When I first got into Italian and European horror in the late 90’s, I began grabbing any and all titles I could. If It was Argento, Bava, Fulci, Deodato, Martino I felt I was in good hands. As I began to wade deeper into the unknown Euro-waters I began to hit proverbial landmines.
One of those “landmines” was the series of sequels to Lucio Fulci’s Zombie that Media Blasters began to put out on DVD. I bought them all as they came out, and hated each one a little bit worse than the last one culminating in the “abysmal” Killing Birds. These were not the great Italian horror films I loved.
And then something happened, about 5-6 years ago I began to revisit films like Burial Ground, Hell of the Living Dead, and the Zombie sequels, and found that not only did I enjoy them, but I really loved these films. They were the completely off-the-rails sort of madness that I tend to go for, and couldn’t get enough of them.
Sadly most of them had decent, but quite dated DVD’s from Media Blasters that were not yet getting upgraded. Zombi 3, 4, and 5 were produced by Joe D’Amato’s company Filmirage, who also produced such wild works like Witchery and Ghosthouse. Those got some double feature Blu-ray releases from Scream Factory, sadly though Scream did not do any restoration for these films, and released some shoddy Italian transfers that were DNR’s with an inch of their waxy lives.
Fortunately, companies like Severin Films, and now Vinegar Syndrome have gotten into the same with Filmirage and the Zombi sequels, and now here we are in September 2020 with Zombi 5 – Killing Birds the last true film in the sequence finally released to Blu-ray.
The film opens with a Vietnam (?) vet played by Robert Vaughn coming home and finding his wife in bed with a lover. He kills them both, at the same time he kills the babysitter of a little boy (his kid, I think). The vet then gets his eyes ravaged by a killer bird. The film then cuts ahead 20 years, and we get to a college campus where Anne is starting her fall semester with getting a job covering a study about a rare bird, that just so happens to be on the property of Dr. Fred Brown (Vaughn). They visit the property to do their research, and weird stuff involving throat slashing, zombies, birds (at least one set of which do in fact kill).
Every time I watch Killing Birds I love it just a bit more, and this time with this newly restored Blu-ray I was bursting with excitement for the film. Watching it on DVD as much as I have done so in the past, I’ve enjoyed it, watching it now the detail on the zombies was increased and they just looked AMAZING. And the whole thing turned into a surreal, horror version of a Looney Tunes’s episode. I loved it.
Vinegar Syndrome presents Killing Birds in a spectacular 1:85:1 1080p AVC encoded transfer. This looks amazing. So well detailed, the colors pop, the grain is film like and natural. Audio is handled by DTS-HD Audio tracks in English and Italian and sound great. Extras include interviews with Larry Revene and Claudio Lattanzi, an excellent and informative commentary by Samm Deighan and 2 trailers. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.