Killing Birds: Raptors (1987) Reviews

• Night of the Missing Script

  GroovyDoom2000-09-27

  "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.

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• Stupid, Gore and Messy Collection of Clichés

  claudio_carvalho2009-03-08

  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

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• Complete waste of time

  Coventry2004-12-13

  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.

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• Disregard the plot line given here, this is not really much of a zombie flick.

  Aaron13752005-03-27

  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.

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• More cheapo Euro fun

  Bezenby2014-08-21

  It's another late-era Italian horror film! For a change, this one involves a bunch of kids in a haunted house, a setting which definitely didn't appear in House of Clocks, House of Lost Souls, Witchery, Ghosthouse or House of Witchcraft. But hold your horses there mister, because this one also chucks in a slasher storyline (for a bit), and some zombies...eventually. We start out in the late sixties, where a Vietnam vet returns home to find his missus in bed with another guy, so naturally our marine goes mental and kills the two of them, then another couple (in laws?) who are just arriving with a new born baby. The marine doesn't kill the baby, however, but when he returns to his home (which has an aviary outside), some eagles get loose and tear his eyes out. Any good Italian film should start with four murders and an eye removal. We see the kid getting taken into care and then fast forward to 1987, where college student/bad actor Steve has just gotten the go-ahead to go and track down a rare bird called a grey-billed woodpecker, so he gathers together his crew of expendable youngsters, but not before Lara Wendel gets involved. She works for some college newspaper (I think), and has tracked down three people who have seen this bird. She's not dubbed in this one either. Lo and behold, the only witness nearby is Bill Oddie! I mean, Robert Vaughan! And he's the blind psycho guy from the start of the film. We see Robert using two revox tape recorders to monitor various bird sounds and after an awkward conversation with Steve and Lara before a lengthy montage of our group of youngsters going around recording bird song in various locals which somehow reminded me of the Hafler Trio's field recordings. Man! I forgot to mention that one of our potential victims here is played by the "Muh Baybee?" girl from Witchery! Remember the Hoff trying to get into her pants in that film? Well, it seems that she got the part in that film based on her performance here. That's good stuff. After finding a corpse in a jeep which the film doesn't bother explaining, our group end up at an old, dilapidated house, with an old aviary outside. This being an Italian film, the house is haunted, which leads to several scenes of the house messing with people's heads before the zombies finally appear, fifty-five minutes into the film. So we've gone from slasher to haunted house and now zombie attacks, so that's all good as far as I'm concerned. This is when the cast start getting picked off too, as you'd imagine, with people having their heads caved in, throats ripped, getting burned and pulled through the roof via the attic just like in Anthropophagus. There's a couple of twists as usual (really far fetched ones, as usual) and although Robert Vaughn doesn't have much to do, his explanation for why anything was happening led to a good Italian head scratching ending. Be warned: I probably like these films a lot more than anyone with a brain, but this is good bet if you're looking for a decent late era Italian horror full of lame fashion, prehistoric computers, a bit of gore and enough loose ends to something a something. I'm not sure of Joe D'Amato's involvement in this one, or how much of the film is his. Man, reading the rest of the reviews, I might be the only person on Earth that enjoyed this.

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