Killing Birds (1988)

**It reunites all the right elements to be a fun b-horror flick (but the title is misleading)**

I admit that when it comes to the horror genre, I can be a conformist. I enjoy quality films, acceptable flicks, mediocre movies and even plain bad ones. I'd say that "Killing Birds: Raptors" could be considered a "good bad movie", and I cannot understand how it got such a low rating on IMDb. Despite of its evident flaws, it provides a decent amount of entertainment, gruesome kills, a reasonable share of creepy moments, fitting music and most of the action takes place inside a creepy old mansion, inhabited by rotting zombies. Honestly, what more can you possibly expect in an Italian horror film from the 80s? Oh, well...

In "Killing Birds: Raptors", the story (which has little to do with killer birds, just so you know), goes something like this: A soldier, returning from the war, comes home to find his wife in bed with another man, which prompts him to kill them both. Afterwards, he also kills another couple (presumably, his in-laws) and, then, the soldier is attacked by a bird that pokes one of his eyes out and causes severe damage in the remaining one, leaving the man blind (okay, what the hell was that?). We later see the deranged soldier being escorted by the police and saying goodbye to his baby, before being sent to jail or a mental institution.

Twenty years later, a group of young university students get together for a research, in which they must find out the whereabouts of a rare breed of woodpecker, which is about to be considered extinct. The work team consists of a group of seven youngsters, but our two main characters are Steve and Anne. Steve, like most of the other group members, is (presumably) a zoology student, while Anne studies journalism. The two aforementioned characters pay an unannounced visit to a man called Frederick Brown, who allegedly was one of the last persons to see the rare bird. The two college mates (and former couple, as it is hinted) get a hostile welcome by the cranky old Mr. Brown, who (surprise!) has a missing eye and the other one looks completely destroyed. Yup, the crazy old kook is none other than the soldier who got a little bit too angry about his wife's infidelity. The eccentric ornithologist (and former cuckold), gives the young students some interesting information and then kindly asks them to get the hell out of his property. Oh, but before sending them off to continue with their research, Mr. Brown asks Steven to let him "see" his face and then proceeds to explore it with his own hands (at this point, we can clearly establish the far-fetched connection between these two, right?).

The students' expedition is cut short when they find a rotting corpse in an abandoned truck (yikes!). The youngsters then find shelter in a creepy old house (of course!), which, as it turns out, is the same place where the two lovers were murdered by Mr. Brown, twenty years ago. Once they're there, as if seeing a dead body wasn't scarring enough for one day, the poor oblivious students are haunted by two horrendous creatures that lurk around the place and, in order to save their sorry behinds, they will spend a large amount time of arguing about what to do next, only to come up with the worst possible strategies to face the horrid monsters.

I said it before, and I can't stress this enough: Italian horror flicks from the 80s usually make zero efforts to provide a coherent plot, so, in the end, even though there are a bunch of loose ends, "Killing Birds" is actually a film that is less convoluted and messy than some of its "equivalents" from that period, like "Ghosthouse" (1988) or "Witchery" (1988), among many others. Now, that doesn't mean that we don't get a fair amount of random ridiculousness and we won't have to sit there and watch a bunch of scenes that are solely there for shock value, even if they make zero sense or add nothing to the story. For example, the bird attacking the soldier. So, are we simply supposed to assume that the bird attacked Mr. Brown because it sensed what he had done to his wife and the bird was a loyal pet to this woman or...? It's absolutely ridiculous, but fun to watch, nonetheless. Then, we have to simply go along with the fact that there are so many crazy coincidences in this story, like Steven reuniting with his father by chance, and then walking into the very same house where his mother was killed. Seriously, what are the chances? We have no choice but playing along or come up with a reasonable explanation ourselves, like, maybe it was fate that caused all those situations. Italian horror flicks from the 80s are pretty random and you either have fun with it, and don't ask a lot of questions or you hate them.

My final verdict: "Killing Birds: Raptors" is worth the watch to anyone who enjoys b-horror flicks from the 80s, that lean a little bit more to the absurd side. It features everything that one would expect from these unpretentious films and, believe it or not, it actually provides genuine moments of creepiness. Nothing that really stays with you, but imagery gruesome enough to satisfy horror fans that simply want to have fun, without expecting superb writing.