, "We're sitting ducks," with a straight face.

"I know what we saw was awful, but it's over," says Salvador Pineda when he thinks he's escaped from danger. Not so fast. That could be your reaction after seeing this Rene Cardona Jr. homage to Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" (1963). There are some promising scenes, but the pace and editing are astonishingly bad - perhaps no editing was done, and Mr. Cardona tried to make a movie with the footage he had. And, it looks like they used up a lot of pigeons during production.

** Beaks (10/87) Rene Cardona Jr. ~ Michelle Johnson, Christopher Atkins, Sonia Infante, Salvador Pineda

What a stupendous movie. So bad in every way that it is flat out hilarious. As someone else wrote - concerns over ACTUAL birds being harmed or killed during the making of this epic. Oh yeah! No doubt about it. You can actually see a crew member's hand in one shot throwing a bird at an actor. In other scenes to make it look like the PIGEONS are swarming a victim you can see the poor things have their feet tied or stapled to the actor's costume. Sheesh! Plus you can tell the money people behind the film told the director we need nudity (check) gore (check) a long para-sailing scene with a Thompson Twins late 1980's pop sound song (check) explosion (got it) and slo-mo shots of children in danger (you betcha)! This mess is very funny even though it doesnt mean to be. For lovers of Grade Z classics - check of BEAKS! Two Claws Up!

It's hard to condone a film that starts off with some muppet shooting pigeons for sport, but this film is so overwhelmingly stupid that it's hard not to enjoy it. Basically, it's The Birds only made by Spaniards and Italians. Which is probably why it starts with a guy shooting pigeons.

Basically, the birds are annoyed that man is damaging the Earth and are now looking for payback. Although we have countless shot of Flamingoes, Storks, seagulls etc any time there's a mass bird attack the films uses pigeons. You know, one of the least threatening birds of all. Fair enough, a couple of eagles show up to pull people's eyeballs out but it's pigeons all the way for this film.

You've got a reporter and her cameraman seemingly travelling all over the world trying to get to the bottom of all these bird attacks (and failing miserably) while interviewing people who've been attacked, like Aldo Sambrell and another guy who had an eyeball stolen by an eagle. Also the guy who was the husband of the junkie girl in the Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue is in this for about five minutes.

But what makes it so enjoyable? The bad acting, fluffed lines, the scene where the pigeons 'eavesdrop' on our heroes, the crap ending and the even crapper (but most welcome) epilogue. What about the guy having a heart attack in the middle of a bird attack? I can just imagine some Spanish racing pigeon enthusiast being bunged a couple of grand only to watch in horror as his pigeons are thrown at confused actors trying to look terrified. They probably just poured breadcrumbs all over everything too.

These include:

1.) Bad dubbing and phonetically challenged foreign actors.

2.) A TV news story entitled "Attack of the Killer Chickens!"

3.) Close-ups of birds pecking faces apart and pulling out eyeballs, leaving only blood-squirting empty black sockets.

4.) Gratuitous slow-mo flying and attack scenes.

5.) A dense globe-trotting blonde couple who take time out from the carnage for a PG-rated bubblebath/champagne kissy kissy session.

6.) Snappy dialogue reducing a worldwide epidemic of bird attacks to "feathered mutiny."

7.) An annoying little brat who runs outside during the middle of a bird ambush just to get her greedy little hands on a party horn...leading to several unnecessary deaths.

8.) Christopher Atkins talking to his penis.

In case you haven't caught on, this is a low-grade rip off of the 1963 classic which cuts back and forth, from different countries to different people running away from someone offscreen throwing pigeons at them. American actors Michelle Johnson and Atkins are in the main segment about TV reporters who travel around investigating various attacks only to get ravaged on a train, but the story also covers a bickering couple, their two kids and a girl in a bikini attacked at a beach and people at a children's birthday party (there's even a little Veronica Cartwright knock-off named Cathy!).

This film was also released as BIRDS OF PREY and was an international production that was filmed in Spain, Peru, Italy, Mexico, Morocco and Puerto Rico!

Score: 3 out of 10 (for scattered laughs)