Those mean old birds from Alfred Hitchcock’s famous movie about killer birds called Rope (1948) are back and boy howdy, they are mad. They’re frickin’ sick of humankind’s bullcrap what with our all of our polluting the Earth and blaring our loud music. I can’t confirm this but my cursory research indicates that birds especially hate Ace of Base’s “The Sign” which was very popular at the time. While attempting to recover from the death of their son and get some peace and quiet (AKA a working vacation (Yuck!)), Ted (Brad Johnson) and his wife May (Chelsea Field) take their daughters out to Land’s End, a seemingly peaceful beachside town.
Ted can’t help but notice the dickish attitude of the local winged residents and, along with local lighthouse keeper (Jan Rubes), tries to warn the mayor of the impending catastrophe that will soon befall the townspeople. The mayor never saw the movie Jaws (1975) because he doesn’t listen and the next thing you know, it’s duck season on human beings! Can Ted and his fam survive the carnage, but more importantly, will May succumb to the wildly inappropriate advances of her sleazy boss Frank (John Naughton)?!
Poor Rick Rosenthal had a literal turkey (or pigeon) on his hands with this one and dubbed The Birds II: Land’s End (1994) as “An Alan Smithee joint”. His career wouldn’t fully recover until he unleashed his masterpiece, Halloween: Resurrection (2002), on an unsuspecting world. The Birds II has this weird malaise over it which I can appreciate, but combine that with the morose actors, shrill characters, and bummer melodramatics, and I just wanted out of this mess ASAP. It’s not all bad as the remote setting is gorgeous, there are lots of unintentional laughs to be had, and there are several fun action setpieces. But mostly I just found this made-for-cable-TV movie irritating.
The Blu-ray for The Birds II: Land’s End looks and sounds excellent. There is a great audio commentary from Amanda Reyes, the author of Are You in the House Alone?: A TV Movie Compendium 1964-1999, and film historian Sam Pancake. They have quite an appreciation for Birds II and their commentary track is my favorite thing about this disc. There’s also a lengthy Making Of documentary, an interview with composer Ron Ramin, and a location scouting featurette.