Die Vögel II - Die Rückkehr

Daphne Du Maurier's short story has inspired another attempt to tell the tale using the medium of film, with its advantages of visual images of the unusual behaviour of birds. Personally, I prefer the book, with its advantages of subtlety, but film has the important characteristic of attracting more viewers than books do readers. On the other hand, this particular film has the special disadvantage of telling the same story, transposed to another coastal village, as a deservedly famous film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Needless to say, The Birds II: Land's End does not manage to recreate the atmosphere of The Birds, but the acting of the family, Brad Johnson and Chelsea Field as Ted and May and two less well-known actresses as their daughters, at least compensated to some extent for a surprisingly weak unfolding of the tale of the aggression of birds, and the mostly irrational reactions of people to the unexpected. However, the dialogue with people in the village could have been much wittier.

The one feature which was better than the much more famous film of this short story was the landscapes. Alfred Hitchcock concentrated on suspense, whilst this film has time to dwell more on aesthetics. Admittedly, this still does not bring it anywhere near to the class of The Birds, but it is still quite enjoyable.

Why, one might ask, should a short story that has already been filmed so well be filmed again. The answer, in my opinion, lies in not being tied down to one set of images, so that the short story regains the elements of conjuring up a reader's images from his own imagination. The Birds II: Land's End offers the reader an alternative set of images to the ones which have been so ingrained into people's minds. It is also interesting to note that Jamaica Inn, Rebecca and Don't Look Now have all been filmed more than once.

Although the film is weaker than The Birds, it is a passable filming of Daphne Du Maurier's short story.

Right, well after just having sat down to watch the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds" once again here in 2022, then I also had stumbled upon the 1994 sequel titled "The Birds II: Land's End". Granted, I had never heard about this sequel, so I didn't even know that there was a follow-up to the 1963 movie.

And since I hadn't already seen "The Birds II: Land's End" before, of course I opted to watch what writers Ken Wheat, Jim Wheat and Robert Eisele had to offer here. It wasn't a whole lot they offered actually, as "The Birds II: Land's End" was essentially just a re-write of "The Birds", just set in a different location and with new characters. The events and the narrative in this sequel was just too blatantly copy and pasting the storyline from the 1963, with some minor changes added. So this was very much lazy script writing. And having just sat through the 1963 movie, then "The Birds II: Land's End" felt very redundant and pointless.

Sure, the effects in "The Birds II: Land's End" were much better than the effects in the 1963 original movie, no doubt about it. And that improvement definitely added something to "The Birds II: Land's End", but it just didn't manage to overshadow the fact that this was just a re-write of the 1963 movie.

The acting in "The Birds II: Land's End" was good, though I was only familiar with three cast members here; that being Chelsea Field, James Naughton and Tippi Hedren. Sure, it was nice that they had managed to get the lead actress from the 1963 movie, that being Tippi Hedren, to participate in "The Birds II: Land's End", but why as another character?

"The Birds II: Land's End" is an adequate enough movie if you have not seen the 1963 original movie "The Birds" from director Alfred Hitchcock. If you have seen the 1963, then you can easily skip on "The Birds II: Land's End".

My rating of director Rick Rosenthal's 1994 sequel "The Birds II: Land's End" lands on a five out of ten stars.

I watched this movie tonight on ABC Family channel. I thought that the television station cut off the ending of the movie until I read some of the comments on this database and realized it actually ends that way. What a disappointment! I only decided to watch it because Brad Johnson was in it. I'll give it a 2/10 instead of a 1/10 since BJ was in it!

In one interview, Tippi Hedren once stated that, in order to raise money for her big cats, she would take any part that's offered to her. That explains why she did many of the movies she did in the 1990s, and it is not up to us to judge her for that.

Well, as for this movie: It must be one of the worst movies EVER made! Miss Hedren does her best to save this ship from sinking, but she fails due to the lack of scenes and a badly written script. There isn't ANYTHING good about this movie. (The talents of the actors are wasted here, everyone involved has never been as bad as in "The Birds II: Land's End". The photography, the "special effects", the editing... BAD, BAD, BAD!) The director must have been sleeping!

If you can avoid this film, please do so, you'll spare yourself a huge disappointment. 1 out of 10.

It's a rare thing that a sequel made decades later can surpass the quality of the original, but such is the case for The Birds II: Land's End.

Rick Rosenthal, of Halloween II and Halloween: Resurrection, cements himself with this film as this generation's Alfred Hitchcock. Every now and then, a visionary director will take a stale premise and breathe life and energy into the project. This is where Rosenthal surpasses Hitchcock in every respect. For instance, while the original "The Birds" is well regarded as a "classic", few remember that it was originally in black and white. While Hitchcock struggled to capture color on film, Rosenthal displays a wide range of them, effortlessly. While the first film presented the audience with two-dimensional antagonists, Land's End takes us deep within the minds of the birds- making for a much more frightening experience. We empathize with the birds, but Rosenthal deftly balances this with their carnal, innate evil, to the point where it's difficult not to root for them. There's a carnal sexuality to these birds that was sorely lacking from the original. Where they were simply black and white before, now the birds are brought to life, more complex (and sexy) than ever before.

I recommend this film to students of film, fans of fun, and generally anyone looking to have a "hoot" of a time. It's clear no one on this production was "eating crow" after filming. All around, this is a "coo" movie, not for the jay-ded.