Zombie 5: Killing Birds (1987)
AKA Dark Eyes of the Zombie (1987)
AKA Raptors (1987)
AKA Killing birds - uccelli assassini (1987)
AKA Killing Birds (1987)

(Release Date: 13 July 1988 [In France]... Again, the original date is lost!)
(DVD Release Date: August 19, 2003)

---

J.C. Maçek III The World's Greatest Critic! Hello there, dear readers! I'm writing to you now from my Hospital Bed, recovering from a terrible Injury. You see, last night, for the sake only of completion, I decided to watch Zombie 5: Killing Birds. In protest and anger, my own major intestine leaped straight up through my neck and throttled my brain. I didn't happen to like it too much! BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! Scroll Down for the Complete Zombie Collection:   See Also these Zombie Favorites:   Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004) Naked Milla Kills the UnDead!   Dead Alive (1992) Peter Jackson? Really?   Night of the Living Dead (1968) What is a Zombie?   Dawn of the Dead (1978) And how the Franchises Link!   Day of the Dead (1985) A Bright, Bright, Bright, Bright Sunshinny Day!   Land of the Dead (1985) I've got to LAND it to you, George!   Night of the Living Dead (1990) Savini's Revenge!   28 Days Later(2002) J.C. is a budding sex god!   Dawn of the Dead (2004) Spoiler Free unless you hit CTRL+A!   28 Days Later: The Soundtrack Album (2003)   Return of the Living Dead (1985) Is it a Sequel or not?   I, Zombie (1998) The Twelve Steps to Zombie Recovery!   Zombi 2 (1979) Not even NUDITY can save it!   Zombie 3 (1988) ONE WAS ENOUGH!   Zombie 4: After Death (1988) A new meaning for "Bad"!   SearchThisSite: But that's the way the cookie crumbles when you force your body to experience a series of terrible movies, simply because you think you have to for the completists out there who might be deterred from watching Crap because of warnings only one man can provide. Ah, well, through the haze of my morphine drip, I'll try to fairly review what just might be the worst movie I've ever seen. Ahem. In the Beginning there was Zombi 2, so named to cash in on the Italian release of Dawn of the Dead (known in old Roma as "Zombi")... AND IT SUCKED! And Zombi 2 begat Zombi 3 and it sucked like a Bio-Mass Powered Electrolux! And Zombi 3 begat the intellectual nadir and cultural sinkhole known as Zombie 4: After Death, which sucks so incredibly much that Astronomers once mistook it for a newly discovered Neutron Star because of the stunning and peerless gravitational field surrounding it. That my friends, is a lot of suck! Now, if the "Zombi/ Zombie" series is a bad joke, Zombie 5: Killing Birds is the Punch line! Ever see a movie so bad it's funny? Now, ever see a movie that goes beyond funny into the dark recesses of actual physical pain in the watching? Compatriots, I give you Zombie 5! Remember actor Robert Vaughn? Sure you do. He's that charming actor from The Magnificent Seven, Superman III and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. But did you ever know his career was in enough trouble to star in a Turkey like this thing? Well, guess what... it was... and he did. Vaughn's character, Fred Brown has returned home from Vietnam to find his wife cuckolding him (fully clothed) with another man, so he kills them both, and has his eyes pecked out by his wife's pet birds as revenge. Naturally he becomes an Ornithologist. I mean, really, you saw that coming, right? Well Vaughn's character, Fred Brown sure didn't... and never does again. Jump forward 20 years to the 1980's. There's no denying this is the 1980's by the way. Everywhere you look there are oversized Polo Shirts, with oversized Eastlands under Oversized Tight Rolls on the College Kids' Undersized Acid Washed Jeans. And then you have the girls with the big butts, bigger hair, bigger glasses, and tiny little acting skills. One character even says "Where's the Beef?"! A Bird Watching expedition from Loyola University (though the main character's shirt reads "LSU", and the scenes were actually filmed at Nicholls State University, Thibodaux, Louisiana) finds Vaughn and his badly made up eye prostheses, and subsequently gets lost in the swamps. There they find Vaughn's old house, now apparently haunted, not by ghosts, but by the undead... we guess. There is only one thing in this movie that vaguely resembles a Zombie, unless you count the acting as a clue! And, of course, the skies are filled with birds, birds, birds. What follows is a Montage of ridiculous, predictable, poorly acted scenes dimly thrown across what no one would call a plot! You can guess the rest, probably because you've seen almost every terrible scene in better movies. But needless to say, almost everyone dies in one badly special effected way or another. One extremely telling thing here is how much director Joe D'Amato really, really wants to rip off Hitchcock's The Birds. He wants to, but he can't, because the producers haven't the bird training skills or budget! So the build up to some massive Pecking Order (sorry) escalates, and then falls flatter than Debra Messing! I mean, seriously... to try to rip something off and fail at that? I didn't even realize you could "Fail" at being unoriginal! I could go on and on and on about the horribly torturous things wrong with this movie, but then it would be the longest review I, or anyone else, has ever written. The DVD Vacuumed my floor though, and I guess I'm grateful for that. Now, this you'll love: In case the dates didn't clue you in... this isn't even really a part of the dreadful and joyless "Zombi/ Zombie" Series. Killing Birds (1987) was made (with a collective 3 hours of work time from Vaughn) before Zombi 3 (1988) and Zombie 4: After Death (1988), and failed at every box office whose window it darkened. So after the fact, they added the headline title "Zombie 5" in the hope that "fans" of the series might automatically rent or buy this. How sad is it that the movie sucked so incredibly much that they have to attach it, unofficially, to one of the worst movie series ever made? Shouldn't they have called it "The Godfather and the Killing Birds", or "Rocky: Killing Birds" or even "My Dinner with Andre: The Killing Birds"? Seriously... this would be like renaming that Afleck film "Ishtar II: Gigli"! I guess this one fits in this broken toilet tank of a movie series well enough, seeing as how none of the other "Zombi/ Zombie" movies had Jack Q. Schidt to do with each other either. (See also Hell of the Living Dead, another film sometimes renamed Zombi 5... although, it has a bit more of a claim to the throne!) Man, you want to talk about a stinker, Zombie 5: Killing Birds is it, man! The most rewarding part of the DVD was the "Interview with Robert Vaughn" extra in which he can't remember a damned thing about this movie, so he starts talking about the movies he can remember being in. I guess that's because Zombie 5: Killing Birds is a DOG! A Mangy, Mongrelized, Wormy, Unpleasant, Mean Little DOG! There's not even any nudity in this one... opportunities, but NO NUDITY! Augh! Well, I have to close now... the nurse just came in with another shot for me. I'm not sure if I really trust this place, because I'm pretty sure that when I came in here last night I didn't have these breast implants. I'm not complaining though...