Falco Terror

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.

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!

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)

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?