Return of the Ghost of the Son of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 23 - Birdemic 2- Resurrection

Birdemic – Shock and Terror has a deservedly high reputation as perhaps one of the worst movies ever made – but it was so awful so mind blowingly bad that it was impossible to not watch it – from the wooden acting of the male lead Ron to the absurdly bad special effects – Gif.s of birds  essentially  the dialogue that sounded like it had been translated into martian by babelfish and then back into English, the fact that it took 47 minutes for the birds to start attacking , to the pictures insane insistence that it was making a big statement on global warming the picture is amazing and became a hit on the midnight circuit.

So, in true Hollywood fashion, they went and made another one.

This one is set in Hollywood where we mostly follow the adventures of a guy who is not Ron and a woman who is not Natalie. Not Ron is a producer director whose last film which was done for we are told ‘a big studio’ flopped.   Rod is a long time friend of Not-Rod (no I don’t know his name and I don’t care to look it up – this will have to do) and he and Natalie meet Not-Rod in a restaurant.

The restaurant is by the way – completely empty other than our party there – however since the director had more money and some actual support from a real studio – he added the crowd sounds to the scene which makes it very odd – you keep thinking where are all the people making this noise.

Rod and Not-Rod form a production company – they get backed for “A million dollars” in true Birdemic universe fashion – Not-Rod convinces Not-Natalie to try out for the lead the film, this leads to Not-Rod and Not-Natalie falling for each other – along with scenes of the four of them walking on the beach or visiting the Labrea Tar Pits.

One of the things about Bridemic 2 is that almost everybody who wasn’t dead at the end of the first film is back in one way or another – by the tar pits we meet dr. Jones who once again talks about Global warming and that in ancient times birds would kill the cave men –

Then we flash to a cave couple - we know this because they are wearing furs - having sex who are then killed by birds – it’s an insane scene and really bizarrely out of tone with the rest of the film.  (At least up to this point).

And then of course we get the bird attack.

Whereas in the last film the actual reason for the bird attack is never really given (as in Hitchcock’s The Birds) this time is some sort of red rain that is linked to global warming that brings the birds that were trapped in the tar pit to life – along with the cave couple.

We are treated to birds attacking – inside the studio this time and another coat hanger scene – we also see the birds attack a movie filming in the next sound stage over I guess – which has two topless actresses who die of bird attack. And if you thought the folks dying in the first film were bad actors you have not seen bad acting like this.

Still whereas the first film was a weird and giddy delight mostly for huge gap between the vaulting ambition of the filmmaker and his limited abilities to bring it off – sort of a new Ed Woodish kind of film – Bird 2 has a real paint by numbers feel along with a bit of forcing – and an overall rushed feel – it’s about 20 minutes shorter than the first one and it shows.

Our party move on – find a big studio van – and run into the cave people along with zombies as well as birds – and one by one for each encounter one of the extras dies –until at the very end the last of the folks who are not Ron and Not-Rod and their main squeezes if killed and falls into a pool al la William Holden from Sunset Boulevard – which I’m terrified the film maker is going to try and do a knock off of that soon.

It’s hard to capture lightning in a bottle twice especially when so much of the lightning depends on the spark of madness in the producer/writer/director of these films James Nguyen.  In the first,  his mad serenity shone like a searchlight – here the phrase Global Warming is taken as a joke. I think in Bridemic 1 he was following his dream – in the second he was delivering product.  One can notice the difference.

Enjoy with chicken nuggets – preferably from a fast food joint.