The Birds II: Land's End (1994)

This movie; "Birds II - Land's End" would be an excellent movie to help distinguish a truly "B" Sci-Fi movie...from one that deserves even less recognition.The leading star; Brad Johnson (who also made an equally entertaining movie about attacking copperhead snakes recently) was as 'vanilla' as one can get. It's quite surprising to find that he continues to get work as an 'actor'. Yes, he's good looking; a tall, handsome, strapping lad...but an actor? He actually makes money as an actor? Chelsea Field seemed to be in a constant, frustrating state of 'breeding mode' which detracted from her exceedingly limited character. Her skill as an actress is questionable at best, but as all know, many make a career with only physical attributes as assets.And Tippi Hedren, (who looks like someone's 'lifted' her face so often...her chin no longer seems to connect with her neck) offered very little as 'ballast'. It was good to see her, though. It's nice that she could be in on the anticipated 'death knell' of the whole 'vicious bird' mentality. Her presence offered 'nostalgia' at least.If not for the performance of Jan Rubes, one could speculate that the entire movie was a sophomoric rendition produced in your local high school auditorium. He was the only actor that had depth in the entire movie.The plot? Well, one could use more words to define the anemia of the plot than were used to write the plot.Is there anything positive about the movie? Certainly. I caught myself laughing often as the birds were coming, going or attacking one of the actors like a cartoon character. You could see the birds were 'tied' to the actor, struggling and flapping frantically to simply get away.The 'special effects' people showed the same level of professionalism as Brad and Chelsea did (if there were special effects people on this movie). They failed so badly that one couldn't keep a straight face.What do we do when birds (water birds who fly in the air) attack in massive swarms...from the air? (From where else would they?) Why, we disdain the buildings, shops, garages and other structures with roofs and walls around the dock and we take our wife and children, climb into a dinghy...and race as quickly as we can out in the open water...where there is absolutely no shelter at all! Yes, that summarizes the plot. Perhaps, we all should shut our TV's and join them in the bay? Be sure to bring an umbrella!

"The Birds II: Land's End" is a somewhat unspectacular sequel with a few decent parts.**SPOILERS**Arriving in Land's End, Ted Harken, (Brad Johnson) and his family, wife May, (Chelsea Field) and his daughters Jill, (Stephanie Milford) and Joanna, (Megan Gallacher) find the isolated island community endearing. While trying to get their new jobs started, they quickly find that the local bird population is somewhat more intrusive than they expected, constantly flying around their home and getting close on several attempts to injuring them. When they find an injured baby bird, they take it in to care for it and only manage to eventually upset the larger flock of birds, leading them in to attack the house and even manage to start going after the other townspeople. Finally listening to their stories, they try to get away from the island before the birds' attack get even more vicious.The Good News: This here didn't have a whole lot of rather decent areas. The main one here is that there's a really nice build-up towards the attacks. From the beginning, there's a fine sense that there's somewhat wrong with what they're doing, and as the attacks escalate and get more vicious and brutal, it makes them seem like a rather imposing threat, which is just pleasant and really appreciated. The swarms of them flying around over the water or simply lying around the beach-front that it soon grows to a really uncomfortable proportion. The few attacks in here do have a really creepy undertone, especially the first one in the bedroom. With an effective set-up that doesn't betray the terror to come, coming off as logical and somewhat unexpectedly, it's a real winner. A later scene where they attack the house en-mass is just as good, coming off with a couple of spectacular shots of the whole flock rising as one to swarm and peck away, with plenty of other little scenes that really look nice. The main one is the huge attack on the outdoor boating dock, which is where the most tension comes from. The amount of birds flying around and pecking and swarming anything in sight is really nice, the move onto the sea-ferry allows for plenty of action, and the different defense tactics make for really interesting scenes. That alone makes it watchable, and is alone in making this one barely beat above average.The Bad News: This one here isn't that terrible, but it still packs in a couple of really unnecessary problems. The main issue with this one is the film is really only worthwhile for the bird attacks, leaving everything else to be quite dull and lame. This is driven by the fact that there's really only a couple of attacks, leaving the rest of the time for a series of really lame subplots that don't have any bearing on how the film goes. The infidelity point goes nowhere, gets dropped halfway through and is then pretended to have not existed at all, with the potential resolution being completely thrown-out since that part of the film had been dropped. There's also the part about the unbelieving townsfolk who only ignore the actual warnings from the outsiders since it interferes with their traditions, despite having plenty of evidence to back up the claims. This is compounded with the incredulous amount of time it's spent on them manages to eat up a ton of time that the film could've used towards making more attacks, or played around with something else in the vain attempt to make it feel more interesting. As it stands, that's the only reason why this one is so dull, and this one really could've had something else to try to bump up the action in the film. By using so many non-action scenes to make the film feel so unexciting, using enough of the other subplots to really make a whole other film, this one ends up with a potentially interesting part that goes nowhere due to how it's filled with stuff that goes nowhere. That knocks it down a lot.The Final Verdict: With only a scant few amount of good parts, this one can't overcome the overwhelming dullness exhibited by it's failed subplots. This one is really only for the completists who have to see everything in the genre or aficionados of bad movies, otherwise steer clear of this one.Rated R: Violence, mild Language and animal violence

I've never been a huge fan of the original Alfred Hitchcock classic "The Birds," but it was well-made annd compared to this looks totally flawless. "The Birds II: Land's End" has to be one of the most shoddily produced nightmare projects of all-time -- it's a gruesome, chilling (but in a bad way) made-for-TV movie with no suspense. That's always a bad thing when you're talking about a so-called "thriller." No, "The Birds II" plays more like a modern-day gross-out slasher horror flick.A modern-day REMAKE of "The Birds" could work with a great director behind the project, but this sequel doesn't only feature one of the most untalented casts ever (with Brad Johnson leading the pack along), but a director by the name of Rick Rosenthal, who has a couple "Halloween" movies to his name and a huge score of television shows and pilots.Now get this. "Halloween II" was crap, right? And Rosenthal left his name in the credits.He called Alan Smithee on "The Birds II." That shows just how unbelievably bad this film is.From the lacking suspense to the poor acting to the ridiculous dialogue to the terrible special effects to the borderline stupid plot line (ooh Land's End, how clever!), "The Birds II: Land's End" will rightly be remembered as one of the worst misfires of all-time.0.5/5

I came on IMDb to check the details of this movie just after having seen it. To my surprise its genre was "horror" and not "comedy". But then, I saw Alan Smithee on the director's credits, a guarantee for good laughs (the MST3K way of course). It is absolutely ridiculous from beginning to end, so I enjoyed it very much. The dog's funeral was a real high point, I almost fell off the couch laughing!