Really Awful Movies: Ep 68 – Birdemic

Sitting at a woeful “1.8” out of 10 on IMDb (with 12,000 + votes cast), it was inevitable we’d turn our eyes to the heavens and examine the notorious Birdemic.

Not to be mistaken for The Birds, the Hitch masterpiece by which this poop was allegedly inspired, Birdemic (full title, Birdemic: Shock and Terror) is widely regarded by aficionados of terrible cinema as one of the worst films of all time.

Does it hold up?

This quirky “independent romantic horror film” was written, directed, and produced by James Nguyen, an auteur of the awful a la Ed Wood.

The somnambulist performances, uneven sound, memorably inane exposition and some of the weirder special effects you’ll ever encounter, makes Birdemic can’t miss material. It’s strangely hypnotic and so bad, it actually improves a bit with repeated viewings (but take that with a grain of salt: we’re rigorous defenders of Battlefield Earth).

What really makes this one a cut above (or is that below?) is the green-think Mother Earth moralizing. Al Gore, eat your heart out! (but make sure that heart is locally-sourced).

Really Awful Movies: Ep 59b – The Devil’s Rain and Kingdom of the Spiders

A special episode of the podcast, featuring Scott Drebit. He’s a writer with The Daily Dead and has a column, Drive In Dust-Offs.

He’s a fan of retro drive-in classics, specifically horror. He talked about his personal connection to drive-ins, which he started seeing from the age of 5. We also chat about the indelible impact of Phantasm on our young psyches.

Scott approached us with two movies to chat about, both very much in line with the kind of thing we do on the Really Awful Movies Podcast: two curiosities which both star the great Canadian export, William Shatner.

The first, The Devil’s Rain, is is a slow moving incoherent desert devil cult worship movie, inexplicably featuring Ernest Borgnine (!) The second, is Kingdom of the Spiders, a pretty taut yet goofy nature run amok movie featuring killer tarantulas.

Really Awful Movies: Ep 47 – Day of the Animals

Another 1970s animal attack feature, Day of the Animals is full of corniness and surprises.

“If there’s a god left to believe in…you’ve made a jackass out of me for years!”, exclaims an enraged Leslie Nielsen in one of the film’s most outrageous moments.

The Naked Gun star plays an ad man who, along with a bunch of other tourists, is trekking through the California woods with some tour guides. Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for us, there’s a problem with the ozone layer and animals are being affected.

There are lots of foreboding shots of predatory animals. We love nature run amok and this one is pretty good. There’s a few inventive kills, a couple of true surprises, and good (well, maybe not so good, they are inexplicably attacking, after all) -natured silliness all around.