It’s 4:46 pm
sunny
As the cheetah and I are watching “Terror Birds”,the most terrifying bird horror film since Hitchcock’s “The Birds”,we started whispering (because we’re hiding under a blanket during the scary parts) that we are reviewing so many cool movies thanks to the director of “Terror Birds”,Sean Cain.
It was because of his wonderfully fun take on dinosaurs in “Jurassic City” that we directed to start reviewing movies. We have had a LOT of fun looking at short films,power dramatic films,comedies and off the wall indie films. But there is one genre we have skipped since reviewing “Jurassic City” and that is a Creature Feature film! I mean,how does that happen? We have reviewed plenty of horror films but nary a creature feature! Well leave it to MarVista Entertainment and Sean Cain to fix that with “Terror Birds”.
Greg Evigan plays Harvey Sullivan,a scientist with some deep pockets. He has found two prehistoric “terror birds” on a island somewhere and has spared no expense in having them shipped to his compound in Texas.
With the help of follow scientist,Dr. Slater (Leslie Easterbrook),Sullivan plans on breeding and producing more of these birds and get even more rich!
Things get off to a bumpy start as a ranch wrangler is killed during the offloading of the birds. Looked at as a workplace accident,no one says nothing and the birds are set free in a enclosed area to start hatching eggs.
Six months later Keith Stern,who loves to bird watch,sets off to find a Mexican eagle.
After picking up snacks at a local gas station,Keith heads to a area he knows very well.
While walking his route,Keith sees a electric fence that he hasn’t seen before,he decides to climb it via old overgrown tree and see what is on the other side.
Back at the compound,Sullivan and Slater are bickering because while the terror birds are hatching eggs,the chicks are DOA and Slater can’t figure out why other then to say its the dirt where the birds are laying their eggs.
As Sullivan’s henchmen bring in new birdfood in the form of live dogs,they sudden hear yelling and and screaming!! It’s Keith ,being chased by the birds,the wrangler’s try to open the gate (its a combination lock) but fail…..the birds attack and as Keith lays dying…..his phone starts to ring
Maddie Stern is Keith’s daughter and when he fails to call her at the college she is attending,she gets concerned and wants to go after him to make sure he is ok. He carries a GPS device with him and Maddie plans on finding this way. Her best friend Paige insists on coming and asks Brett and Justin to come with them,Maddie has a thing for Justin but he is seeing a girl named Taylor.
The boys agree to help but when Maddie and Paige see Taylor along,things get tense as Taylor is a bitch on wheels.
The Scooby Gang,err,the group takes off to find Maddie’s dad. They stop at the same gas station where Taylor has a nasty run in with a thug,when she defends herself with a kick to the guy’s nuts,he decides he want revenge and follows after them.
The gang get to the cabin but of course he isn’t there so they follow his last known GPS signal. This leads this to same fence and possibly the same fate. Is Maddie’s dad really dead? Who is the mysterious thug chasing them? Will Sullivan get his just deserts? Who will be The Final Girl?
First off,we liked this movie. Again,the first thing you noticed is the cheesy CGI,its bad and it knows it. If you are expecting top notch CGI,then you haven’t watched a SyFy Channel creature feature. And that would be a shame.
“Terror Birds” is nicely directed by Cain,he gets the most out of his very lean budget and I mean the very most. Lucky for us the heart of that budget went into the cast. Greg Evigan is a old hat of doing these creature features and playing the heavy in them. After being typecast as a good guy in “BJ & the Bear” and “My Two Dads”,he looks like he is having a ball as the evil scientist protecting “my babies” despite the fact they are dangerous killers.
The young cast of kids are also pretty good and we really liked Sarah Joy Byington as Paige. Needless to say the cheetah wasn’t happy when those damn birds went after her.
Jessica Keller as Maddie, Evan Miller as Brett, Dillon Cavitt as Justin and Lindsey Sporrer as Taylor were also solid. We noted that Lindsey had no trouble at all in playing a royal bitch,she seemed a natural….a casting coup to be sure of.
Camera and set design were pretty good…..except for that gas station which was obviously wasn’t open. The scenes there had us laughing.
The only knock I had with “Terror Birds” was writer Jake Helgren”s script lacked humor,I think a little more invested in here would helped. I do commend it for investing time in character development,you end up caring for the five kids and want them to make the General’s Fried Chicken out of those birds.
Terror Birds would be rated PG-13 for CGI violence and a practical kick to a nutsack.
You can buy “Terror Birds” at the MarVista Entertainment website.
The cheetah and I give “Terror Birds” a paw/thumbs up.
Let us know what you thought of our “Terror Birds” review by leaving a comment below!
The Inner Circle 
It looks scary! Enjoyed the review on the movie.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It was a fun movie indeed,love a an old fashioned creature feature!
LikeLike
It was a look of fun after the cheetah calmed me down
LikeLike
This sounds like a B movie but good fun! We watched The Room the other day, OMG how have I never seen it before!
LikeLike
I wondered if Melissa survived her viewing of “The Room”?
LikeLike
It sounds a bit jurassic park like? I’d be interested to see what the CGI is like now!
LikeLiked by 2 people
This is easily in the same class as any Star Wars epic!!
LikeLike
Ummm, as a cheesy SyFi muncher, it was barely passable. Nothing more.
There were MANY scenes which made no sense, had the threat been real.
The worst was the scene where the two birds were feasting on ‘dad’ (Harvey), and Maddie has just bolted. The camera stays with the two girls and guy in the doorway for what seems like 10 minutes, while the actors try to keep the scene fresh and believable. They failed.
The scene had flavors of the old black and white SciFi movies, where there is what feels like an unending exposition made by the grey-headed senior scientist (usually leaning on a desk and smoking a cigarette), while the rest of the main characters gather around in rapt attention. This is the old stand-by cost saver.
Low budget is low budget, but watching the three of them hold a surfer’s crouch, while they discussed their options (as well as politics, events of the day and the advisability of young people going looking for a missing person, unarmed, in Texas), as two deadly carnivores were munching on a corpse 10 feet away was definitely a shark jumper, at least for me. All the scene needed was a desk and some cigarettes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It wasn’t Maddie who bolted, it was the blonde. Sorry. Once I’m bored, my attention span isn’t what it should be.
LikeLiked by 1 person
How could you be bored when Greg Evigan is chewing the scenery so well? He makes Pacino look like a newcomer!!
LikeLike