Killing Birds

In Louisiana, a soldier returning from Vietnam finds his wife in bed with her lover and he kills him, her and a couple of friends, but he is attacked by a bird and he loses his eyes. Years later, the bodies have not been found and the former soldier is the specialist in birds Dr. Fred Brown (Robert Vaughn), living in a house nearby the swamp. When a group of college students is assigned for a research of a woodpecker near extinction, they head to Dr. Brown's house to get some tips of how to find the rare bird. Then they drive through the swamp where they find the house where the murders happen and they decide to stay there. During the night, weird things happen and they are attacked by the victims of Dr. Brown.

"Zombie 5 – Killing Birds" is a stupid, gore and messy collection of clichés. The acting is terrible and histrionic; the screenplay is imbecile with mistakes in the continuity; the soundtrack is annoying and inappropriate for a horror movie; and the sets are very poor. Indeed it is an awful end of career of Robert Vaughn. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

Where the hell were the killing birds? There were birds, yes, but they didn't kill anybody! Argh! There is one zombie shuffling around in this film, though, killing off teenagers in some empty house. But don't ask me why or where that zombie came from, because once again, there's no explanation for any of the events whatsoever. So why on earth am I rating this fantastic film actually 3/10? Hmmm... Let me think. Well, the opening scene is pretty solid. It sets a certain dreary mood (and those teenagers haven't arrived yet at that point). Ehrr... It's got somewhat of an atmosphere to it, this movie, somehow. Uhm... What else? Huh... Oh, yes: It's Italian! There you go: That's 3 points. Yay!

First of all this movie is not really Zombie 5 as someone pointed out Zombie 4 After Death came out a year later. Rather, both movies are just being repackaged and given new names simply to make some connection to Fulcio's Zombi 2. The only thing they have in common is that the dead do rise. I liked After Death a little, I thought it was a nice little zombie flick, nothing super great, but worth a look. This one, however, was really kind of tedious. Started promisingly enough with a man going on a killing spree after he finds his wife in bed with another man, but then it almost turns into a teen flick as we are introduced to the rest of the cast. The music even makes it seem like a teen comedy. Oh, and though it really is not clear at all there has been a significant number of years that has passed since the killings. Well we meet our young group of bird watchers and one annoying bus driver and a rather unremarkable reporter and all you can think is I hope they all die in extremely horrible ways. Not a good way to establish your characters in a horror movie is it? I mean when they aren't arguing over stupid stuff they are mumbling their lines so badly they sound like the parents in a Charlie Brown cartoon. Well they set off to find a bird which has not been seen in 20 or so years, and they run across a blind bird watcher. You'll know who he is and you will know what one of the gang of teens is right away so there is no real surprise at the revelation at the end. Well after they bother the blind guy they proceed to go bird watching get lost in the woods and find a house. They immediately set up camp here, despite the fact there vehicle is like just over the hill and if they would have continued searching for another 5 minutes they could have gotten out without anything happening. But hey, its a horror movie. Well finally some stuff starts to happen as people begin to die while their friends just stand there watching the person die. Of course they don't offer to help just standing there like idiots and then reacting well after the fact when it is far to late. My favorite being the guy who gets caught in a generator gear and gets ground up while this moron stands there not offering to help, then after the guy has had it he runs up stairs and says "they got him". I had to say, no they didn't the jerk got caught and you kind of let him die. As for the zombies they aren't in this movie much and they don't make much of an impression. The plot is practically nonexistent as there is no explanation for why any of it is happening besides the blind man's explanation at the end. Then you expect a rather grisly conclusion, but it never materializes and it just ends. Not a real zombie movie I say the makers were trying to make a movie more in the vain of "The Beyond". Of course that movie looks better, sounds better, and has better kills so there is no comparison there. I don't know maybe this was two movies that got bumped together. One film crew was making a horror movie, the other a teen romance, but they ran into each other and the teen romance people thought, a horror movie cool. That would explain the strange changes in the music in the first thirty minutes or so.

A lot of reviews criticize this movie and claim the zombies are only in the last few minutes. I just want to correct that and confirm that there are zombies through out the last half of the movie.

The rest of the reviews about the bad acting and loss of plot are pretty spot on.

Terribly bad acting is what annoys you here right from the start. The acting, along with the soap opera-like music, completely ruins the film before it even properly begins. I don't know by what standards the teenage protagonists were cast but they're NOT attractive and they sure don't succeed in making themselves appear believable. Killing Birds suffers a little too much from awful sound editing and low budget production values to make it worth renting. Luckily it got released as an unofficial sequel in the Zombie-series otherwise it was doomed to disappear into oblivion right after its premiere. At least now it enjoys a modest cult-reputation. Completely undeserved, because any other Zombie film contains more gore in the opening minutes than this production features throughout the whole playtime. The plot may have had some potential (the great Alfred Hitchcock already knew birds had something eerie forty years ago) but you're simply not interested due to the annoying characters and the tensionless surrounding. One to avoid at all costs.