Number 6: Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)
I’ve noted before, I didn’t go into this 100 worst thing
entirely blind, I have seen a lot of these films before.
Some I’ve seen many times. Many, many times. Birdemic is one such film. It’s similar
to whenever I watch Superman IV, I
know what I’m watching is awful but there’s always something new I hadn’t
noticed before that makes me enjoy it more.
I don’t feel like I even need to watch it again to do a
review of it. I can describe the whole intro right up to the opening line of
dialogue. In fact I’ll do just that:
Opening with
a POV shot inside a moving car with an awful music loop playing over the top.
Seriously, it’s just two bars repeating over and over. Windows Movie Maker
credits appear giving us the main players but also ‘Supporting Casts’ because
one supporting cast just isn’t enough. Watching this car drive slowly along the
road for four minutes but feels three times as long. Eventually our, for lack
of a better word, ‘hero’ carefully parks his car (if there is one message to
take from this film its park safely because there is a lot of car parking
coming up). Rod slowly walks from his car in a way that you would not expect
any person to walk in, he looks so unnatural. Eventually he makes it to the
restaurant where a terminator is disguised as a waitress. It’s the only
explanation I have for the ridiculous way the first line is delivered. You
would need to hear it to fully appreciate it, its’ only one word ‘Hi!’ but if
you assume multiple takes are done for each shot, like a proper film-maker
would, you have to conclude that was the best take. So God only knows how bad the
others were.
One new thing I did notice when re-watching was a credit for
Tippi Hedren, star of Alfred Hitchcock’s The
Birds which Birdemic is a loose
remake of. Though writer and director James Nguyen clearly didn’t take note of
how Hitchcock built suspense in his films. But seriously Hedren is on screen for
a second on a TV in a motel room. I do like the cheekiness of it.
Since Nguyen tried and failed to get Birdemic shown at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, driving a truck
with the film’s title emblazoned on the side, it has picked up quite the cult
following. If you go on You Tube and type in ‘Birdemic’ hundreds of videos
reviews will appear, from little nobodies in their basements to big million
plus subscriber channels.
The criticisms always note the same things: the awful acting;
Rod being the worlds’ worst salesman; Nathalie apparently being a Victoria’s
Secret model but has all her photo sessions in a one-hour photo shop; the
excessive parking; the ham fisted environmental message; the stupid song in the
nightclub (‘Just hanging out, hanging
out, with the family, Yeah!’); it being 47minutes before we even see
anything with wings; the kamikaze exploding birds with plane sound effects;
fighting off birds with coat-hangers (the motel wouldn’t let them take out the
shower rails); the children who immediately forget the brutal murders of their
parents; the movie occasionally taking a break to bring you an environmental
lecture on global warming and Spruce Bark Beetles; fishing apparently requiring
no hooks or bait.
That’s a small sample that barely skims the surface. The one
thread that runs through all reviews though is: this is the best bad movie
ever! And it really is. Everything about it is wrong. Some claim that Birdemic is intentionally bad. I
disagree, to have deliberately made a film as bad as this would have required
far too much thought and effort.
The problem with there being all this material available
makes it hard to find anything new or original to say about it. So rather than
try and sum up the film any more, lets’ see what happened to the principal
casts since then:
Alan Bagh – Rod – By all accounts a really nice guy, Birdemic was his first film role. Since
then he’s kept himself busy with a number of straight-to-dvd releases and even
had a role as an extra in Parks and
Recreation. When website Rifftrax took their show on the road and done a
live riff of Birdemic, Bagh attended
as a special guest.
Whitney Moore – Nathalie – auditioned for her role in a car
park and had to take over as make-up artist on the film after the previous two
had quit. How appropriately chaotic. She’s kept herself busy since then, mostly
in independent low-budget movies even if a lot of her roles do seem to be of
the ‘woman in diner’ variety. There’s probably not many actresses who can list ‘Batman’
on their CV though.
Damian Carter – Nightclub singer – he of ‘Hanging out with
the Family’ fame (‘gonna have ourselves a
parrrrr-ty!’). Despite appearances, he is a proper musician, has performed
in venues all over America and released an album. In a 2013 interview he said
he had a lot of fun with Birdemic and
was happy it gave him a chance to showcase his music. It’s still a weird song
though.
James Nguyen – the Vietnamese born writer, director and
producer. A former IT Software salesman, which is surprising given how little
his films seem to understand the industry (nb. Giving away a 50% discount is
never a good deal, there is such a thing as ‘profit margins’ you know). He’s
never had any formal training in filmmaking, which explains a lot, but founded
Moviehead Pictures in 2001. The people he casts in his films typically have
little movie experience themselves. The blind leading the
blind. Though he's so out there I think he might secretly be a genius.
One day, I hope for peace between man and birds too...
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