Birds of Prey (1987)

Fresh and Exciting

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

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.

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?

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.