El ataque de los pájaros

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!

My review was written in October 1987 after watching the movie on International Video Entertainment video cassette.

"Beaks", originally titled "Birds of Prey", is a very silly and very gory imitation of Alfred Hitchcokc's "The Birds". Direct-to-video packaging lampoons the film, but it's too boring to acquire the implied camp status.

Michelle Johnson (of "Blame It on Rio") toplines as a European tv newshen (pun intended) assigned by her callous boss to cover silly stories involving birds. (She complains she's a journalism school grad who wants hard news assignments, to no avail.) Accompanied by her cameraman (Christopher Atkins), she reports on a marksman who shoots birds while he is blindfolded and then covers a "feathered mutiny" of killer chickens who pecked their owner.

Meanwhile, birds of many feathers are attacking humans all over the world, duly photographed on location in Spain, Puerto Rico, Peru, Morocco, Rome and Mexico. There's a lot of gore and pithy philosophical speculation (copying Hitchcock) on why the attacks are occurring. Consensus is that instinctually the birds are trying to survive by killing off man, who has been polluting the environment. As in Hitch's classic, the birds suddenly stop at film's end, cuing an idiotic final shot of what looks like insects or tiny flying fish getting ready at a lake for a sequel.

Mexican filmmaker Rene Cardona Jr., best known Stateside for his poor taste epic "Survive", takes time off from helming Mexican sex comedies like "Buenas y con... Movidas" to pilot this farrago. He keeps repeating boring transition shots of flocks of birds in flight and dubs the supporting cast while the leads speak English. Acting is weak, with voluptuous Johnson given a relatively flat-chested body double for the requisite nude scenes.

I just watched this film...no kidding I mean I JUST watched it. The credits rolled less then a minute ago before I stopped the DVD and ran to my computer. This film is absolutely dreadful, awful. No, it's worse then that. 'Awful' is a good description of a bad film. But this movie is deserving of some other word and I don't know what it is. It isn't just bad, while watching the film I found myself grinding my teeth and hurling obscenities in rage and frustration. From the very beginning with the 9 minute handgliding sequence which amounts to...NOTHING, this film had me...p*ssed. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. How can anything on Earth be so horrible on so many levels? This film blatantly abuses the slo-mo sequence, especially in places that don't need to be slo-mo'd. In fact, I wager that if you played all the slo-mo footage at normal speed along with the rest of the film...the film would run about 30 minutes. The main story is about a (sometimes naked) reporter and her faithful lapdog--er...cameraman. But for some reason 80% of the flick revolves around 8 or 9 groups of people in 'bird peril', WHY?????????????? I'm not exactly sure how to express my feelings on this film correctly. I have nothing but absolute contempt for the cast and crew responsible for this travesty... ARGHHHHH!!!!!!!

Such an obvious ripoff of Hitchcock's movie. But Michelle Johnson is so hot. She's one of the best looking chicks of the 80s. Hehe chicks.