Movie Review #49: The Birds II - Land's End (1994)

 

Let's go back to the day of the Video Store, the 1990s for a minute here. Let's talk about one of my favorite video stores as a child (we here in St. John's, Newfoundland surprisingly had a lot of them here), Allan's Video. Allan's Video had several locations but my favorite was the one on Highland Drive. It was next to the Sobeys and K-Mart (until like 1997 I think when K-mart went away). It was always a good time when we would go to Sobeys. When I got sick of looking around there, I still had the video store and the department store to look around. It was a weekly thing we'd do. Go get groceries and then look around K-Mart and the Video Store. Anyway Allan's Video had an awesome horror section. It was against the back wall and was on a giant shelf. Mostly horror movies (and wrestling! HI DOM!) were on this huge shelf. It was awesome. Right next to them was the Thriller section, and by that was the Comedy section. And the SNES games.

They would have a ongoing deal. It was 7 games or movies for 7 dollars and 77 cents. A movie would regularly cost you like 5 bucks so most of the time you knew you'd go for the deal just for the hell of it. One of the many many movies in the horror/thriller section that I would notice every time I went there would be The Birds II - Land's End. I never ever rented despite being sorta curious about it because well I had seventy seven thousand other awesome looking movies to rent. While I was curious about this movie you know it wasn't going to get rented before Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives. I think they got rid of said movie before I could even rent it. I actually believe it might have been the only place in town for you to get to rent The Birds II - Land's End. I had 7 choices but 3 of them would always end up being a Super NES game to play and I just couldn't ever talk myself into letting The Birds II - Land's End becoming one of those rentals.

So let's fast forward a few years, I get the internet and find even more movies to put on which I now call My Never Ending Movie List Which I Will Never Probably Complete. I shove The Birds II - Land's End on there because why not. I still don't try very hard to acquire a copy via either buying it on VHS or downloading a copy when that becomes viable. I just feel that I should end up seeing it one day. It's just not a "Oh man If I die without seeing Blood Cult then my life would have been in vain!" kinda situation really. The Birds II - Lands End is just very very low on that list. Sometime I believe in like 2011 I finally sit down and watch the original movie by Alfred Hitchpenis. It's very well made, tense as hell and legit makes Birds scary. Alfie was a talented movie man. He might have made it hard as hell on many of his actors like a loony fuck but he was damn talented. It's a shame so many talented people are also dickholes. Anyway It took me another decade to finally go "Fuck it I'll finally watch The Birds II- Land's End off the My Never Ending Movie List Which I Will Never Probably Complete." and there you have it. 

Was it worth it? Nope. I was not a fan of this movie, but had I rented it instead of A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors I would have been fucking livid. I would have probably brought my house down from my tantrum. Now I'm just bored and depressed and wished I had spent that hour and 22 minutes doing something else. I did so well let's discuss what doesn't work about this movie. The main problem is the 4 characters we spend the most time with are boring and played by people I'm sure they pulled off the street to act. Which ruins just about everything when you don't give a shit about any of them. That ruins any tense scene because you don't give a pigshit ass about the character thats in said tense scene. I'll give it to some of the secondary characters, they were actually kinda entertaining, like the asshole mayor but they sadly don't get enough time to shine.

This movie also takes way too long to get to the point. By the time crazy shit starts happening for real real it's like 50 minutes into this 82 minute movie. I just wish they had made a cheesy silly ass 90s animal attack movie instead of trying to be as good as the original, which wasn't gonna happen. Nothing against Rick Rosenthal, shit man I really like Halloween II A LOT, but you were going up against Alfie and that wasn't gonna work out for you. I honestly believe they should have just gone whole hog with this movie and made it ridiculous. Like get ostriches and pelicans and all kinds weird looking birds to go around messing people up. I'm pretty sure HBO (or Showtime or the Movie Channel or whatever channel put this out) just didn't pony up enough dough for that kinda movie. Yeah this was a made for cable movie. Are you surprised? Would it also surprise you to find out that Rick Rosenthal used the Alan Smithee pseudonym for directors of film and TV who aren't happy with their work? No I didn't think it would surprise you.

They also end up killing the dog in this movie and I don't like when they do that in movies that are actually well made, what makes you think I'll like it in this rubbish pile? I am not a fan of that. Poor Scout.  Oh I gotta talk to you guys about the ending which is so hilariously abrupt. The Family is under a boat in the water trying to stay safe from birds pecking at it until they just stop. The Family gets on the top of the overturned boat and watch the Birds fly off. One of hte kids asks were they are going and the dad goes THE MAINLAND!!! It's like they had to quickly finish off the movie but still had to put in that sequel stinger. Sadly The Birds III: Birds vs. New York never came to be.

FINAL VERDICT: That's all you really need to know about The Birds II - Land's End. Just stick with either the original movie or something silly and cheesy and let this boring pile of piss. I should have talked about Blood Cult instead.