User reviews

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)

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.

Rene Cardona Jr.'s spin on Hitchcock's THE BIRDS isn't just a bad movie – it's an incredibly trashy one, seemingly made with little regard for quality, coherence, editing or linear storytelling. Plenty of effort has been made to give the movie an international feel – parts of it were filmed in North and South America as well as Europe – and all that effort goes to waste in what is nothing more than a schlocky Z-grade attempt to emulate greatness. It has the same kind of quality to it as something like Bruno Mattei's ZOMBIE CREEPING FLESH, except without the fun factor.

Things do kick off on a good note, with an ultra-gruesome moment involving an eagle. There are some hilarious attacks of people being 'ambushed' by birds achieved by somebody chucking pigeons, off camera, at the cast members! Then the film loses it and turns into a rambling narrative, setting up about five different sets of characters for an hour or so before throwing them into siege situations: a party attacked; a camper van seeking refuge; a train at the mercy of flocking winged terror. None of this is as interesting as it sounds, and the gore effects are in short supply, limited to a few scratches on the back of people's hands and on their faces.

Christopher Atkins and Michelle Johnson are set up as the nominal protagonists – a female reporter covering the avian crime and her cameraman sidekick. There's even some body-double nudity and a cheesy sex scene thrown in. However, these guys have little to do in the film and their acting absolutely sucks, with the kind of awful dubbing you expect from late '80s Spanish and Italian flicks. There's no characterisation anywhere in the film, and aside from a brief cameo from Italian star Gabriele Tinti, no interest from the varied cast.

In the end the film becomes overwhelming senseless, with more pigeons being chucked about than is strictly necessary; there's an exploding eagle and some annoyingly whiny kids around too, including the most irritating little red-haired girl whose awful scream leads you to hope that a pigeon will fly down and pluck out her throat! No such luck. Cardona made a long string of Mexican exploitation movies, but this is one of his very worst. It's not the worst I've seen, though; it may be an absolutely diabolical film, but like Z-grade trash such as THE ABOMINATION, it's never boring.

Ah yes, who could forget this little gem from the director who brought us such greats as NIGHT OF 1000 CATS and TINTORERA!! Birds are banding together into an unstoppable army to wipe out mankind. It's up to a news reporter (played by the gorgeous Michelle Johnson) and her cameraman boyfriend to stop them. But can they be stopped? Ridiculous and absurd from beginning to end and some scenes are stolen right from THE BIRDS, such as the birthday party scene. But it moves along at a clip and it's over before you really have a chance to hate it. What amazed me were the attack scenes. I wonder how they trained the birds to attack so viciously without harming the actors. As usual with a Rene Cardona, Jr. flick the plot is incoherent, the acting putrid, and the dialogue inane. But dig those attack scenes. And dig watching the beautiful Michelle Johnson, who's been absent from the big screen for awhile. Where are you, Michelle?

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

Rene Cardona, Jnr doing what he does best, though not with his usual flair nor the abundant cast normally assembled for these Latin B-grade horror fests. This one is just a re-hash of Hitchcock's "The Birds", featuring Michelle Johnson and Chris Atkins ("The Blue Lagoon") as a pair of reporters documenting the strange and sudden phenomenon gripping the world as birds of all species retaliate against mankind's sustained mistreatment.

If you've ever wondered what a stray beak could do to your eye, you won't have to wait long watching this film to find out. And it's not pretty. But, aside from a brief moment or two of hysteria, "Beaks" is otherwise tame and unremarkable, a very loose narrative of clichéd story strands with little to elevate the pulse. Looks like it was shot on video or possibly made-for-TV, the production values and staging look confined, and the overall result is somewhat tedious.

Aldo Sambrell features in a relatively interesting minor role as a farmer who warns of the impending danger from his personal experience whilst names like Gabriele Tinti, Sonia Infante and May Heatherly should be familiar to some audiences. For their part, Johnson and Atkins look comfortable and display apparent chemistry, then of course the title stars look more harassed than harassing, but it's difficult either way to make a pigeon look menacing. Birds on a budget isn't awful, but it's definitely not among the finest in Cardona's catalogue.

Beaks is one of those rare movies, like Troll 2, that is so badly done, and silly, that it's fun to watch. Beaks is an obvious, and badly done, take on Alfred Hitchcocks' The Birds, but unlike the aforementioned film, contains little in the way of terror and absolutely no suspense what so ever.

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).

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.

Thrilling and exploitative movie with horror moments and hair-raising scenes . Nail-biting and moving film concerning Vanessa Cartwright (Michelle Johnson) , a television reporter , and her good-looking camera man , Peter (Christopher Hatkins), covering a story of a farmer attacked by his chickens, discovering that this is not an isolated incident. From now on, it occurs an unstoppable chase to find the birds that are causing slaughter all around the world . A travel that transports us to lot of countries and cities : San Juan, Puerto Rico , Acapulco , Mexico , Peru , Madrid ...while people battling for survival besieged by the hungry birds , including gore and blood . Kids and adults are attacked, and, finally, everyone hides in homes tightly closed against repeated attacks by the birds . Suddenly happening more and more mass bird attacks over trains , farms , parks and houses . There is no explanation as to why this might be happening , and as the birds continue their vicious attacks , causing massacre and survival becomes the priority. You don't have a wing of a prayer!

This intriguing shocker regarding a beautiful reporter and her colleague , while they're discovering as gradually the creepy events of bird attacks on people by pecking increases . In the film there are impressive attacks , action pace enough , beautiful landscapes and lots of blood and gore . An adventure movie relying heavily on sensationalistic aspects , eerie images full of gore , nudism and exploitation . Exciting scenes when birds attack with death dropping fiercely , its magnified menace enhances more and more , soon , birds in the hundreds and thousands are attacking anyone they find out of doors. And including an ecologist message in which blame pollution for the bird attack and and concluding that the birds are organizing themselves against the ecological ravages of man . Mediocre acting from starring duo , two B-American actors : Christopher Atkins and Michelle Johnson . Being a Mexican/Italian/Spanish coproduction appearing here and there a lot of familar faces of these countries , such as Mexico : Sonia Infante , Salvador Pineda , Italy : Gabriele Tinti and Spain : Aldo Sambrell , José Lifante , Manuel Pereyro , Nene Morales, Carole James , May Heatherly , among others.

¨Beaks: The Birds 2¨ (World-wide, English title) or ¨Beaks: The Movie¨ is a rip-off to classic ¨Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds 1963¨ with Melanie Griffith , Rod Taylor , Jessica Tandy , Charles McGraw, Karl Swenson . And it was presented in Italy as "the sequel to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963)¨. But its real follow-up was a lousy and cheesy sequel in 1994 titled ¨The birds II : land's end¨ by Rick Rosenthal under ordinary pseudonym as Alan Smithee with Brad Johnson, Megan Gallaher and again Tippi Hedren.

It contains a colorful and adequate cinematography by Leopoldo Villaseñor shot in various locations in Toledo, Castilla-La Mancha, Villanueva del Pardillo, Quintanar de la Orden, Toledo, Castilla-La Mancha , Seville, Andalucía, Coto de Doñana, Andalucia , Spain , Lima, Peru , Machu Picchu, Nasca , Islas Ballestas, Peru, San Juan, Puerto Rico , Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico , Morocco , Rome, Lazio, Italy . Adding an eerie and suspenseful musical score by Stelvio Cipriani. This horrific retelling of the astonishing bird attacks was regularly written/produced/directed by Rene Cardona Jr who developed a long career as national as international . He was a Mexican director and writer, expert on all kinds of genres with a penchant for Terror , adventure and exploitation ; being especially known for The Treasure of the Amazon (1985) , The Bermudas Triangle (1978) , ¡Tintorera! (1977) , Cycone , Fantastic Balloon Voyage , Under Siege , The Night of a Thousand Cats , Survivors of Andes , Beaks , Carlos the terrorist and Guayana, El Crimen del Siglo (1979) . Rating : 4/10 , below average , though some moments being passable .

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!

Hilariously bad knock-off of Hitchcock's "The Birds" that offers a rare lead role for boobtacular 80s babe Michelle Johnson. Also starring is annoying Chris Atkins. If you've seen the Hitchcock classic there's really no need to sit through this. Worth a couple of chuckles I suppose for the slow motion scenes of people trying to look like the poor pigeons flapping about them are out for blood. You don't even get a real Michelle Johnson nude scene. She uses a less endowed body double I'm sad to report. Skip it.

"Alfred Hitchcock's classic film … but with loads & loads of additional gore" … See, even the text on the old VHS box warned me that watching "Evil Birds" would be a complete waste of time, and still I didn't listen! There's gore, all right, but this also happens to be one of the most retarded movies I've ever seen in my life. We all know Hichcock and his films were (and still are) imitated and copied endlessly, but this is undoubtedly the most shameless and blatant rip-off of his repertoire ever! The story lines are identical, only the elaboration here is hopelessly inane with miserable dubbing, pitiable dialogs, atrocious acting performances (cursed be that gay boy from "The Blue Lagoon") and lousily cheap and unconvincing make up effects. Since there isn't the slightest bit of suspense or atmosphere to experience, "Evil Birds" is unspeakably boring and thus doesn't even qualify as 'entertainingly awful'. The bird attacks are wannabe engrossing, but it simply isn't very petrifying to see a pigeon/dove/chicken approach the camera bit by bit. I guess it requires a talented filmmaker in the league of Hitchcock to make even the most nonthreatening little animal look threatening. Writer/director René Cordona Jr. is getting dangerously close to becoming my personal choice of worst director of all time. This is the fifth major disappointment in a row I see of him (after "Cyclone", "Night of a 1.000 Cats", "The Bermuda Triangle" and "Tintorera!") and easily the most embarrassing of them all. So far, I only enjoyed his jungle adventure knock-off "Treasure of the Amazon".

This hilariously bad Spanish ripoff of "The Birds" is perfectly enjoyable entertainment. Much of "El ataque de los pájaros" ("Beaks: The Movie" in English) is slo-mo shots of people getting attacked or running or screaming. René Cardona Jr. apparently directed a lot of exploitation movies, and this one has all the elements that make one an exploitation movie: violence, bad acting, and some nudity. But like I said, it's a pretty fun movie, provided that you accept it as a total B movie (or maybe C movie). They probably had fun filming it. As for what Alfred Hitchcock's opinion would've been had he been alive when it got released, I figure that he would've either been offended that they ripped off his movie, or he would've laughed at how hilariously bad the result was.

I've seen a lot of bad movies in my day, but this has to be one of the worst. The acting is bad, the deaths are gory and goofy at best (although I must admit the hawk tearing one guy's eye out is pretty funny), and the thin plot is worn out within the first 10 minutes of the film, and drags on and on and on to an ending that makes no sense.

Do yourself a favor and just rent "The Birds".

I just saw a pigeon shooting tournament end with a guy spiking a pigeon in victory.

I hope the rest is as ridiculous!

This film was made well after the Hitchcock film Birds, but that was clearly what this film was trying to do. I give them props for doing some really gory kills with eye ripping and such; however, the film also kind of is all over the place with random scenes aplenty. Watch a man shoot pigeons blindfolded, watch a man drive right into a sandy hill and get stuck, watch a random shot of a duck and so many more as this film really lacks a cohesion. No real main character either as Christopher Atkins gets top billing, but doesn't stand out at all. We also have old dude with high blood pressure, random nurse and family with loud and obnoxious dad!

The story, as I said is almost nonexistent; apparently, birds attacking is what they are showing and it is what we are going to get! A intrepid reporter with jump cities to get brief interviews with people who have been attacked by birds; meanwhile, birds are attacking! They are attacking old dude with high blood pressure, family who is on a trip with a surfboard and couple where the girl somehow survives while outside a Winnebago and her boyfriend who is killed inside! All leading up to a great anticlimactic ending where the reporter and random people are riding on a train and we literally get no real payoff...

The effects are rather good and gory and are the best thing about this one. The attacks are pretty good, but too many times we just jump from location to location as the film really does not seem to want to formulate any real cohesion. Then, my main complaint is the non ending as they seem to think because the Hitchcock film kind of ended, theirs could do the same thing. Basically, the copied the ending while the rest of the film is simply birds attacking randomly.

So, the film is not too good as I would have liked to have seen a bit more attacking and less pointlessness. I mean, at one point there are just children walking through a empty street and a baby in a stroller left behind before a kid retrieves it. The American title for this film is Beaks, though, and the film does deliver that! If birds were as deadly as portrayed in this film, cats would not stand a chance!

Yes they are, and this horror movie about birds is good and surprisingly interesting, gruesome and detailed in the attack scenes. Anybody who likes gory movies might like this. Because of habitat destruction, birds all around the world strike back at humans for a week or so and then return to being peaceful. It's an okay movie with an okay message, but it kept my interest for an hour and a half so it was worth watching.

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!!!!!!!

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.

Oh, no, another italian low-budget saga! This movie is awful. The Director Rene Cardona Jr. has no idea how to work with his own script and these so-called "actors". The characters are unbelivably cardboard, the plot is weak, this movie is probably the worst remake ever made!

I admit, I've never seen "The Birds". I read a children's story version of it in third grade (from the school library) and enjoyed it very much. I really hope that the Hitchcock film does not revolve around pigeons. I have handled them and know are very very harmless. The slow motions shots in "Beaks" look great, but I know all a pigeon could do is bounce off of somebody. I'm concerned that lots of pigeons died making the film and that makes the ecological message look hypocritical.

An army of ants could scare me, but not pigeons or the canary in one scene. I only enjoyed the gore close-ups of pecked writhing bodies. They were pretty well done. A silly and boring film, though I would like to see "Night of the Thousand Cats".

In BEAKS (aka: BIRDS OF PREY, EVIL BIRDS), our fine feathered fiends have finally tired of humanity and its bird-hating ways. This should come as no surprise, since the opening is awash with pigeon murder! In no time flat, wings are flapping and no one's eyeballs are safe!

TV reporter, Vanessa Cartwright (Michelle Johnson) and her cameraman, Peter (Christopher Atkins) are following this fast-developing story. Dear god above, not even high-flying aircraft are immune to these murderous flocks of doom!

EEEEAAAGH!!

Drop whatever you're doing, and watch this movie now! Right now!! Every bit of "action" is like watching "actors" shuffling about after their human / pigeon brain transplants! Every shred of dialogue is bust-a-gut hilarious! Every character takes it all seriously, while poultry misbehaves! This movie makes the case that mankind is far too stupid to survive.

Imagine if Hitchcock's THE BIRDS had been directed instead by sentient mold, and written by vengeful pigeons, and you get close to the wonder of this film!

BEST SCENES: #1- The killer canary! #2- Any scene featuring vengeful pigeons! They really hate children, and waddle quite quickly! #3- The great hunter, and his attempt to wipe out the menace with his elephant gun! #4- Vengeful pigeons again! More like piranha pigeons! #5- Obligatory, female breast close-ups without rhyme or reason! #6- The beach! It turns out that seagulls hate us as much as the pigeons do! #7- The astounding, hang-gliding sequence, accompanied by disco elevator music! Hang-gliding enthusiasts should always wear anti-bird goggles! #8- The child's birthday party... full of kids..., and... the hunter! Oh yes, there will be carnage most fowl! Pigeons truly are birds without mercy!

Forget BIRDEMIC! Killer bird movies don't get more preposterous than this!...