Welcome back to my dark corner of this sick world.
‘You trying to be funny’
We’ve reviewed some bad films but this week’s is the first credited to Alan Smithee
'What's wrong with that?'
Alan Smithee is, or used to be, the name the director’s Guild allowed directors to use when they’d rather not have their own name on a movie.
‘That’s the whole idea’
Pretty desperate measures but what do you expect when you make a belated, ill-advised sequel to a masterpiece.
‘The Birds’
This is The Birds II: Land’s End.
Does anyone think this will be good?
‘I do’
Let’s not be silly, this should never have been made,
and the only thing to do is ask; does at least work on its own terms?
‘Will the birds hurt me?’
You can’t view it in isolation because it is a direct sequel.
‘Did you know something like this happened before’
but you’ve got to judge it on its own merits,
without forever berating it for its unnecessary and unwanted existence.
‘A seagull ran into me’
That’s like blaming the child after the condom broke.
And surely there are some pluses, 30 years of special FX advances ought to make a difference.
Not so much.
'God damn it!'
if you watch this space you’ll see the birds enter a nexus of non-existence, fading in and out of reality.
‘Stop it you idiot’
The plotting is similarly slapdash;
even though the events of Bodega Bay are within living memory no one believes in the bird attacks
‘I’ve never heard of a bird attacking people in my life’
The central family are attacked.
But are still unwilling to cut their holiday short.
‘Let’s go for a swim before the girls wake up.’
It’s not even consistent as a sequel,
Bernard Herrman’s eerie avian soundtrack has been replaced by normal music
and Tippi Hedren is playing a completely different character.
‘Oh thanks’
I guess a 30 year continuity error is forgivable, this one isn’t
‘You ever seen a bird like that before?’
Five minutes later...
‘You wouldn’t happen to know what type of bird that is?’
Yeah It’s the lesser spotted Grows 6 inches after Death
‘It’s a black napped tern’
It’s a starling.
'I know.'
Now admittedly, the Birds is hard to pull off, it’s easy to forget; this was a terrible idea for a film!
‘What? How can you say that?’
It shouldn’t work, and it’s a testament to Hitchcock and writer Evan Hunter that it does.
'You got it.'
But the Land’s End has a head start, they knew what worked and yet still fail to learn the most important lesson of the original.
‘You don’t understand, you got a problem here!’
In Hitchcock’s film the Birds’ motivation, is never explained, they just attack.
‘Pretty weird isn’t it’
But here we get moral justifications.
‘Mother natures can only take so much before she hits back with all she’s got.’
We get scientific explanations...
‘It was a high tide when they hit us last night’
This bird lays a trap.
'He really missed us, that's why he came home.'
The original was scary because you out there in the audience, you can’t know the birds won’t just attack.
You can know that they won’t cut your phone line!
'It's dead!'
'Followed by the power.'
Most irritating, there is a natural sequel to the Birds,
right at the start birds are shown massing in the city, which we never see again,
the brilliant final shot shows the characters leaving to an uncertain future.
'How do you know? Are you a bird?'
Instead of following that thread, Land’s end just retreads the events of the original minus the tension.
‘They’re going away’
Then goes all Michael Bay!
Why was this made?!
‘You know what, you’re just wasting your film’
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'There'll be more stories some other time.'