Killing Birds

Typical horror movie isolates a bland group of characters in a seemingly unoccupied villa (which they run across after getting lost in the course of a bird-watching expedition), then throws some zombies at them trying to spice things up, but unfortunately the gore is none-too-convincing. There are occasional moments of tension, but not enough to merit a rating higher than *1/2. Sorry.

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

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.

This movie is possessed by an agonisingly slow pace, unlikable characters, and an annoying plot involving a bunch of college students looking for a rare species of cardinal in the Louisiana bayou. The film is ambitious, I'll give it that. The screen writers throw in a bunch of horror cliche c*** that goes nowhere (hero the son of...that guy, some "historical" stuff pertaining to murders, facts about birds), you know, the kind of stuff that's supposed to come together at the end to prove something.

The conclusion is especially terrible. It wraps up no loose ends and you are left wondering what the hell happened and why the hell the entire movie happened at all. It is a wholly unsatisfying experience with no redeeming qualities.

I fully recommend avoiding The Killing Birds.

Killing Birds (1987)

* (out of 4)

Incredibly bad, cheesy Italian horror film that's nothing more than a rip of Night of the Living Dead (again). A group of college kids travel to the Louisiana bayou for research and come under attack by zombies. There's also a side plot with a knife welding maniac and killing birds but none of this makes any sense. The gore footage is pretty good but the rest of the film is a real drag. Robert Vaughn has a small role in the film but adds nothing.

On DVD under the title Zombie 5 Killing Birds. Joe D'Amato directed some of the footage.