"Killing Birds" is being belatedly marketed as a part of the vague "Zombie" series. It has nothing to do with any of them, but none of them have anything to do with any of the others, so that's OK. There *are* zombies in "Killing Birds", but that's not really what the movie is about. The plot itself may leave you a little confused. The first time I watched it I was lost, but eventually by reading up on the film I put the pieces together. The movie opens with a mostly unseen soldier who walks into a house and murders all of the inhabitants. If you didn't read about the film on the Internet, you might not know what the heck the murders have to do with anything, but to have the plot explained to you from an outside source helps (the movie itself is no good at communicating facts to the viewer): the soldier is returning home from Vietnam. He finds his wife in bed with another man, and apparently it's not much of a secret because a few other family members live there, too, and they're all home, including a baby. Oh, there are a lot of exotic birds around, too. The soldier kills all of the people, and even a few of the birds, except for the baby. As he's trying to clean up the bloody mess, the remaining birds attack him and peck out his eyes, which all birds in horror movies will instinctively do.
The point is, years later a group of students venture into the wilderness to study the rare "ivory-billed woodpecker". This will help them get an A in their classes, you see. They visit our now-blind soldier/murderer, who has aged into Robert Vaughan. It just so happens he's an expert on birds, and the kids hope he can help them find their woodpecker. After leaving him, they drive off into the Louisiana "swamp" and come upon the murder house, where they discover strange things and are eventually beset-upon by zombies. I'm not exactly sure why zombies, exactly. I suppose they are the reanimated corpses of the murder victims at the beginning of the film, and they are out for a little blood. Not that the college students make it difficult for them. They are the kind of horror-film characters who insist on splitting up when danger is present. They wander off alone to investigate strange lights, or to look for the car keys, or whatever paltry reason the script writer could come up with for them to be alone and defenseless.
I suppose this is all in the spirit of good horror movie fun, but I found it to be really boring and a test of patience. The characters behave like morons at all times, and do not respond to anything in any way that can be considered rational or even human. For instance, even before they get to the house they discover a corpse in an abandoned truck. Instead of turning back immediately, one of them says "That's what will happen to us if we don't KEEP MOVING!" Huh?
Then later, the first character to be killed by a zombie is murdered when she visits the cursed porch where the old bird cages are; another character sees her go up onto the porch, but refuses to react when she sees the girl screaming and knocking over the cages to get away from the zombie. After the zombie victim is already dead, then the girl goes and wakes up her companion: "I think something's wrong with Jennifer."
In my favorite example of non-human responses, two guys are trying to start a generator. One of them is wearing a long pendant, which gets pulled into the rusty machinery and drags his face slowly into the gears. For about two minutes, the other guy just stands there watching, wide-eyed, as the other one is mangled by the machine. Then he runs off to tell the others what happened.
On the plus side, the film is surprisingly well-lit (although it's almost nonsensical; rooms are lit blindingly bright when the power's supposed to be off). There's some nice cinematography. One interesting scene echoes the swinging light fixture at the conclusion of "Psycho", with the light intermittently illuminating an approaching zombie, and another involves the slow approach of zombies glimpsed through the windshield of a truck.
The film is obviously inspired by Fulci's "The Beyond", but the gore is really tame and there is very little suspense or atmosphere. Too much logic is sacrificed and very little is offered in its place. The soundtrack made me chuckle at first, then became rapidly annoying with the repeating Casio-keyboard synth lines and canned musical cues that went out of style in 1984. In one of the scenes, they rip off "Two Tribes" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Swear to God! The conclusion of the film is truly laughable, as if they ran out of money and just had to stop shooting.
It should also be noted that, although the zombie makeup is pretty good, everything else in the special effects department sucks. There's a hilarious slit-neck appliance that shows up four times. There's an outrageous scene where a picture is supposed to "black itself out", but they just put some scratches on the film. One of the characters has a "hi-tech" computer that looks like a modern-day laptop crossed with a Commodore 64, and some awful superimposed graphics to go along with the computer scenes. The acting ranges from amateurish to just plain awful; Robert Vaughn appears to be half asleep, which is how you'll feel watching "Killing Birds". In the end, the biggest killing has been the hour and a half it took to watch the thing. Of interest to genre purists only, and even then, you probably won't want to watch this more than once.
The point is, years later a group of students venture into the wilderness to study the rare "ivory-billed woodpecker". This will help them get an A in their classes, you see. They visit our now-blind soldier/murderer, who has aged into Robert Vaughan. It just so happens he's an expert on birds, and the kids hope he can help them find their woodpecker. After leaving him, they drive off into the Louisiana "swamp" and come upon the murder house, where they discover strange things and are eventually beset-upon by zombies. I'm not exactly sure why zombies, exactly. I suppose they are the reanimated corpses of the murder victims at the beginning of the film, and they are out for a little blood. Not that the college students make it difficult for them. They are the kind of horror-film characters who insist on splitting up when danger is present. They wander off alone to investigate strange lights, or to look for the car keys, or whatever paltry reason the script writer could come up with for them to be alone and defenseless.
I suppose this is all in the spirit of good horror movie fun, but I found it to be really boring and a test of patience. The characters behave like morons at all times, and do not respond to anything in any way that can be considered rational or even human. For instance, even before they get to the house they discover a corpse in an abandoned truck. Instead of turning back immediately, one of them says "That's what will happen to us if we don't KEEP MOVING!" Huh?
Then later, the first character to be killed by a zombie is murdered when she visits the cursed porch where the old bird cages are; another character sees her go up onto the porch, but refuses to react when she sees the girl screaming and knocking over the cages to get away from the zombie. After the zombie victim is already dead, then the girl goes and wakes up her companion: "I think something's wrong with Jennifer."
In my favorite example of non-human responses, two guys are trying to start a generator. One of them is wearing a long pendant, which gets pulled into the rusty machinery and drags his face slowly into the gears. For about two minutes, the other guy just stands there watching, wide-eyed, as the other one is mangled by the machine. Then he runs off to tell the others what happened.
On the plus side, the film is surprisingly well-lit (although it's almost nonsensical; rooms are lit blindingly bright when the power's supposed to be off). There's some nice cinematography. One interesting scene echoes the swinging light fixture at the conclusion of "Psycho", with the light intermittently illuminating an approaching zombie, and another involves the slow approach of zombies glimpsed through the windshield of a truck.
The film is obviously inspired by Fulci's "The Beyond", but the gore is really tame and there is very little suspense or atmosphere. Too much logic is sacrificed and very little is offered in its place. The soundtrack made me chuckle at first, then became rapidly annoying with the repeating Casio-keyboard synth lines and canned musical cues that went out of style in 1984. In one of the scenes, they rip off "Two Tribes" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Swear to God! The conclusion of the film is truly laughable, as if they ran out of money and just had to stop shooting.
It should also be noted that, although the zombie makeup is pretty good, everything else in the special effects department sucks. There's a hilarious slit-neck appliance that shows up four times. There's an outrageous scene where a picture is supposed to "black itself out", but they just put some scratches on the film. One of the characters has a "hi-tech" computer that looks like a modern-day laptop crossed with a Commodore 64, and some awful superimposed graphics to go along with the computer scenes. The acting ranges from amateurish to just plain awful; Robert Vaughn appears to be half asleep, which is how you'll feel watching "Killing Birds". In the end, the biggest killing has been the hour and a half it took to watch the thing. Of interest to genre purists only, and even then, you probably won't want to watch this more than once.